Labour migration: Legal means of regulation in the context of contemporary challenges

Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation, Center for Public Law Research, Moscow, Russia

¹ Corresponding author: inna_wp@mail.ru

Abstract

For a long time, the Russian Federation has been one of the world’s leaders in terms of the number of international migrants, a significant proportion of which are labour migrants. This required the development of a legal framework that would make it possible, on the one hand, to ensure the security of the state and the host society, create conditions for a prompt and flexible response to the situation in the labour market, and, on the other hand, protect the rights and freedoms of foreign nationals working in Russia, and create an attractive migration climate. The article highlights the current developments in the statutory regulation of labour migration, the legal means used to respond to modern challenges and formulates the major problems facing government bodies. Purpose: on the basis of an analysis of the development of the migration legislation of the Russian Federation, to identify the features of the regulation of labour migration and determine the areas of modernisation of the legal framework in that field. Basic methods: formal-logical, system-structural, special-legal, comparative-legal; content analysis, etc. Results: by evaluating the dynamics of legal regulation of labour migration in the Russian Federation in recent decades, the following features can be distinguished: detailed and differentiated legal status of various categories of foreign nationals involved in labour activities in Russia; the focus of legislation on the use of flexible mechanisms for foreign labour intake, which presuppose taking into account professional qualities and the level of qualifications; increased role of supranational regulators in the legal regulation of migration relations (CIS, EAEU, etc.); introduction of the technological advance achievements into the public administration mechanism which made it possible to improve control measures and migration registration etc. The developed legal means for regulating migration processes need interval updating in order to ensure an adequate response to changes in political, social, economic and other conditions, effective impact on the migration situation by taking into account the purpose and intent of the state migration policy.