Why and When Do Migrants in Russia Come to Homeownership and How Is It Related to Integration?

Abstract

This article explores when and why Central Asian and Transcausasian migrants in Russia turn to homeownership, and how this fact is bounded to their patterns of integration. The main theoretical model tested is the straight line assimilation theory supplemented with a residential component. Empirically, the study bases on an all-Russian survey carried out in social networks (N=4888). The questionnaire of the survey is devoted to the interconnection between residential and integration characteristics of migrants. The authors perform correlation and regression analysis taking homeownership as the dependent variable; the independent variables include various measures of integration. According to the results, although there is statistically significant association between most of the residential, integrational, and other variables, and all of them are related to the time passed since the first trip to Russia, it is the duration of the presence in the country that primarily explains the fact of buying real estate. If this factor is controlled for, most of the integration variables appear to be unrelated to home purchases. The main conclusion is that while the characteristics of integration may be not predicting purchase of a real estate, the very fact of waging trips to Russia for a long period of time may be sufficient for it. These results show that for Russia, in terms of resident behavior of migrants, the theory of straight line assimilation supplemented with the transnational model is generally relevant.

Acknowledgements. The article was prepared with the support of a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (Russian Science Foundation project No. 18-78-10086) «Analysis of the mechanisms for the formation of ethno-migration enclaves in Russian cities».