Interpretation of people’s behavior in the sphere of interethnic relations is experiencing certain difficulties nowadays. On the one hand, social surveys usually record a hostile attitude towards migrants from other ethnic groups on the part of the local population. On the other hand, the results of social surveys allows to speak confidently about the absence of racial prejudices and nationalist attitudes in the minds of Russians. There is a paradoxical situation in the society of xenophobia without the presence of xenophobes. The authors argue that conflicts, usually qualified as interethnic, are actually conditioned by other factors. The presented paper shows that the deterioration of the interethnic situation is due not to nationalist prejudices, but to social causes. The background of the guarded or even hostile attitude to migrants is in the deeply rooted orientation in the consciousness of “locals” toward the widespread use of social support provided by the state – the so-called redistributive model of social behavior. The study focuses upon correlation between the level of the interethnic conflict and the degree of satisfaction with the availability and quality of services in the social sphere. Conducted sociological research proved that significant proportion of the population in the region shares the opinion about the “unjust” consumption of social services by “newcomers”. We argue that the real basis of the claimed interethnic conflicts is the rationally realized desire of the local population not to allow competitors, internal and external migrants, to join the state system of social support.