Perception of Interethnic Relations by Nonresident and Foreign Students — Representatives of Turkic Peoples in Moscow Universities during the Pandemic

Abstract

The paper concerns the perception of interethnic relations in the face of the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic by non-resident and foreign students — representatives of the Turkic peoples studying in Moscow universities. Empirically, the study bases on the materials of a series of in-depth interviews conducted in the fall of 2021 with 85 respondents aged 18 to 33 years. The sample included citizens of the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, who resided in Moscow during the pandemic (2020—2021).

The results obtained allow the author to state that, during the pandemic, nonresident and foreign students at Moscow universities faced specific challenges that could be due to their ethnicity. These challenges led to the formation of two opposite trends in the perception of interethnic relations: (1) the manifestation of xenophobia, the mutual strengthening of social and interethnic barriers, (2) the strengthening of a positive perception of interethnic relations in the metropolis. In the course of the study, the author attempted to find explanations for these trends and presented new data on the perception of ethnic identity by different groups of respondents assuming possible factors that determined it.

Acknowledgements. This article is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University). Author is grateful to the staff and students of HSE University M. Maksimenkova, Yu. Belova, R. Shaidullin, A. Petrevich, N. Varga, A. Abildina, E. Sokovnina, N. Mel’nikova.