Russia, China, and the immigration security dilemma

Political Science Quarterly

Volumn 121, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 1-32

  Alexseev, Mikhail A ^a   Hofstetter, C Richard ^a,b  

^a SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Department of Political Science ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33845384129     PISSN: 00323195     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-165X.2006.tb00563.x     Document Type: Review

References (138)

1. See Viktor Larin, Kitai I Dal'nii Vostok Rossii v pervoi polovine 90-kh: problemy regional'nogo vzainwdeystviia [China and the Russian Far East in the First Half of the 1990s: Problems of Regional Interaction] (Vladivostok: Dal'nauka, 1998), 72.
2. For recent reactions, see Mikhail A. Alexseev, "Socioeconomic and Security Implications of Chinese Migration in the Russian Far East," Post-Soviet Geography and Economics 42 (March 2001): 95-114;
3. Dmitrii Chernov, "Kitatiskaia bolezn' Dal'nego Vostoka. Diaspora zhivet po svoim zakonam" [The Chinese Disease of the Russian Far East. The Diaspora Lives According to Its Own Laws], Vremia novostei, 19 February 2003, accessed on the website of East View at http://dlib.eastview.com, 30 May 2003.
4. Accessed on the Levada Center website at http://www.levada.ru/press/ 2005111101.html, 22 November 2005.
5. For the argument about the economic necessity of Chinese migration into the Russian Far East and a review of alarmist responses, see Galina Vitkovskaya, Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya, and Kathleen Newland, "Chinese Migration into Russia" in Sherman W. Garnett, ed., Rapprochement or Rivalry: Russia-China Relations in a Changing Asia (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000), 348,353,364.
6. In the European and American contexts, the rise of antimigrant sentiments regardless of net economic benefits from migration has been noted in The Economist, "The Longest Journey: A Survey of Migration," 2 November 2002, 14;
7. Michael S. Teitelbaum and Jay Winter, A Question of Numbers: High Migration, Low Fertility, and the Politics of National Identity (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998);
8. Warren Zimmermann, "Migrants and Refugees? A Threat to Security?" in Michael S. Teitelbaum and Myron Weiner, eds., Threatened Peoples, Threatened Borders: World Migration and U.S. Policy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995, 88-116);
9. st Century: Mapping the Research Agenda (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 165-189.
10. For example, according to the Primorskii Krai Visa and Registration Service (OVIR), 34 percent (or 27,530) of the total number of PRC visitors to Primorskii in 1994 and 1995 failed to return to China. In 1999, less than 1 percent of Chinese visitors failed to return.
11. See Alexseev, "Socioeconomic and Security Implications," Table 1. According to Vladimir Protiven, deputy head of Russia's migration service for Primorskii Krai, in 2004 only 12 out of 100,000 Chinese tourists failed to return to China; interview with the first author, Vladivostok, 21 June 2005.
12. See Gilbert Rozman,-"Sino-Russian Relations: Mutual Assessments and Predictions" in Garnett, ed., Rapprochement or Rivalry, 148.
13. Ronald R. Krebs and Jack S. Levy, "Demographic Change and the Sources of International Conflict" in Myron Weiner and Sharon Stanton Russell, eds., Demography and National Security (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 88.
14. Barry Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict" in Michael E. Brown, ed., Ethnic Conflict in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 103-125;
15. Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis, "Civil War and the Security Dilemma" in Barbara F. Walter and Jack Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 15-37;
16. Stephen Van Evera, "Nationalism and the Causes of War" in Charles A. Kupchan, ed., Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 146-174.
17. Robert Jervis, "Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma," World Politics 30 (January 1978): 167-214.
18. John Herz, "Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma," World Politics (January 1950): 157.
19. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," 103.
20. A study of immigration attitudes in California showed that respondents made little distinction between permanent and temporary migrants. See Brian Loveman and C. Richard Hofstetter, "American Perceptions of Undocumented Immigrants: Political Implications," New Scholar 9 (Spring 1984): 111-118. In the same study, the perceived impact of migration on crime and welfare spending far exceeded the actual crime rates and welfare expenditures associated with illegal migrants.
21. Snyder and Jervis, "Civil War and the Security Dilemma," 24.
22. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," American Political Science Review 90 (December 1996): 715-735.
23. For example, see contributions to Walter and Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention
24. For example, see contributions to Walter and Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention, especially Susan Woodward, "Bosnia and Herzegovina: How Not to End Civil War," 73-115;
25. B.D. Jones, "Military Intervention in Rwanda's 'Two Wars': Partisanship and Indifference," 116-145;
26. David D. Laitin, "Somalia: Civil War and International Intervention," 146-180;
27. Michael W. Doyle, "War and Peace in Cambodia," 181-220;
28. Chaim D. Kaufmann, "When All Else Fails: Evaluating Population Transfers and Partition as Solutions to Ethnic Conflict," 221-260;
29. Rui J.P. de Figueiredo, Jr. and Barry B. Weingast, "The Rationality of Fear: Political Opportunism and Ethnic Conflict," 261-302.
30. Our unit of analysis, in other words, is the individual. The goal is to explain individual variation in antimigrant hostility and threat perception. Variations in the broader demographic, political, and socioeconomic context of migration would matter to the extent that individuals are likely to associate them with threat and hostility. Although we believe that threat and hostility are antecedents and therefore important signposts of interethnic violence, we do not assume a firm link between mass opinion and violent conflict.
31. Primorskii Krai, Khabarovskii Krai, and the Amur oblast all experienced natural population decline, out-migration of ethnic Slavs to Central Russia, and approximately the same levels of Chinese migration since the early 1990s. All of these regions experienced economic decline and problems with law enforcement. See, for example, Vitkovskaya, Zayonchkovskaya, and Newland, "Chinese Migration into Russia," 350-353, 355-357.
32. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," 103.
33. Daniel C. Esty, Jack Goldstone, Ted Robert Gurr, Barbara Harff, Pamela T. Surko, Alan N. Unger, and Robert S. Chen, "The State Failure Project: Early Warning Research for US Foreign Policy Planning" in John L. Davies and Ted Robert Gurr, eds., Preventive Measures: Building Risk Assessment and Crisis Early Warning Systems (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 27-38;
34. James N. Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
35. R. Koopmans and P. Statham, eds., Challenging Immigration and Ethnic Relations Politics: Comparative European Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1.
36. Myron Weiner, "Nations Without Borders," Foreign Affairs 75 (March/April 1996): 128.
37. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," 110-111.
38. Alexseev, "Socioeconomic and Security Implications of Chinese Migration, 134.
39. For exaggerated estimates of Chinese population, see M. Nosov, "Rossiiskii Dal'nii Vostok I Kitai: problemy segodniashnego dnia I perspektivy sotrudnichestva" [The Russian Far East and China: Present-Day Problems and Prospects for Cooperation], Report (Moscow: Moscow Carnegie Center, 1996), 8.
40. Vladimir Kontorovich, "Can Russia Resettle the Far East?" Post-Communist Economies 12 (September 2000): 365-384.
41. Petr Ia. Baklanov, Geograficheskie, sotsial'no-ekonomicheskie i geopoliticheskie faktory migratsii kitaiiskogo naseleniia v raiony rossiiskogo Dal'nego vostoka [Geographic, Socioeconomic and Geopolitical Factors of Chinese Migration in the Regions of the Russian Far East] (paper presented at the Roundtable, "Prospects for the Far East Region: The Chinese Factor," Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok, 28 June 1999), 3.
42. Interview with the first author, Vladivostok, 15 August 2000.
43. Dmitry Trenin, Kitaiskaia Problema Rossii [The Chinese Problem of Russia] (Moscow: Moscow Carnegie Center, 1998), 38.
44. Kitaiskaia Problema Rossii [The Chinese Problem of Russia] Ibid., 37.
45. Van Evera, "Nationalism and the Causes of War," 146-147.
46. Graeme Herd, "Russia: Systemic Transformation or Federal Collapse?" Journal of Peace Research 36 (May 1999): 259-269.
47. For a multidisciplinary assessment of these conditions, see Judith Thornton and Charles Ziegler, eds. Russia's Far East: A Region at Risk? (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002).
48. See Mette Skak, "Post-Soviet Foreign Policy: The Emerging Relationship Between Russia and Northeast Asia," The Journal of East Asian Affairs 7 (Winter 1993): 141.
49. Rozman, "Sino-Russian Relations," 167.
50. Sino-Russian Relations, Ibid., 164.
51. Interview with the first author, Vladivostok, 15 August 2000.
52. Sherman W. Garnett, "Limited Partnership" in Garrnett, ed., Rapprochement or Rivalry, 20.
53. Goskomstat Rossii, Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Dal'nevostochnogo Federal'nogo okruga v 2000 godu [Socio-economic Situation in the Far Eastern Federal District in 2000] (Moscow, 2001) 7, 64.
54. Notably, after Putin forced Nazdratenko to resign in February 2001, the Kremlin's envoy, General Pulikovskii, failed to get his protégé (Apanasenko) elected in place of Nazdratenko.
55. Anatoly Kstyukov, "The Security Council Has Reached the Pacific Ocean," Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 27 November 2002, accessed on the website of LexisNexis at http://welj.lexis-nexis.com/universe, 12 July 2003.
56. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," 104-105.
57. Robert Axelrod, Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
58. See Jervis, "Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma," 211.
59. I. Lotkin, "Omsk: O vneshnei trudovoi migratsii" [On External Labor Migration], in Set' etnologicheskogo monitoringa I rannego preduprezhdeniia konfliktov, Bulletin' 3 (August 1997): 16.
60. Even in economically prosperous Moscow, only 2.1 percent of Chinese migrants in 1999 sought permanent residency. Vil'ia Gel'bras, "Kitaiskoe zemliachestvo v Moskve" [The Chinese Community in Moscow], Aziia I Afrika Segodnia 11 (December 1999): 34-39.
61. Chernov, "Kitatiskaia bolezn'."
62. Vitkovskaya, Zayonchkovskaya, and Newland, "Chinese Migration into Russia," 364.
63. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," 106.
64. John C. Turner, "The Experimental Social Psychology of Intergroup Behaviour" in John C. Turner and H. Giles, eds., Intergroup Behavior (Oxford: Blackwell, and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 97, 98.
65. Ibid.
66. J.F. Dovidio and S.L. Gaertner, "Intergroup Bias: Status, Differentiation, and a Common In-Group Identity," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75 (January 1998): 109-120;
67. J.L. Gibson and Amanda Gouws, "Social Identities and Political Intolerance: Linkages Within the South African Mass Public," American Journal of Political Science 44 (April 2000): 278-292.
68. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 182.
69. The literature review is in Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Ibid., 141-186.
70. Lincoln Quillian, "Prejudice as a Response to Perceived Group Threat: Population Composition and Anti-Immigrant and Racial Prejudice in Europe," American Sociological Review 60 (August 1995): 592 and citations therein.
71. Myron Weiner, The Global Migration Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 2.
72. Yevgenii Nazdratenko, I vsya Rossiya za spinoy... [And All of Russia Is behind Our Back...] (Vladivostok: Ussuri, 1999), 20-24. Nazdratenko was the Governor of Primorskii Krai from 1993 to 2001.
73. th Century] (Vladivostok: DVO RAN, 2002), 198-199.
74. Sergei Pushkarev, Head of the Russian Federal Migration Service for Primorskii Krai, in an interview with the first author, Vladivostok, 15 August 2000.
75. Barbara F. Walter, "Introduction" in Walter and Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention, 4.
76. Weiner, The Global Migration Crisis, 2.
77. Herbert M. Blalock, Toward a Theory of Minority-Group Relations (New York: Wiley, 1967);
78. Graham Kinloch, The Dynamics of Race Relations: A Sociological Analysis (New York: Vintage Books, 1974);
79. Nancy Tienhaara, Canadian Views on Immigration and Population: An Analysis of Post-War Gallup Polls (Ottawa, Canada: Information Canada, 1974);
80. Susan Olzak, "Labor Unrest, Immigration and Ethnic Conflict in Urban America, 1880-1914," American Journal of Sociology 94 (May 1989): 1303-1333.
81. Susan Olzak, The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992).
82. J.R. Kluegel and Eliot R. Smith, "Affirmative Action Attitudes: Effects of Self-Interest, Racial Affect, and Stratification Beliefs on Whites' Views," Social Forces 61 (March 1983): 797-824.
83. David Lake and Donald Rothchild, eds. The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 10;
84. M.Z. Bookman, Economic Decline and Nationalism in the Balkans. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994).
85. For earlier work, see Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970);
86. Edward L. Azar and John W. Burton, International Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1986).
87. For a cogent critique of the relative deprivation theory with respect to interethnic conflict, see Walker Connor, "From a Theory of Relative Economic Deprivation towards a Theory of Relative Political Deprivation" in Michael Keating and John McGarry, eds. Minority Nationalism and the Changing International Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 114-136.
88. Quillian, "Prejudice," 590.
89. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 175.
90. For psychological experiments substantiating the logic of relative gains' valuations, see Henri Tajfel, "Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination," Scientific American 223 (November 1970): 96-102;
91. Turner and Giles, Intergroup Behavior
92. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 143-149.
93. Income valuations were derived from responses to "Do you consider yourself to be in the low, middle, or high income group?" and coded on a scale from 1 to 3, with a mean of 1.53 and standard deviation of 0.53, putting most respondents in low- and middle-income groups.
94. Jack Citrin, Donald P. Green, Christopher Muste, and Cara Wong, "Public Opinion Toward Immigration Reform: The Role of Economic Motivations," Journal of Politics 59 (August 1997): 858-881. The survey had 2,428 respondents.
95. Robert Gilpin, "Three Ideologies of Political Economy" in Charles W. Kegley, Jr. and Eugene R. Witkopf, eds., The Global Agenda: Issues and Perspectives (Boston: McGrawHill, 1998), 281.
96. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," Econometrica 47 (March 1979): 263-291.
97. Jack S. Levy, "Daniel Kahneman: Judgment, Decision, and Rationality," PS: Political Science and Politics 35 (June 2002): 272.
98. See John C. Turner and Richard Y. Bourhis, "Social Identity, Interdependence and the Social Group: A Reply to Rabbie et al." in W. Peter Robinson, ed., Social Groups and Identities: Developing the Legacy of Henri Tajfel (Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 1996), 25-64;
99. Jacob M. Rabbie and Murray Horwitz, "Categories versus Groups as Explanatory Concepts in Intergroup Relations," European Journal of Social Psychology 19 (January 1988): 117-123.
100. Pavel Tarasenko, "Migratsionnye protsessy, ikh vliianie na kriminogennuiu obstanovku v krae i o dopolnitel'nykh merakh po uporiadocheniiu prebyvaniia i osedaniia inostrannykh grazhdan na territorii Primorskogo kraia." [Migration Processes, Their Impact on the Criminal Situation in the Krai, and Additional Measures for Regulating the Visits and Settlement of Foreign Nationals in Primorskii Krai] (paper presented at the conference, "Prospects for the Far East Region: The Chinese Factor," Institute of History, Archeology, and Ethnography of the Far Eastern Branch, Russia Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok, 28 June 1999), 5.
101. See Peter Burns and James G. Gimpel, "Economic Insecurity, Prejudicial Stereotypes, and Public Opinion on Immigration Policy," Political Science Quarterly 115 (Summer 2000): 201-225.
102. Bernard Schissel, Richard Wanner, and James S. Friederes, "Social and Economic Context and Attitudes Toward Immigrants in Canadian Cities," International Migration Review 23 (Summer 1989): 289-308. The latter found that unemployment rates were only weakly related to immigration attitudes in Canada.
103. Alexseev, "Socioeconomic and Security Implications of Chinese Migration," 126.
104. Principal components analysis of these two items revealed one principal component accounting for 88.3 percent of total variance in perceptions of threat to Russia and Primorskii.
105. Daniel Yergin and Thane Gusthafson, Russia 2010: And What It Means for the World (New York: Vintage Books, 1993).
106. Previous studies found a significant connection between levels of threat perception and preference for hostile or incendiary policies. Meredith W. Watts, "Political Xenophobia in the Transition from Socialism: Threat, Racism, and Ideology Among East German Youth," Political Psychology 17 (March 1996): 97-126;
107. Mark Schafer, "Cooperative and Conflictual Policy Preferences: The Effect of Identity, Security, and Image of the Other," Political Psychology 20 (December 1999): 829-844;
108. C. Gordon and A. Arian, "Threat and Decision Making," Journal of Conflict Resolution 45 (April 2001): 196-215.
109. We obtained this variable from principal components analysis explaining close to 70 percent of variance in these two items.
110. Mikhail A. Alexseev, "Chinese Migration in the Russian Far East: Security Threats and Incentives for Cooperation in Primorskii Krai" in Thornton and Ziegler, eds., Russia's Far East: A Region at Risk?, 319-348.
111. Jack Citrin, Beth Reingold, and Donald Green, "American Identity and the Politics of Ethnic Change," Journal of Politics 52 (November 1990): 1124-1153.
112. Stuart J. Kaufman, "Ethnic Violence, Symbolic Politics, and the Security Dilemma" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 2001).
113. Mary Jackman, "General and Applied Tolerance: Does Education Increase Commitment to Racial Education?" American Journal of Political Science 22 (May 1978): 302-324.
114. Mary Jackman, "Education and Policy Commitment to Racial Education," American Journal of Political Science 25 (May 1981): 256-269;
115. Lawrence Bobo and Frederick C. Licari, "Education and Political Tolerance: Testing the Effects of Cognitive Sophistication and Target Group Affect," Public Opinion Quarterly 53 (Fall 1989): 285-308;
116. Charles R. Chandler and Yung-mei Tsai, "Social Factors Influencing Immigration Attitudes: An Analysis of Data from the General Social Survey," Social Science Journal 38 (Summer 2001): 177-188;
117. C.E. Case, A.M. Greeley, and M. Fuchs, "Social Determinants of Racial Prejudice," Sociological Perspectives 32 (Winter 1989): 469-483.
118. For a counter-argument, see Mary Jackman and Michael J. Muha, "Education and Intergroup Attitudes: Moral Enlightenment, Superficial Democratic Commitment or Ideological Refinement?" American Sociological Review 49 (December 1984): 751-769.
119. Chandler and Tsai, "Social Factors Influencing Immigration Attitudes, 186-187." Our regression pre-tests were consistent with these findings. In a separate test, we found that age, gender, occupation, and religion were not significantly related to our dependent variables.
120. The regression formula, methodological notes with descriptive statistics for all variables, factor analysis summaries, and tables showing regression results were reviewed by anonymous referees and PSQ editors prior to publication and may be accessed at http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~alexseev and at the Publications Related-Archive of the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research (ICPSR).
121. Survey documentation is available from the first author upon request.
122. Goskomstat Rossii, Sbornik. Sostav naseleniia Primorskogo kraia po polu I vozrastu na I ianvaria 1999 g. [Data Collection: Population of Primorskii Krai by Gender and Age as of 1 January 1999] (Vladivostok: Rosstatagenstvo, 1999), 8;
123. Goskomstat Rossii, Primorskii Krai v 2000 godu (statisticheskii yezhegodnik) [Primorskii Krai in 2000, a Statistical Yearbook] (Vladivostok: Rosstatagenstvo, 2001), 50, 68-69.
124. The discrepancy between "Ukrainians by passport" (6 percent of Primorskii population in 1994) and Ukrainians by self-identification in the survey (11 percent) most likely reflected the tendency among ethnic Ukrainians in the former USSR to chose "Russian" as their "passport nationality" so as to minimize the risk of economic and/or political discrimination.
125. 2 = .194 (p < .001) for threat to Russia and Primorskii. Relationships with p > .05 were considered insignificant. Because all of our hypotheses were directional, we used one-tailed significance tests. The amount of variance explained by the complete model for all three dependent variables is, respectively, 16, 20, and 21 percent.
126. Valuations of ethnic balance and territorial claims correlated significantly (r = .132, p < .001).
127. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 95.
128. Zero-order correlation, r = .016, p < .342 (insignificant).
129. r = .236 (p < .001) and r = .089 (p < .01), respectively.
130. r = .180, p < .001.
131. For the description of economic climate, see Mikhail A. Alexseev, "Desecuritizing Sovereignty: Economic Interest and Responses to Political Challenges of Chinese Migration in the Russian Far East" in John D. Montgomery and Nathan Glazer, eds., Sovereignty under Challenge: How Governments Respond (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 271-273.
132. Thomas J. Espenhade and Katherine Hempstead, "Contemporary American Attitudes Toward U.S. Immigration," International Migration Review 30 (Summer 1996): 535-570;
133. Eva Thalhammer, Vlasta Zucha, Edith Enzenhofer, Brigitte Salfinger, and Gunther Ogris, "Attitudes Toward Minority Groups in the European Union: A Special Analysis of the Eurobarometer 2000 Opinion Poll on Behalf of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. Technical Report," (Vienna, Austria, 2001), accessed on the Center website at http://www.sora.at, 10 August 2002.
134. Weiner, The Global Migration Crisis, 91.
135. For an account of the crucial role of restrictionist policies in generating the massive resentment that sparked French urban riots, see "An Underclass Rebellion," The Economist, 12 November 2005: 24-26.
136. Ibid.
137. Such unintended consequences have been documented in the case of U.S. policy on Mexican immigration. See Wayne A. Cornelius, "Death at the Border: Efficacy and Unintended Consequences of US Immigration Control Policy," Population & Development Review 27 (December, 2001): 661-685.
138. "The Longest Journey," The Economist, 2 November 2002.