ETHNICITY AS A STIGMA: INTERACTION OF MIGRATION WAVES IN THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST

The article uses concrete empirical material to investigate the formation of a "forced" identity in three "waves" of migration to the Far East, mainly to Khabarovsk Krai, of natives from the republics (states) of Central Asia and Transcaucasia. It is compulsory insofar as it is forced to be guided by the discourse about migrants formed in the host community. At the same time, in the eyes of the host community, the factor that "distinguishes" migrants is not their official status but the ethnicity of a person. As shown in the article, the main population of the region formed in the 1960s-1980s. Accordingly, the ethnicity of some of the new Far Easterners ("zero wave") was not a significant factor, and their identity was not different from that of the rest of the regional community. Over time, they became the basis for facilitating the migration of new migrants (" first wave") who arrived throughout the post-Soviet period. The peculiarity of these waves was the focus on rooting in the local community, acquiring an identity that would allow integration into the host community. However, in the 2010s, a new wave of migrants appeared in the region, arriving under state programs, mostly contracted to work on construction projects in the Far East. Central Asians predominated among them. Unlike the previous agents arriving from the national republics of the USSR and Eurasian Economic Union countries, who gradually dissolve into the local community, the new migrants arrive en masse and become visible. At the same time, they have a number of features that distinguish them from their predecessors. This group of migrants ("second wave") does not seek integration into the local community, remaining mentally at the place of origin. They begin to be perceived as the " Other", endowed in the dominant discourse with a number of negative traits. However, as the article shows, the quality by which the " Other" is defined was not the length of stay in the region or perception of local culture, but ethnicity as a stigma. Moreover, this stigma on the parameter of ethnicity also applies to previous waves of arrivals who were already well adapted to the local community, destroying their established identity and forcing them to build a new one, which must also take into account the negative discourse itself.