Sustainability of the New Economy: An Empirical Study of Bangladeshi Migrants in Moscow

Abstract

Very little is known about the specifics of the challenges and the strategies of the Bangladeshi migrants use to cope with, in Russia, for studies in this regard are largely non-existent. With the aim of filling this gap, this study explores the socio-economic survival strategies of Bangladeshi migrants in Moscow. Using mixed research methods, it draws data from 385 survey questionnaire, and 10 Key Informant Individual Interviews and analyses the experiences of migrants in relation to access to livelihood and their use of social networks in Russia. The findings of this research indicated that economic reason is the main pull factor for the migration of Bangladeshi to Russia. This paper also examines the survival strategies of Bangladeshi migrants in Moscow. A number of survival strategies are identified including trade and commerce, petty business, importing, trading processing raw jute from Bangladesh, trading electronics products, physicians and working in government institutions. Migrants have been noted to intensify establishment of petty businesses in major trading centres as their major survival strategies. The findings presented in this paper established that age, sex and education are important factors in influencing the diversification of survival strategies of migrants. The study concludes that, although all the survival strategies examined seems to have improved migrants livelihoods better than in their place of origin, however none of strategy is complete in its own forcing migrants to opt for more than one survival strategy.

Keywords: socio-economic, survival strategies, social networks, migrants, international migration

JEL Classification: J00, J12, J15, J24, J60, J61