Contextualizing Migrants' Strategies of Seeking Medical Care in Russia*
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12247 |
| Published date | 01 October 2016 |
| Author | Ekaterina Demintseva,Daniel Kashnitsky |
| Date | 01 October 2016 |
Contextualizing Migrants’Strategies of
Seeking Medical Care in Russia*
Ekaterina Demintseva* and Daniel Kashnitsky*
ABSTRACT
Russia is an important destination for labour migrants from the former Soviet Union republics
especially Central Asian low-income countries: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The
life of migrants from Central Asia is characterized in Russia by scarce resources and social
exclusion. Limited access to healthcare is aggravated by the negative attitudes and discrimina-
tion that migrants face when visiting state hospitals and clinics. In our study, we aim to
describe the medical infrastructure available to migrants in Moscow. We investigate how
migrants use formal and informal strategies to overcome the barriers to their receiving medical
care in the urban environment. The study is based on the analysis of qualitative interviews
with 60 labour migrants from Central Asian countries and 23 caregivers working in Moscow-
based medical facilities such as state hospitals, outpatient clinics, ambulance stations, and pri-
vate medical centres including the so-called Kyrgyz clinics.
INTRODUCTION
Russia has one of the highest rates of international migration. According to the United Nations’
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Russia was visited by over 11 million foreign nation-
als in 2013 (UN, 2014). Most of them came from the states of the former Soviet Union, including
the countries of central Asia.Uzbekistan has been the largest donor of labour migrants to Russia
followed by Ukraine, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan (FMS, 2012). Migrants’access too
social services, especially, to medical care and health insurance, is a very pressing issue in Russia.
This issue is particularly relevant as extensive foreign labour migration is a relatively recent phe-
nomenon in Russia. As a result, necessary legal provisions and social programmes aimed at both
documented and undocumented migrants are often lacking (Kuznetsova and Mukharyamova, 2013:
370). This situation is exacerbated by widespread discriminatory practices towards migrants by the
host society and by public institutions. Undocumented migrants are particularly vulnerable to dis-
crimination and other barriers and risk factors (Zayonchkovskaya et al., 2014, Demintseva and
Kashnitsky, 2015: 216).
The large influx of migrants to Russia in recent years has been driven by a combination of sev-
eral factors: a significant wage gap between Russia and the neighbouring countries, the visa-free
policy with the Commonwealth of Independent States and non-transparent labour practices includ-
ing the employers’flexibility to recruit migrants disregarding the Labour Code (Ivanov, 2011: 39).
A significant share of labour migrants come to Russia from countries that have a reciprocal
agreement of visa-free entry to Russia. According to a new amendment to the Law on the Legal
Status of Foreign Citizens (Federal Law #127 as of January 2014) foreign citizens of the CIS
* National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE)
doi: 10.1111/imig.12247
©2016 The Authors
International Migration ©2016 IOM
International Migration Vol. 54 (5) 2016
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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