The evolution of labour migration regulation in Eurasia in the XX-XXI centuries

The article provides the overview of the changes in labour migration regulation in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet area throughout several centuries. The labour migration role for the development of the Eurasian migration system development is described in the article with the history of the region taken into consideration. The Eurasian migration system is considered to be the set of stable migration flows of various types, established due to historical, cultural, economic, social and other ties between the countries of the post-Soviet area. Thus, the research is mainly based on the migration systems theory. However, historical ties as well as objectively existing differences in the levels of economic development between the countries of departure and destination of migrants in the post-Soviet area are now supplemented by political decisions influencing migration flows, too. Therefore, the author aims at analyzing both the objective prerequisites and nowadays political framework of migration in the post-Soviet area in order to detect their influence on the reasons, directions and scope of current migrations in the region considered in the article. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) that was established at the post-Soviet area just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, created the conditions for visa-free movement of labor migrants in the 1990s, however, without exempting them from other obligations for legal employment in Russia. It provided the CIS states citizens with advantages over other labour migrants at the Russian labour market. Since the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) has been launched in 2015 and the single labour market has been created there, the citizens of its five member-states have enjoyed the equal treatment with locals at Russian labour market. The creation of the EEU resulted into less favorable conditions at Russian labour market for those labour migrants who are the citizens of the CIS states not participating in the EEU. The author takes the example of migration between Ukraine, Moldova and Russia in the XX-beginning of XXI centuries to show that despite the prerequisites for large labour migration in the post-Soviet area, the existence of 'two-speed' Eurasian economic integration influences the priority destinations of labour migrants from some CIS countries that are not the EEU member-states. Thus, labour migration of the Ukrainian and Moldavian citizens has switched from Russia to the European Union.

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