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22ARTICLES
LILIIA ZEMNUKHOVA
HIGHLY SKILLED
RUSSIAN MIGRANTS IN LONDON: THE CASE OF IT PROFESSIONALS1
Urban Studies and Practices Vol.2 #1, 2017, 54-63 https://doi.org/10.17323/usp21201754-63
Liliia Zemnukhova, Senior Research Fellow, Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences; European University at St. Petersburg, Center for Science and Technology Studies, Research Fellow; 7-ya Krasnoarmeyskaya Street, 25/14, 190005, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract
This article analyses Russian IT professionals as highly skilled migrants in London. The context of Russian-British migration has determined the emergence and development of four waves: each of them represents a certain set of circumstances for newcomers to move to, to work in, and to live in the global city. The main idea is to show the transformation of a specific population through the four waves of highly skilled migration to London. This study is based on biographical interviews and observations collected in London in 2013-2015. I claim that the dynamics of local professional and language-based communities, on one hand, were determined by these waves of highly skilled Russian migration, and on the other, shaped their practices of capitalization of various resources.
Key words: highly skilled migration; Russian IT professionals; London; immigration policy; networks; communities
Introduction
The professional field of information technology (IT) is growing rapidly and its community influences the structure of the market and even local societies. Silicon Valley is the easiest and most extreme example: the recent initiative known as #calexit (California campaign to secede from the U.S.) is mostly supported by the area's IT companies, including thousands of immigrated professionals. By these
1 The article is a part of the project, which is
fulfilled as a government order work funded from the federal budget of the Russian Federation ("Structurization of social space in the modern city", № AAAA-A17-117030110145-0).
means, the heterogeneous local IT community sets trends for the rest of the IT world and affects not only technological, but also economic, social, and political agenda. The global rotation of IT specialists worldwide produces a certain effect on migration flows, which affect not just sending and receiving countries, but also localities and cities.
Megalopolises make the local labor market attractive to professionals from all over the world and facilitate international mobility. Some of these cities became strong magnets owing to both the rich skilled job market and the national immigration policy. London represents such a case. On one hand, it is notable for being one of the world's financial centers with New York, Zurich, and Singapore. An IT job in banking is knowledge — and labor-intensive, so banks rely on the help of outsourcing and consulting companies. On the other hand, a favorable immigration policy in the UK known as the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme, or HSMP, engendered a huge influx of non-EU professionals.
In these circumstances, capitalization of resources and specific skills takes place. For example, offshore programing, which was developing in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, became now highly demanded in London banking sphere and resulted in a prominent presence of Russian-speaking specialists. Moreover, the situation of the global market and a high concentration of professionals stimulate various forms of capitalization: not just resources and skills participate in the development of professional capacity, but also prominent communitarian practices and an intensive knowledge exchange within language groups. The dynamics of these professional and language-based communities and networks, in turn, determine the transformation of a migrated urban society.
I am going to trace the transformation of a specific population, Russian IT professionals, as highly skilled migrants in the global city focusing on the deconstruction of certain sets of practices and connections in the process of changing location. Special attention is paid to two dimensions in this context — origins (and language) and the IT profession — which initiate, support, and direct a migrant's life. In this article, I show how highly skilled migrants capitalize their resources and highly skilled status, and how they use professional and language-based networks in the global city. I claim that the representatives of different waves of IT migration performed various community practices changing individual status within professional or language-based communities.
The article continues with a literature review, which shapes a conceptual framework for the study of Russian IT professionals placed in London. Then, I consider both British and Russian contexts that determined the four waves of professional migration. Finally, results and discussion are devoted to the transformation of this population and their practices through professional waves, featured by specific sets of circumstances of local IT community(-ies).
Literature Review
Within the scholarly literature on migration, questions of IT migration are usually placed into the frame of ethnic-national issues. Studies of Indian programers [Xiang, 2007], Israeli diaspora [Drori, 2013], or Chinese businesses [Leung, 2001] focus on their national features and ways of building communities and ethnic-based businesses. This perspective is relevant not only for highly skilled migrants [Schittenhelm, Schmidtke, 2010-2011], but also for any kind of labor migration [Cederberg, 2012]. Independent of the type of migration, the context of changing country and culture raises ethnic issues, and they play a crucial role in building local communities of highly skilled migrants, based on language and/or profession.
While many professions are in the process of denationalization or internationalization [Favell, 2003], the groups of skilled migrants have been treated as a social class, and in particular, as the middle class [Scott, 2006]. The urban turn in migration studies pushed the context of localities and global cities forward over a focus on ethnic groups or nation states [Glick Schiller, Qaglar, 2009; Sassen, 1991]. Presumably, life preferenc-
es mitigate the factor of nationality or ethnicity and reinforce professional identities and social positions of highly skilled migrants. Moreover, their everyday practices drive the productivity of local interactions [Maré et al., 2011].
The structure and the development of the global market create a mobile population to serve abroad: because of the costs for training and education, highly skilled workers of the capital-intensive primary sector "become more like capital" [Massey, Arango et al., 1993, p. 442]. This process is mainly facilitated by global organizations and international corporations, where the IT giants play a significant role. The networks of interpersonal ties lower the costs and risks of migration and movement [Taylor, 1986; Massey, 1990; Gurak, Caces, 1992], and thus increase international mobility, transnational and cross-border connections [Liu et al., 2015]. This process is interdependent: when a number of migrants reaches a critical threshold, the expansion of the network reduces the costs of movement and it further expands the network and so on [Massey, Arango et al., 1993]. Networks as a form of social capital have to be defused in order to give additional opportunities for others to move, while ethnic identity sometimes turns out to be a resource for a job search [Beaverstock, Smith, 1996].
The issue of capital picks up significant value when dealing with highly skilled migrants in the context of global cities [Sassen, 1991; Ewers, 2007], which create a strong demand for qualified workers and intensify the flow of migrants. In theorizing cities, ethnic groups are considered in terms of "their location in the occupational structure, their position in the local immigrant social structure, their degree of marginality, and/or their historical and racial distinctiveness as the basis of discrimination and oppression" [Low, 1997]. A junction of the locality of communities and the globality of the IT industry makes it problematic to state whether ethnicity works as capital or helps to build networks. It is not clear which identity becomes primary for highly skilled émigrés — ethnic, professional, or maybe a solidarity group [Wimmer, Glick Schiller, 2002]. I aim to contribute to the discussion on highly skilled migrants in the urban context by discovering the transformation of the population of Russian IT professionals in London through various waves of highly skilled migration. The latest study of Russians in London [Malyutina, 2015] provides a clear picture of this language-based
community, but lacks the analysis of the highly skilled migration specifically.
Immigration Context
It is important to show a constellation of circumstances that made moving to the UK possible. The British context surely includes the official migration policy and its changes over the past decades. In particular, these changes touched the IT market to a great extent. I concentrate more on highly skilled migration issues, including the HSMP program and its different stages and the transformation into a tier-system. Reconstructing this story provides opportunities to define not only the reasons, but also the main stakeholders in the process of attraction of the overseas professionals — corporations, government, or local market actors. London is treated as the center of this interplay, but through personal networks and community capitals in the professional IT world.
The migration context under consideration is bilateral: both British and Russian contexts were specific for their own sets of circumstances, which allowed Russian IT professionals to move. I am going to show the opportunities provided by British policy — what it looked like to move to the UK from a Russian point of view. The Russian IT professionals fancied not only life in the UK, but also favored the city of London with its IT market and major global corporate players. This includes not only professional futures and career, but also family, money, and further destinations.
London is a city of immigrants: 36.7% (2.99 million out of 8.17 million) were born outside of the UK [Krausova, Vargas-Silva, 2013]. It is not clear how many Russians are in London, and how many of them immigrated permanently or came temporarily as mobile professionals. The foreign workforce in the UK has been increasingly focused on the computing industry, going from 7.6% of work permits in 1995 to 18.1% in 2005, with almost 20% of all work permits being granted to software engineers [Salt, Millar, 2006].
Since the number of Russians is not definite from official data, the NGO "Russian Speaking Community of Great Britain" (Russkoyazychnaya Obschina Britanii) initiated a large-scale research project on the migration flows and the current state of the Russian-speaking diaspora in London [Report, 2012]. In 2012, they provided the following estimates: from 30,000-52,000 to 83,000-144,000 Russian-speaking people in
London. Moreover, it is not clear how to keep track of Ukrainians, Belarusians and other CIS citizens: there were 25,000-36,000 Russians by birth and 19,000-23,000 by passport in Great Britain in 2010 (with a 22-31% margin of error) [Report, 2012, p. 90]. The office for National Statistics treated Ukrainians (following the International Organization for Migration) as "less organized as a community than some because they prefer to participate in the cross-national networks with other migrants from the former Soviet Union." Among all Russian-speaking people in 2010, more than half of them were Russians (56%), a fifth were Ukrainians (20%), and 12% were Belarusians [Report, 2012, p. 92-94]. In 2011, there was an estimated 26,000 Russian speakers in London, according to Nomis, the official labor market statistics [Nomis, 2011].2
The major flow started from Russia and other post-Soviet countries in the 1990s as a result of the collapse the Iron Curtain and the unstable economic situation in Russia. Migration policy probably played the most crucial role in providing opportunities for highly skilled professionals in London, namely the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP) taking place from 2002 until 2011. In 2002, the UK Home Office initiated the program to attract qualified professionals from all over the world. The HSMP allowed citizens of non-EU and other overseas countries to come to Britain and to find a job freely. To get this visa, it was necessary to meet certain requirements, collecting points for age, education, work experience, income, and language. For IT specialists, it was easy enough to open the borders. Russia became the ninth sending country after the first four years of the program [HSMP Services UK, 2006]. After the UK received the first migration flow, the Home Office decided to modify its visa system. 2006 became a crucial year for those who could apply for the HSMP. The level of requirements increased and the migration flow
2 The Office for National Statistics has a service "Freedom of Information." There was a question on Russians in 2016. Available at: https://www. ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/ freedomofinformationfoi/russianspeakers. You asked: I was wondering whether it would be possible to receive the official data you have on file for Russian Speakers, this includes citizens from Ukraine, Byelorussia, Baltic countries, Georgia etc. I would like to know how many Russian speakers live in the UK. Perhaps a breakdown of nationalities would also help.
We said: The data you requested are not available from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
diminished. The British Office for National Statistics showed that the majority of Russian migrants came as highly skilled specialists, including managers or senior executives (34.2%), and science and technology professionals (27.3%) in 2006. Among the advantages of life in London, visa-holders mentioned culture, education, business, history, and rule of law [HSMP Services UK, 2006].
The HSMP was finally replaced by a Tier-1 visa type, which was introduced in 2008. Since 2012, the Tier-1 visa is unavailable to IT specialists. As a result, a Tier-1 visa is only granted to investors, entrepreneurs, and post-study workers. Tier 1-to-5 is a type of visa that is a more complicated, but in a well thought-out system. It takes into account peculiarities of visa politics for different groups:
1) Tier 1 was tuned for General for Highly Skilled, Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Post-Study Work;
2) Tier 2 Visas includes General, Intra Company Transfer, Sportspersons, and Minister of Religion;
3) Tier 3 Visa stands for Unskilled Tempo -rary Migration;
4) Tier 4 is for General Adult Students and Child Students;
5) Tier 5 concerns a Youth Mobility Scheme.
IT professionals used to come through Tier 1
(General for Highly Skilled) or Tier 2 (Intra Company Transfer) visas. However, one feature of the Tier 2 visa was that specialists could work only for a particular company that managed and covered the visa expenses. It is complicated for small companies to arrange a Tier-2 visa. After Tier 1 was closed for professionals, the migration flow greatly decreased, though it is still open for investors and entrepreneurs. According to the Migration Advisory Committee's Tier-1 visa data analysis, "the top nationalities in terms of applications for Tier-1 applications investor visas (out-of-country) for the period 5 June 2008 to 31 July 2012 were: Russia, China and USA" [Nathan, Rolfe, Vargas-Silva, 2013, p. 20].
Data and Method
I used an anthropological approach to study highly skilled migrants and their language-based and profession-based networks. This research is based on qualitative methodology and includes several methods of data collection, namely biographical interviews and ethnographic observation. My interview guide focused on a
professional trajectory and a migration strategy, the observations took place in offices and during professional meetings, and correspondences between members of online groups provided an additional source for analysis.
Several field trips to London in 2013-2015 resulted in forty-nine biographical interviews.3 The majority of informants4 had been working in the banking sphere, and eleven out of forty-nine were computer scientists or mathematicians. There were only four female informants. Age dispersion was 22-57-years-old. A search for contacts was executed through friends and acquaintances, first, then through key informants who were in charge of organizing events or professional meetings and communities. Living places and leisure ethnography (houses/apartments, meetings, and events) appeared to be helpful for the larger context of migrants' lives. I also participated in the events of three IT groups: Russians in the City (its IT group), Google groups (a mail exchange), and Saturday meetings (and its Facebook page). There were orienting points for search, such as IT giants in London (Google), bank offices in London, startups at Campus London and Digital Peninsula (Greenwich), campuses of University College London, Oxford, and Birkbeck colleges. Academic staff information was available via web pages. In some cases, I had an opportunity to monitor parts of internal communication in professional and language-based communities.
There are many different communities of Russians in London, and some of them gather IT professionals specifically. It was important to become part of their everyday life for a short period to observe their communications and interactions, not only at work, but also during leisure time. I was particularly interested in the values translated in the companies and reproduced by employees, the relationships between team-members of different nationalities, Rus-sianness in its different forms, and individual opinions and reactions in corporate, local, and city contexts.
3 The data were collected at the STS Center of the European University at St. Petersburg with the support provided by the Russian Federation Government (grant No.14.U04.31.0001)
4 I considered Russian-speakers from post-Soviet countries, but did not include the Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as they do not have visa restrictions. The majority was from Russia, several informants were from Belarus and Ukraine.
Results and Discussion
It might be reasonable to frame migration relationship between post-Soviet countries (mostly, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus) and the United Kingdom with the push-pull theory of migration [Lee, 1966], but adjusted for the highly skilled context. This concept explains economic macro-conditions, where push factors operate from a homeland, and pull factors relate to a country of destination. "Intervening obstacles" produce additional structural barriers for migrants that must be overcome. As a result, personal factors set out strategies depending on their situations and combination of push and pull. Though the theory does not focus on individual choices, the explanatory potential of push and pull factors applies to the last four decades of the migration process of the IT professionals from the post-Soviet countries to the UK. The theory starts working when non-economic factors are also included, for instance, the political situation, law regulations, professionalization, and social impact. The missing links of this framework are interpersonal ties and helping mechanisms, traceable with the use of a network approach. Both personal and social networks provide offset links from macro-factors, which are visible in the push-pull framework, to individual stories and the reasons within social-structural factors.
As my study shows, Russian highly skilled migrants in London are not homogenous. My fieldworks and the analysis of the immigration context allows speaking of four distinct waves measured in a decade each. This analytical decision was made to grasp the main features and trends in highly skilled migration of Russian IT specialists to London as a global city. These waves represent different migration projects, based on the use of networks and capitals in order to build a global professional career. The first wave, "Out of the USSR," considers the late 1980s till 1991; the second wave, "Hello World," ends with the dot.com boom in 2001 and HSMP start in 2002; the third wave, "London Calling," grasps the whole HSMP period until 2011; and the last and current wave is titled "Be Mobile." Each wave is featured with a certain set of individual performances and community strategies (both professional and language-based), so I will provide their description with the most typical and specific types of practices in the process of capitalization of resources in the context of London as a global city.
"Out-of-the-USSR" Wave
The first wave gathered professionals who added global mobility to the migration agenda. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, repatriation programs appeared to be the major channel of emigration. Alternative homelands welcomed many intellectuals and academic workers such as physicists, mathematicians, and engineers [Dietz, 2000; Popov, 2009]. The late 1980s saw experiments with a limited number of migration projects, as ethnic-based migration took place regarding the reunions of families and spouses. The "Out-of-the-USSR" people were represented mostly by academics who discovered deep rootedness into local life and personal practices.
In professional terms, a typical case among computer scientists or Soviet-trained engineers would be more likely connected to (rare, but still possible) previous experiences of collaboration with foreign colleagues. Professional identities gave way to ethnic identity as an essential part of the Russian-language networks, which were built by these migrants. Their choices and practices were greatly determined by both professional and language networks. In academia, there are local communities of Russian-speaking British scientists, who in a sense reproduce the idea of a "scientific school," so popular in Soviet times. Their ties and connections helped to ground high academic status and position, which in turn enrich networks serving the following newcomers. The first wave hardly appropriated specific areas in the city, but rather gathered other Russian professionals in their universities. They used to and still do transfer typical (post-)Soviet practices of teaching and doing science, which became local here: for example, they used Soviet books and replicated Soviet techniques of calculation. They capitalized not just their general educational (and cultural) background, but rather specific area of studies (which is rooted in the Soviet school).
The case from the field represents a community of mathematicians and computer scientists with a Russian professor as a core. At some point, another Russian professor invited faculty and friends to celebrate a grant award. My observations during this meeting revealed the prevalence of Russian language (with rare English conversations), despite the fact that some of guests were non-Russians. The conversations with different members of this community confirmed that they prefer to speak Russian and to spend time with other Russian colleagues. Almost all of them were either married to Russians, or in search for
a partner among Russian speakers. Members of this community mostly reduced their practices to constant contacts within the academic community and alternative hobby-type activities, such as biking. At the same time, there were hardly interested in the activities of young professionals and the city as a variety of opportunities.
"Hello-World" Wave
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, migrants of the second wave of the 1990s — "Hello World" — became involved in the adventures of the booming IT industry with a new range of employment opportunities. The mad 1990s turned many academic workers into either industrial specialists or emigrants.
Some academic workers continued to develop paths in British universities, and did not aim at building language-based networks. The academic sphere was preferable though larger Russian community remained relatively small at that time. One of the professors shared his experience of collaborations, where Russians took a considerable share:
"I win grants, and I invite somebody. It appeared somehow that almost all of them were from Russia... Because... No, it wasn't because of language, but. It was not me who chose. There is a contest, they send their CVs. You examine them, compare them, and. That's it" (M, 58, computer scientist).
This ambivalent situation aided in discovering two findings, which later were approved with other empirical cases. The first idea is that early skilled migrants hardly tried to use language-based networks in order to become "more British than the British themselves." Their purpose was to find a permanent place and to integrate into a local community of other professionals, where all kinds of capitals might facilitate their career growth. The second idea was that these émigrés created a basis for future flows of newcomers to integrate them into a larger network capitalizing both their training and origins. The city itself represented a set of random events and people which sometimes happened to be helpful alongside with online platforms and resources for Russians: the most popular events happened at pubs and parks, web-sites and blogs navigated the flows.5 These "global profession-
5 It is possible to trace the scope of Russian platforms all over the world, where the UK is recognizable due to amount of sources http:// www.e-diasporas.fr/wp/morgunova.html
als" became mere office workers and their dependence on local Russian communities grew commensurately. The more that (Russian) IT professionals appeared on the market, the more likely it was that they would dissolve themselves into the mass of other expats in their group. Language-based communities had been shaping, but the actual increase happened afterward.
"London-Calling" Wave
The third wave of the 2000s - "London Calling" — saw London as a point of attraction due to a favorable immigration policy (HSPM), and gathered a huge community of IT specialists with the dispersed network of connections. Russian IT professionals of the third wave had significantly changed the structure of Russian society in London. They started to explore new city areas and settled either close to their workplaces, or in neighborhoods with developing infrastructure and a Russian community. Whereas previous professionals hardly sought opportunities to build neighborhoods, representatives of this wave developed favorite places to live, such as Chelsea, Hampstead, St. John Wood, and later Notting Hill and Canada Water. They also crowded temporary contract positions in banks being self-employed — mostly around the City or Canary Wharf as the main banking areas. Small professional communities turned into huge networks, mostly language-based, but not usually with familiar people. At some point, IT specialists flooded all Russian communities using them as networks for dealing with various issues — renting or moving, sports or education, etc. They established regular meetings at the same place and time — usually Friday or Saturday — to gather with other Russian IT professionals. In-teriorization of these kinds of experience forced the capitalization of various resources of skilled migrants in the context of multiple communities and networks: training, education, hobbies, language, weak ties, alumni acquaintances, spouses' contacts, children's friendship, neighborhood, and professional gatherings, etc.
To take Low's approach [1997], their location in the occupational structure became visible enough to place these communities on the city map — both work and life areas. Whatever language-based meeting (for example, in "the Cittie of Yorke") or Russian hub (like "Ziferblat") I visited asking about Russian IT professionals, everybody had an image or shared knowledge about their presence and usual practices. From
other people and from the interviews, I found out that they gather either in neighborhoods or specific (traditional) places; they play active urban games (for instance, "Encounter"); and they have several gatherings of professional groups and many more online platforms and groups. I managed to enter some of these activities and communities, where informants described the structure of a local language-based, but professional community. This was a wave of active building of communities and networks, which were specifically for professionals rather than Russians in general: IT specialists did their best to separate themselves from the general public.
"Be-Mobile" Wave
The natural immigration barriers of the 2010s produced the fourth wave of professional migration, comprising those who came with pragmatic purposes. The current wave "Be Mobile" provided few examples of independent migration, as it was less determined by personal choice, but rather with the support of corporate conditions and policies. The status and self-identification of new-coming Russian IT professionals in London became traceable with their inclusiveness in various types of language-based networks and professional communities. They had a large choice of various Russian communities to create their own urban communities in the city of professionals: they grew economic, social, and symbolic capitals largely aside from the existing language-based networks, though they reproduced some of the established practices. For instance, they rarely visited Russian hubs and local social infrastructure with their meetings and urban games; they also kept some ties and contacts with friends, who came in London long before. However, they were not included in their urban community lives.
Isolation takes place when the city does not welcome diversifying everyday and professional life. London as a global city holds hundreds of events daily. Newcomers barely sought Russian communication, nor did they plan their future steps and careers for a long period. They felt free to choose futures and to stick to specific practices and communities; and, so far, their individual choices look more situational and spontaneous: they capitalized their language skills, startup experience, openness to the new possibilities, and their cosmopolitanism. Most of them are integrated into their company teams bearing
corporate identity and loyalty, but do not limit themselves with internal Russian communities. This wave is in a transition from office to office in whatever city it is located. It seems like they explore the city as another point of destination to change very soon, not trying to create emotional contact or cultivate early nostalgia.
Having described the four waves, I showed the dynamics of the local Russian IT population. The migration policies determined both typical practices of IT professionals, the structure and role of professional and language-based communities within local urban structure. We observed how the representatives of these waves capitalized first their skills and training, then Russianness, and social connections afterwards. These strategies are both ethnically and professionally driven, as Russian population appeared to be recognized within the IT world. And because they create a variety of communities and networks, they also become visible in the urban context.
Conclusion
Migration as both a future-oriented and a backward-looking process [Pine, 2014], involving temporalities, spaces, and regimes of value. It changes with many contexts and personal stories and opportunities, which transforms into capitals and networks in the context of a global city. However, IT professionals have advantages that allow them to be a bit freer than others. A high level of various capitals and a set of tight network connections facilitate constant professional development, where specialists with diverse experiences support a city milieu to capitalize themselves on the basis of both language and profession with the help of urban communities. As Bauman puts it, "'Community' is one of those words that feels good: it is good 'to have a community', 'to be in a community'" [Bauman, 2001]. This need for community appears in uncomfortable situations, in particular, in situations of moving to another country with its own language and culture. Despite globalization, national rules and the global urban context put significant limitations on the uniformity of locals and migrants, citizens and expats. In these circumstances, newcomers of different waves followed diverse capitalization practices based on language or professional networks.
The transformation of urban communities and individual practices was traced through the dynamics of experiences based on capitals and
networks for each wave of highly skilled migrants. The "Out-of-the-USSR" people faced significant determination of either professional or language networks, where they reproduced old practices and used skills and training to ground local statuses within academia, as a rule. The "Hello-World" wave strived for permanent places and integration into local communities of other professionals, where various kinds of capitals — education, training or connections — might facilitate the career growth. The major practices of the "London-Calling" wave represent a looped process of networking to multiply capitals to fa-
cilitate networks: they staked a claim on a map of professional and social structures of the city. The current "Be-Mobile" wave got significant starting points to create their own urban practices while multiplying various capitals in the inte-riorized city. This dynamics shows that not only skills and training serve highly skilled migrants to promote themselves on the global market, but the community factor plays significant role in this process. These communities are both IT and Russian, and they provided different support for the newcomers of each wave in shaping their individual practices.
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Л.В. ЗЕМНУХОВА
ВЫСОКОКВАЛИФИЦИРОВАННЫЕ «РУССКИЕ» МИГРАНТЫ В ЛОНДОНЕ: КЕЙС ИТ- ПРОФЕССИОНАЛОВ
Земнухова Лилия Владимировна, кандидат социологических наук, старший научный сотрудник Социологического института РАН, научный сотрудник Центра исследований науки и технологий Европейского университета в Санкт-Петербурге; Российская Федерация, 190005 Санкт-Петербург, ул. 7-я Красноармейская, д. 25/14 E-mail: [email protected]
В статье предлагается анализ «русских» ИТ-профессионалов как высококвалифицированных мигрантов в Лондоне. Контекст российско-британской миграции обусловил появление и развитие четырех волн: каждая из них представляет собой определенный набор обстоятельств для тех, кто приезжает в глобальный город жить и/или работать. Основная идея статьи состоит в том, чтобы показать трансформацию вполне определенного сообщества через четыре волны профессиональной миграции. Исследование основано на биографических интервью и наблюдениях, собранных в Лондоне в 2013-2015 гг. Утверждается, что динамика локальных профессиональных и языковых сообществ, с одной стороны, зависит от волн «русской» миграции, а с другой стороны, формировала практики капитализации различных ресурсов специалистов.
Ключевые слова: высококвалифицированная миграция; «русские»
ИТ-профессионалы; Лондон; иммиграционная политика; сети; сообщества
