Russia’s Plans To Kick Migrant Children Out Of School Is Immoral — And Stupid

-OpEd-

A new proposal approved by the Russian Parliament to deny schooling to migrant children who don’t pass a language test should scandalize people who call themselves Russian nationalists. Unfortunately, the world isn’t as logical as I’d like it to be.

But let me try a thought experiment: I imagine sitting opposite of someone with views completely opposite to mine, someone who supports the law. I’ll try to convince them. Picture this: they’re wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan “Russia is for Russians,” while mine says “Russia is for the Sad” in the same font. And — the most incredible assumption in this experiment — for some reason we are really ready to talk, rather than exchange a volley of witty insults.

Let’s hear their argument. “Because there are so many migrant children in classrooms who don’t speak Russian, other kids suffer,” my hypothetical interlocutor says. “Teachers don’t have the resources or qualifications to work with these students. Why should we pay our taxes for this?”

Indeed, teachers in Russian schools typically lack training in teaching Russian as a foreign language. It’s true that the learning process can be severely disrupted when children have vastly different levels of language skills.

What is important here is that we have found a point of agreement — without it, meaningful dialogue is impossible. We disagree on what is an acceptable and reasonable solution to this problem. We also disagree on which is the greater of two evils: The challenges faced by non Russian-speaking children in a system unprepared for them, or children being deprived of the opportunity to go to school at all.

Immigration to Russia

The world can be divided into countries of emigration and immigration. The former are those from which more people leave (either completely or to earn money) than arrive. The latter are the opposite. Economically successful and socially stable nations tend to be immigration countries; they offer jobs, money, opportunities, attracting people seeking financial security and safety. Such immigration is both an indicator of a country’s well-being and a factor of its economic development.

I believe my hypothetical interlocutor wants Russia to be a prosperous country. But the reality is that Russia is currently facing a significant labor shortage across many sectors. The reasons are clear: demographic challenges, the war (or perhaps in my interlocutor’s terms, the “special military operation”), and the resulting workforce drain.

By forcing people into ghettos, we accelerate the very social conflict we claim to avoid.

Maintaining Russia as an attractive destination for labor migration, then, seems like a goal that should not contradict the values of my opponent. But labor migration brings not only workers, it brings different cultures, languages, and norms. From there, two main scenarios can unfold: ghettoization or integration.

Ghettoization occurs when migrants live in isolated communities, excluded from mainstream society and marginalized. And if we know anything from social science, it’s that the first scenario never leads to anything good. I think it is similar to the structure of ancient myths, where the hero believes he is escaping a terrifying, foretold fate, but in fact he is unknowingly bringing it closer. By forcing people into ghettos, we accelerate the very social conflict we claim to avoid.

Key integration 

Another analogy is children who squeeze their eyes shut and think they are hiding. If we make it so that we no longer see these children, these migrants, then surely they’ll just disappear, won’t they?

The alternative to ghettoization is integration, but it’s a complex process. Full integration rarely happens in the first generation and tends to be more common among those with higher education or significant social capital. That is, if you move to another country as an adult, not to write a dissertation but to earn a living, chances are you’ll mostly interact with other immigrants like yourself, go to “your” cafes (run by and serving your compatriots), and live in the same way as before.

In contrast, the second generation — those who arrived as children or were born in the new country — has, according to research, a much higher chance of full integration. This doesn’t mean they will necessarily lose their identity, but they will become part of local social institutions, develop an emotional attachment to the country they live in, and master the local language and culture.

And it is the school that serves as the key factor in this process. Of course, ideally the integration process is well structured. There are various models. In some, foreign-speaking children attend classes alongside native speakers but receive additional support after the classes. In others, they start separately, and once their language skills improve, they join regular classes. There’s also a mixed system, where some lessons are taught separately for foreign-speaking children, and in other classes the children sit together.

The human cost of exclusion 

Of course, all of this requires resources — textbooks, training courses for teachers, a whole system in place and, most importantly, funding. But this is an investment not only in migrant children but also in the social well-being of society and in the “soft power” of cultural influence. (Isn’t it a dream of Russian nationalists for the whole world to read Pushkin? Well, here are the children. Teach them!)

Frankly speaking, by the time I get to this paragraph, I’m already tired of the rationality and cynicism of my own arguments. From 2014 to 2016, I was the director of Kids are Kids, a center for refugee and migrant children integration.

And for me, migrant children are not abstract concepts. They are our Booz and Edda Gat, Congolese teenagers I once taught to read in just one lesson. Imagine — in one day, the indecipherable scribbles turned into meaningful words. How much easier and friendlier the world immediately became.

The rights to education, childhood, the future and human dignity are not just Article 43 of the Constitution.

One of these teenagers passed away because, as a child of a refugee, he had no access to healthcare in Russia, and his serious illness went unnoticed [by Russian law, refugees are entitled to health insurance, but in practice, they may face difficulties in obtaining or prolonging it].

There was also Nassim, whom we once had to pull out of a police station when he was detained as a homeless person on New Year’s Eve, although he was walking with his mother — what can you expect, it’s the end of the quarter, the police have their own reporting to do.

There was also Parvina, Iksen, Wahab, Wahab, Hamun, Muin, Nafisa and dozens and dozens of other children — each different, funny, capable or not, active or calm, hard-working or lazy. In short, children.

It is difficult for me to convince my interlocutor that the rights to education, childhood, the future and human dignity are not just Article 43 of the Constitution (as well as various international conventions) or merely a pragmatic choice for a Russian nationalist, but a fundamental principle.

All children should have this right, regardless of passport color or eye shape. And it is our — adults’ (also regardless of passports) — responsibility.