Understanding the state per se

migrations for the purposes of colonization, economic development and to gain a competitive edge in a globalizing economy.” (Hollifield: 2004a, 5) Just as an example; in Russia in the 18^th century, Catherine the Great brought in skilled German farmers to help develop the soil in parts of the empire where population was low and unskilled as well as where the boarders needed better securing (Hollifield: 2004b, 889). When trying to understand how states go about to handle migration, and in this case the particular state of Russia, it is necessary also to have a clarified understanding of the state per se.

2.2 Understanding the state per se

“Bringing the state back in” is actually the title of a book edited by Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol. Here, in her reflections on the state, Theda Skocpol lets Alfred Stepan formulate what she calls “the biting edge of the Weberian perspective”:

“The state must be considered as more than the “government”. It is the continuous administrative, legal, bureaucratic and coercive systems that attempts not only to structure relationships between civil society and public authority in a polity but also to structure many crucial relationships within civil society as well” (Skocpol: 1985, 7).

I would like to stress the use of the word `attempts ` in this quotation. The state (the continuous administrative, legal, bureaucratic and coercive systems) attempts to structure relationships between civil society and public authority and so on... I read the fact that it attempts as a built-in possibility for the state both to fail and to succeed in this matter. I am sure it is well known to the reader that attempts may be convincing or less convincing, whole-hearted or half-whole-hearted. The state may attempt to structure its relationship with different immigrant groups, accepting to incorporate them or not, and limiting the incorporation in time and scope. At the same time - when it comes to structuring relationships within (civil) society, the state is crucial in forming the relationship between the immigrants (which have entered the country, and in this respect is incorporated to some extent), in this case labour migrants from Central Asia, and the local Russian population. The state is likely to shape (to attempt to shape!) the structure of these relationships according to its own self interest and goals.

However:

“...not infrequently, states do pursue goals (whether their own or those pressed on them by powerful social groups) that are beyond their reach. Moreover, the implementation of state policies often leads to unintended as well as intended consequences, both when states attempts tasks they cannot complete and when the means they use produce unforeseen structural changes and socio-political reactions. Thus the capacities of states to implement strategies and policies deserve close analyzes in their own right”

(Skocpol: 1985, 16).

23 In its management of migration, the state is structuring the relationship between the local population and the immigrants. The local population, however, consists of several groups;

there are the employers, who might be interested in access to cheap labour power, and there are other citizens who in one way or the other may see immigration as something which affects their own overall situation in society negatively. If the state sees a pragmatic need for immigration, it ought to somehow balance the negative sentiments related to it, in order to both secure its interests, and more importantly, the further existence of its government.

In Skocpols perspective, the state becomes an actor in its own right. This does not mean, however, that she excludes or devalues the presence of other non-state actors:

“Other organizations and agents also pattern social relationships and politics, and the analyst must explore the state`s structure and activities in relation to them. But this Weberian view of the state does require us to see it as much more than a mere arena in which social groups make demands and engage in political struggle” (Skocpol: 1996, 7).

What I also devote some space to in the following, is precisely the presence and appearance of non-state actors and patterns within migration management. I claim that the state itself has contributed to the evolution\outspring of these actors. The non-state managers are either witnesses of side effects and/or base their very existence on side effects from the state‟s management. I suggest that the non-state management of migration relates to a theoretical foundation, which investigates the appearance of other actors in the absence of the state, or when the management of the state, the state machinery itself is insufficient.

“When property rights and enforcement institutions are misaligned, [however, these]

agents may emerge from sources operating inefficiently and outside the bounds of established

legal and social norms. Illicit entrepreneurs, then, substitute for state-supplied or state-sanctioned public services...”

Milhaupt and West (2000, 4) are here speaking of what they call a “dark-side” private

ordering, that is criminal structures, which are able to establish niches out of something which used to be and to some extent still is state supplied. This idea is transferable to the sphere of migration management, and in Russia one could say that migration services (миграционные услуги) have become one such niche. Migration services then means the supply of or

assistance in preparing documents needed for a legal stay in the country such as; registrations, work permits, residence permits and passports. In their work, Milhaupt and West are relating, and contributing to research on the relationship between organized crime and the state.

“In the past several years, observers have begun to change their perspective on the services provided by organized criminals and the relationship between organized crime and the state. Focusing on Sicily, for example, Diego Gambetta argues that organized criminals deal not in extortion, but in protection, including the protection of contracts in the form of dispute settlement. Even more interestingly, he

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argues that rather than being a monopoly, organized crime competes with the state to provide this service”(Milhaupt and West: 2000, 4).

The literature which Milhaupt and West are referring to is

“emphasizing the entrepreneurial nature of organized crime and thus the general applicability of economic principles to firms engaged in illicit as well as legitimate activities. Second, it implicitly suggests that the state‟s institutional structure supplies incentives for illicit firms just as it does for legitimate enterprises; thus, firm adaptation is the central problem of economic organization in illegal as well as legal markets”(Milhaupt, West: 8 – 9).

Similarly, the state may be said to have supplied incentives for the appearance of non-state migration managers. These may be divided into different categories. It is possible to distinguish between those, operating within the “dark-side private ordering” – for instance falsifiers of documents. These are illicit migration managers. Others belong to a “non-commercial based private ordering” – these are human rights organizations, which thus constitutes for the non-commercial managers. Out of this follows that there also are

commercial migration managers; juridical firms, which provide migration services for a fee, and moreover there are what I have chosen to speak of as semi-commercial managers; ethnic associations that share features with both the non-commercial and the commercial actors.

What is important to underline is that all the actors are relating to the state management in one way or another. This is also the reason why I in the following use the non-state managers of migrations‟ experience with and thoughts of the state management as empirical material collected through interviews. However, the main focus of this thesis again remains on the state.

Migration management may partly be privatized and commercialized within legal frames – as this is already evolving in Russia. At the same time, the activity of illicit actors, existing at the moment, may be further encouraged by the state‟s inability to run the

management efficiently. Or this activity may be curtailed and denied further growth by the state through efficient state law enforcement. This present thesis does not provide in-depth information on the non-state migration managers in the sense that the number of actors studied here is limited, and also when considering that they are drawn in mainly to shed light on the state‟s management. What this thesis thus presents, is to suggest a concept of non-state migration managers, and variations of such, which may be used in further inquiry. Inquiry, that focuses mainly on the evolution and work of these different non-state migration managers in Russia, which is appropriate to conduct only after acquiring sufficient knowledge on the state management.

25 2.2.1 Russia - a migration state

Even though the Russian state is the central research unit of this thesis it will, however, not deal with the question: “What kind of national state is Russia?” Independently of whether Russia is a democracy, an authoritarian regime, a hybrid of the two, or another type of regime, it still is a state with institutions and policies, which may be subjected to scrutiny therein.

Although this is not a regime study, the management of migration is an integrated part of the state machinery, and there is every reason to believe that general problems of the Russian state also is found within this particular sphere of regulation. In this respect, Russia‟s nature, and the “state” in which Russia finds itself, is unquestionably most relevant in how it relates to migration processes. Moreover, “Since states are intrinsically Janus-faced, standing at the intersections of transnational and domestic processes, their structures, capacities, and policies are always influenced by identifiable aspects of the particular world historical circumstances in which they exist.” (Skocpol et al: 350) The world historical setting was discussed in the introduction chapter, and will also be taken into account in the following, as it clearly affects and will continue to affect migration management in Russia.

“We asked for workers but human beings came” is a much used quotation by Max Fisher (in Brettel, Hollifield: 2008, 196), There are doubts about states‟ capacity in migration management and their capacity when it comes to regulating migration according to pragmatic aims. Castles asks whether democratic states possess: 1) the capacity to analyse and forecast the long-term consequences of migration policy decisions; 2) the political ability to reach consensus on long-term goals in this field; and 3) the necessary policy tools to achieve these goals in a manner consistent with democracy and the rule of law. He is not at all certain that they do (Portes: 2007, 33) and it is important to emphasize that this thesis has not set out to answer these questions. What it does seek to do, however, is to place itself in line with

research that advocates greater attention to the state in migration research. Whether migration is a powerful flow of people driven by push and pull factors, or if it stems from the intrinsic labour demands of modern industrial societies, national states relate to these flows in what I have here chosen to call their management of migration. The interest, role and behaviour of the state in this management are objects worthy of study.

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