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Igor Ivanov, president of the Russian International Affairs Council
Probably it is difficult to find a better example of modern globalization than migration.
Migration processes in the global world reflect complication, ambiguity,
and inconsistency of the world policy in the 21st century.
Migration means sharp issues of internal policy of states
and a serious problem of international affairs and international security.
On the one hand, migration is challenges and threats;
on the other hand, it is resources for development.
This is a headache for officials of all countries,
but it is a common cause for a state, a society, the mass media, and civil society institutes.
In the end it is our routine life and we face it at work, in shops, and in the streets.
Of course we can discuss the dynamics and geography of migration processes for a long time.
However, most of experts think that migration scales will extend,
while attempts to hold these processes will fail.
During the current decade about 1 billion people have changed their place of living.
At the same time, there is no country which could say
that it has found a perfect strategy of management of migration flows.
There is more successful experience and there are obvious failures,
but in the end we all learn how to manage migration in the modern world;
and unfortunately, the process of learning is not easy and it has to be constant.
Of course for Russia migration issues are sharpest.
There is no an aspect of migration theme, which wouldn’t touch on our country.
Both immigration and emigration are important for us, transit and refugees,
returning compatriots and accepting forced migrants, labour migration, and educational migration.
Even though Russia has been a crossroad of migration processes for many centuries,
many things are discovered as new today, we have to learn from our foreign partners.
The voluminous work “Migration in Russia” is our mutual attempt to sum up the complicated
and sometimes painful processes of establishing of the migration strategy in Russia in the early 21st century.
This process involved federal state structures, Russian regions, our expert society,
and numerous NGO and the mass media.
It was difficult to choose texts for this book.
On the one side, we wanted to present the widest diversity of views and approaches to the migration problem;
on the other side, we wanted to avoid thoughtless, tendentious, and politically dependent materials.
Did we succeed? It’s up to readers to decide.
We hope this work will be demanded in universities, academic institutes, and state facilities.
I started with universities not accidentally.
I think this subject must be taught in universities, if not in schools,
because everybody will face this problem, despite his or her profession.