Russian Immigration Control SYMBOL OVER SUBSTANCE

Abstract

This policy memo critically examines the mismatch between Russia’s stringent immigration rhetoric and its actual enforcement capacity. It argues that migration policies often serve symbolic purposes—projecting control to manage public anxieties—while allowing informal labor markets to operate beneath the veneer of formal regulation. Through analysis of key reforms (2007 liberalization followed by restrictive quotas and the 2015 “patent” system with EEU mobility), the memo highlights how bureaucratic discretion, enforcement loopholes, and migration blacklists maintain informal inflows of migrants, rendering much of the policy performative rather than substantive.