For many years, the question "Does Russia need guest workers?" became rhetorical. That is, there is no definite answer to it. You can only try to compare the pros and cons and draw conclusions that, with a small margin in one direction or the other, may turn out to be untenable.
A bit of history. There have always been guest workers in Russia. If you do not get carried away looking for them from the time of the invitation to the kingdom of the Rurik and Varangians, but remain in the field of visibility of the second half of the twentieth century, then someone may well remember construction teams from different Soviet republics at the construction site of the BAM or shabashniki from Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, etc. building cowsheds and pigsties, padding doors with leatherette, looping floors, gluing wallpaper. Then no one had a question: are they needed. They were a given of the Soviet system.
It would seem, why is it not so now, what is the question? What is the difference between modern guest workers, and why is there a sharply negative attitude towards them in Russian society? After all, most European and Asian countries also use the labor of guest workers, but there are much fewer problems similar to Russian ones.
"A group of Moldovan special forces, out of habit, also repaired it during the storming of the apartment." Folklore.
For example, in Germany, for example, foreign workers are somehow integrated into society, although the descendants of the first Turkish migrants are increasingly in constant search of their own identification. In South Korea, on the contrary, the social structure does not allow integration, since centuries-old mono-national traditions have developed there.
The solution to the issue is different for these countries, but there are practically no problems. Why?
Who is he - a guest worker in Russia?
In relation to guest workers, Russia is following its own special path of development. Migrant workers, unlike many other countries, in Russia have absolutely no rights, and are in the position of slaves, at the very bottom of the social-working stratum.
The tightening of the stay of these socio-cultural groups in Russia is reduced to an even greater increase in corruption among Russian officials and a deterioration in the situation of the migrant workers themselves.
The mood of society towards them is mostly negative, since people who do not speak the language, but work in the service staff, cannot but irritate at the everyday level. Their way of life in Russia - large ethnic communities due to cost savings and unsanitary conditions - also cannot please the eye of a Russian esthete.
Only associations with a common historical past with Russia are a guest worker able to understand the phrase inaccessible to other foreigners: "No, probably …".
Why and why are they going? In their countries (formerly friendly, and united with Russia by one common seventy-year history) the economic situation is much worse, and by inertia they choose from two evils what they think is, if not less, then familiar.
Guest worker as a constant of Maslow's pyramid
In fact, the question should probably be posed somewhat differently: can the state regulate or, more simply, afford to make the socio-economic working conditions attractive in those spheres of activity in which guest workers are employed? Solving the problem in this way is guaranteed to respond to the header's maxim.
If so, then the citizens of Russia will probably willingly go to work, which is unattractive from an economic point of view, and the question will disappear by itself.
“Previously, the Penkins swept the yards, and Tsoi worked in the boiler rooms. Nowadays, there are Uzbeks in the janitors and taxi drivers, most of the stokers are Tajiks, and the bartenders are two-thirds of them snitches. NevaForum.
In the same South Korea, to which, by the way, the flow of labor from Uzbekistan is increasing, since this is facilitated by the government of this country, thereby reducing the flow of visitors to Russia, for example, this issue is solved simply.
Taking into account the fact that the local population, as well as in Russia, is reluctant to go into areas where low-skilled, and therefore low-paid - by Korean standards - labor is required, the state willingly uses foreign labor. At the same time, the rights of guest workers are protected and regulated there both at the legislative and actual levels. For example, compensation for accidents at work is paid to them on a general basis, cases of non-payment of wages are rare, if such occur, then the Korean state, represented by the judicial system, always takes the side of a foreign worker.
Germany is also quite successful in regulating the issue of foreign labor, making some efforts to integrate them into German society. And this is bearing fruit. For example, last year the whole of Germany was saddened by the death of a man who created in the distant seventies the first doner kebab in Germany, thanks to which thousands of Turkish guest workers still have well-paid permanent jobs.
Guest workers are undoubtedly needed in Russia. If we ignore the economy, then at least so that society becomes a truly civil society, and not just a people inhabiting a certain part of the land. So that it learns to ask itself questions that drive the development of socio-cultural ties and general civil freedoms. Only then is it possible to go up a step in Maslow's pyramid.
