Young People's Migration and its Impact on Preserving Ethnic Features (on the Example of Kalmyks)

• Main Author: L V Namruyeva
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 2011-06-01
• Series: RUDN journal of Sociology
• Subjects: миграционные процессы; титульное население; безработица; занятость; этническая культура; адаптация; ассимиляция
• Online Access: http://journals.rudn.ru/sociology/article/view/6419
• ISSN: 2313-2272; 2408-8897

The article views Labor migration as a means to solve unemployment problems in the republic. Migration shows not only the mobility of the population but it also reflects the life standards of the Kalmyk people in the past decade. Every year thousands of qualified specialists leave the region, which requires that they should comply with the new models of behavior and social standards that differ fundamentally from the mode of life in the agrarian Kalmyk republic. The megapolis changes the morals, values and ethnic features of labor migrants, imparting to them new elements of culture different from their ethnic nature. In the course of adaptation of Kalmyk-migrants to the conditions of the modern poly-ethnic city people tend to get estranged from their traditional ethno-environment, which eventually results in their loss of their native language and other elements of ethnic culture, unique traditions and customs gradually disappear, and the problem of preserving ethnicity in the Kalmyk diaspora arises.