“The Image of the City” as a Factor in the Formation of Migration Motivations (using the Example of Chita Migrants in Irkutsk)

The article examines the images of host and donor cities in the narratives of people moving from Chita to Irkutsk. We propose that the construction and opposition of representations of the host city and the donor city can be an important part of the mechanism reproducing the ‘Western drift.’ The image of the donor city allows future migrants to identify the reasons that make it impossible for them to stay in Chita, while the image of the receiving city aids in making significant decisions about potential migration destinations. Based on 16 semi-structured autobiographical interviews with individuals who moved from Chita to Irkutsk, we analyzed how respondents compared the images of the cities, identifying and classifying the key arguments in favor of leaving and choosing a destination. Our main finding was that in the respondents' narratives, rational arguments (economy, ecology, infrastructure) were often intertwined with emotional arguments (subjective feelings of danger, boredom, greyness, and exclusion from the local cultural context). Notably, emotional arguments frequently dominated the narratives of younger respondents. Our hypothesis suggests that local culture and the ‘Western drift’ in Siberia are interdependent processes. Rural migration to Chita contributes to the maintenance of a specific non-urban culture characterized by a high level of tolerance for violence, a lack of demand for developed entertainment infrastructure and various everyday goods, and the popularity of criminal subculture. This situation provokes young people, particularly the middle class ones, out of the city to Irkutsk, which may not differ significantly from Chita in terms of economic and infrastructural perceptions, yet offers a higher level of ‘culture.’ We believe that this study contributes to the discussion on ‘Western drift’ by providing a deeper understanding of how it operates at the level of two nearly equivalent regions. While the Western drift typically considers migration flows from Siberia and the Far East to the major cities of the European part of Russia, we have highlighted some features of this process at a smaller scale. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

Keywords

Authors

References