Ethnicity in schools: perception of migrant children in the multicultural environment of Russian cities

Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity. 2022. Vol. 50. No. 6. P. 1093–1106.

Demintseva E.

This article analyses phenomenon of “migrant schools” and “migrant classes” in schools that began to emerge in the 2010s in Siberian cities of Tomsk and Irkutsk. The study is based on 120 interviews with migrants and 36 express-interviews with parents of children from both local families and those that have migrated from Central Asia, as well as case studies of four schools in these two cities identified as “migrant” by local residents. Despite the ethnic diversity of these Siberian cities where most families themselves descend from migrants from other regions, the local population singles out new migrants from the countries of Central Asia as “others” in the urban space. While school administrations, teachers, and parents reproduce the narratives of tolerance and ethnic diversity, school segregation persists in these cities, manifested, among other things, in the emergence of “migrant” schools and “migrant classes” in schools. This study presents this segregation as an outcome of strategies pursued by school administrators and parents of both local and migrant children. In particular, creation of “migrant” classes in some schools is the school administrators’ response to the lack of adaptation programs for migrant children. I conclude that rather than assisting the socialization of migrant children, such schools reproduce their isolation from other pupils, limiting their ability to succeed in the future.

Keywords: дети мигрантов, этничность, ethnicity, migrant children, мигранты из стран Средней Азии, migrants from central Asia in Russia, “migrant schools”, Siberian cities, "мигрантские школы", сибирские города

Publication based on the results of: Analysis of adaptation of various socio-economic and demographic groups to the pandemic consequences in the context of new social policy measures (2021)