Literature Review

Migrant residential concentration has been in the focus of two main directions of research. First, scholars attempt to obtain an overview of migrants’ residential distribution and estimate the level of segregation, spotting areas of migrant concentration, usually based on statistical data for a specific territory, such as a city (Murdie and Borgegård Reference Murdie and Borgegård1998; Pamuk Reference Pamuk2004) or a whole country (Johnston, Poulsen, and Forrest Reference Johnston, Poulsen and Forrest2007; Hall Reference Hall2013). The resultant level of segregation, however, at least to some extent depends on the level of (dis)aggregation of ethnic categories (Poulsen, Johnston, and Forrest Reference Poulsen, Johnston and Forrest2004; Anderson et al. Reference Anderson, Leung, Perez and Dragićević2020). Within this strand of research, scholars also look at the way migrant residential distribution changes over time: an analysis for three Canadian cities during the 1970s–2000s shows that during this period the main migrant reception areas in Toronto and Vancouver shifted from the city center to the suburban areas, whereas in Montreal they remained in the city center (Murdie Reference Murdie2008). Tracking over time where migrants reside allows researchers to “see” new types of settlements, such as ethnoburbs (Li Reference Li1998). However, the research in this direction is quite frequently reliant on official statistics. This can become a problem in the cases where the statistics are tampered with by the state policies or insufficient on some level, like excluding some groups of migrants due to the features of data collection.

Second, there are studies “zooming in” on the areas with high migrant concentration (O’Connor Reference O’Connor1994; Pasco and White Reference Pasco and Rebecca2020) and paying special attention to the social processes taking place that can be considered characteristic of these areas (Teixeira Reference Teixeira, Kaplan and Li2006; Kaplan and Recoquillon Reference Kaplan and Recoquillon2014). An important topic within this strand of research is whether migrant concentration is positive or negative for integration, and so far scholars have come up with contradictory findings (Waldinger Reference Waldinger1993; Xie and Gough Reference Xie and Gough2011). On one hand, living in an ethnic neighborhood can help a migrant obtain a safety net and employment as well as foster a sense of belonging to the new area (Mazumdar, Docuyanan, and McLaughlin Reference Mazumdar, Mazumdar, Docuyanan and McLaughlin2000) and contribute to lower depression levels (Jurcik et al. Reference Jurcik, Ahmed, Yakobov, Solopieieva‐Jurcikova and Ryder2013). Moreover, a workplace found in this manner can guarantee a higher payment than the one found in a mainstream labor market (Portes and Manning Reference Portes, Manning and Grusky2001; Edin, Fredriksson, and Åslund Reference Edin, Fredriksson and Åslund2003). On the other hand, residing among coethnics is tied to a lower level of competency in the learning the country’s language (Lazear Reference Lazear1999; Chiswick and Miller Reference Chiswick and Miller2005), poorer education outcomes among the children (Grönqvist Reference Grönqvist2006; Danzer et al. Reference Danzer, Feuerbaum, Piopiunik and Woessmann2018), higher discrimination (Douzet and Robine Reference Douzet and Robine2015), and even religious radicalization (Hüttermann Reference Hüttermann2018). There is evidence that the effects of concentration on integration are linked with the characteristics of migrants (Murdie and Ghosh Reference Murdie and Ghosh2010).

However, neither scholars zooming in on specific areas of migrant concentration nor those who “zoom out” for a higher-level analysis pay much attention to the explanation of such areas’ origination. That is, there is some research explaining migrant or ethnic concentration in an urban context with different factors, including migrants’ social networks (MacDonald and MacDonald Reference MacDonald and MacDonald1964) and preference to live with coethnics (Moghaddam Reference Moghaddam and Frisken1994; Clark and Fossett Reference Clark and Fossett2008; Mazza and Punzo Reference Mazza and Punzo2016), tendency of ethnic majority to avoid “others” (Pais, South, and Crowder Reference Pais, South and Crowder2009; Andersen Reference Andersen2017), discrimination (Hulchanski Reference Hulchanski1993; Farley Reference Farley1995), housing and welfare regimes (Arbaci Reference Arbaci2007; Andersson et al. Reference Andersson, Dhalmann, Holmqvist, Kauppinen, Turner, Andersen, Søholt, Vaattovaara, Vilkama, Wessell and Yousfi2010), socioeconomic status (Kaplan and Woodhouse Reference Kaplan and Woodhouse2004), or some combinations of these (Owusu Reference Owusu1999; Musterd Reference Musterd2005). Nevertheless, these factors are rarely fused into a comprehensive explanation with detailed description of the mechanisms in operation (But see Massey [Reference Massey1985] and Li [Reference Li1998] for exclusions). The research this article presents works on both planes: we zoom in on the areas to establish the features they possess as well as the reasons they might be considered optimal for migrants who are in the process of making their residential choice, and we zoom out—looking into the pattern that these features present on a larger scale of a postsocialist city.

Although migration processes in the postsocialist context have recently gained more academic attention (Agadjanian, Menjívar, and Zotova Reference Agadjanian, Menjívar and Zotova2017; Górny and Kaczmarczyk Reference Górny, Kaczmarczyk, Inglis, Li and Khadria2020), migrant residential concentration in this context is poorly studied. Some quantitative research (Vendina Reference Vendina2004; Vendina, Panin, and Tikunov Reference Vendina, Panin and Tikunov2019) into the available data for Moscow proposes that although there is a tendency for migrants to settle in peripheral areas of the city, the difference in the share of migrant population is rather minute to proclaim the existence of migrant residential concentration areas. Some articles looking into other cases—for example, in Czech metropolitan areas (Přidalová and Hasman Reference Přidalová and Hasman2018)—witness migrant residential concentration areas, whereas others argue that they do not form due to the sociospatial organization of the cities inherited from the Soviet period (Demintseva Reference Demintseva2017). However, there is evidence that the often-declared absence of spatial segregation in socialist cities was more a reflection of a taboo on the discussion of the topic in literature than of a real situation (Ladányi Reference Ladányi1993; Ruoppila and Kährik Reference Ruoppila and Kährik2003; Bazhenova Reference Bazhenova2010; Makarova Reference Makarova2013), not to mention the rapid changes that many postsocialist cities have undergone for the last 30 years (Li and Wu Reference Li and Wu2008) even though these changes are different from the processes taking place in the Western cities (Großmann et al. Reference Großmann, Arndt, Haase, Rink and Steinführer2015). Moreover, for the postsocialist cities the research into the topic of poverty concentration is more relevant as opposed to ethnic one in terms of these transformations of the last three decades (Liu and Wu Reference Liu and Wu2006; Nord, Luloff, and Jensen Reference Nord, Luloff and Jensen1995), whereas migrant concentration is mentioned briefly or as one of the consequences of economic segregation.

One of the features of postsocialist cities is the existence of large bazaars (Schlögel Reference Schlögel, Grubbauer and Kusiak2012; Huwelmeier Reference Huwelmeier2013), which, usually located in lower-income areas on the outskirts of a city, are very diverse: they can take the place of a former stadiums or warehouses and factory buildings (Rawitsch Reference Rawitsch2020) and can be surrounded with residential areas or detached from them. As a rule, a considerable part of business owners and employees in such bazaars are international migrants (Yessenova Reference Yessenova, Dannhaeuser and Werner2006; Humphrey and Skvirskaja Reference Humphrey and Skvirskaja2009) for two reasons: this economic niche is not as attractive for nonmigrants because of low margins, but at the same time it is easy for migrants to enter this sector (Hiebert, Rath, and Vertovec Reference Hiebert, Rath and Vertovec2015). If a bazaar is surrounded with residential areas, there is evidence that they become areas with high migrant concentration (Fiedlerová and Sýkora Reference Fiedlerová and Sýkora2015; Patzer, Góralska, and Winkowska Reference Patzer, Góralska and Winkowska2015; Erokhina, Reference Erokhina2017; Rawitsch Reference Rawitsch2020). Although the literature gives the impression that this is an inevitable process, meaning that proximity to a large bazaar is the only sufficient factor for the emergence of a migrant residential concentration area, our study shows that it happens only under a set of specific circumstances. Before discussing these factors, we shortly describe the context and research design.

Context Description

The most important contextual aspect is the urban history of Russian cities, especially the post–World War II period and the post-Soviet change. To understand why migrant residential concentration areas appear where they do, we need to look back on the history of these areas and evolution of their attractiveness to various groups of general population, as in many cases the important factors of residential patterns arise from those processes (Tammaru et al. Reference Tammaru, van Ham, Marcińczak, Musterd, Tammaru and van Ham2015). Undeniably, in many cases worldwide there is a link between the poorer areas and migrant concentration (Massey Reference Massey1985, Costa and de Valk Reference Costa and de Valk2018, Chiswick and Miller Reference Chiswick and Miller2005), so it is important to establish where such areas tend to form. Thus, this section follows the specifics of the two aforementioned periods while answering the question of how the cities’ structure came to be the way that it is now. By juxtaposing migration history to this context, we strive to create a current understanding of what the migrants’ place is in residential patterns in Russian cities.

The urbanization and industrialization at the turn of the 20th century laid the grounds for the industrial development of the Soviet era. With World War II, many factories were transferred to the new locations farther inland (first, in the Urals and Siberia), which served as an impetus for these towns’ and cities’ growth (Usanova Reference Usanova2014). However, it was not until the 1960s that large-scale residential house building directed at providing each family with an apartment started (Meerovich Reference Meerovich, Kuzmin, Akimov, Rogunova, Terekhova, Karpukhina and Korobova2016). The late Soviet period was characterized with remarkably low levels of segregation, which, according to different academic interpretations, could be a result of a deliberate policy of social mixing or the tendency of house building and distribution of residential units to be organized by different-level enterprises and government bodies. As opposed to European practices, Soviet housing, especially in larger cities, was closely linked to state and various institutions in a form of “employer-provided housing” (Meerovich Reference Meerovich, Kuzmin, Akimov, Rogunova, Terekhova, Karpukhina and Korobova2016). This policy prompted social mixing, as one area could house employees of drastically different institutions and, thus, backgrounds.

After the dissolution of the USSR and introduction of a market economy, the residential development in the Russian cities changed and has by now taken the form of either infill construction (tochechnaya zastroika) in the areas deemed most attractive to potential residents, mostly city center (Peshina and Ryzhenkov Reference Peshina and Ryzhenkov2013), or construction of new residential complexes (Pozdniakova Reference Pozdniakova2011). These complexes can take on diametrically opposed statuses. In the case of central high-end areas, they constitute the most expensive residential development, grouped together with the older buildings in the city center—the richer areas of the cities. Alternatively, the complexes that fall under the so-called economy-class type may imply the use of cheaper construction materials, less developed infrastructure, and location far away from the city center, in which case they are put in the same category as old, dilapidated housing of the previous epochs—and make up cheaper housing options and, thus, areas of poorer population concentration. These new modes of residential development arise against the background of older urban structures, and recent studies have witnessed processes of social polarization in this context (Vendina, Panin, and Tikunov Reference Vendina, Panin and Tikunov2019).

As in many other countries, the cities in Russia have the concentration of economic opportunities and thus attract international migrants more so than do the rural areas (Russian Federal State Statistic Service 2020). International migration started in Russia after the USSR collapse, but unlike many other post-Soviet republics, Russia became a country of not only emigration but also immigration, and it is by now the main migrant destination country (Denisenko and Chudinovskikh Reference Denisenko and Chudinovskikh2012) within the post-Soviet migration system.Footnote ¹ In the 1990s, Russia experienced the influx of mostly Russian speakers, also called “compatriots” (Vishnevskii Reference Vishnevskii2013, 100), as well as ethnicFootnote ² migrants from the South Caucasus. The 2000s saw the start of a labor migration boom, with immigrants arriving from Ukraine, Moldova, and Central Asian states. Today, the most prominent migration flows to Russia are heading from Central Asia: in 2019, the citizens of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan constituted almost 40% of the 10.7 million foreign citizens who were present in Russia at a single pointFootnote ³ and about two-thirds of the 5.4 million of those who came to work.Footnote ⁴ The events of 2020–2022 were certainly expected to change the migration trends in Russia. Nevertheless, according to the official migration statistics (and in the absence of other data), the immigration flows from Central Asia persist at a relatively unchanged rate, with most of the migrants from Central Asian states still coming to Russia for work (Ministry of the Internal Affairs, Migration Office 2023).

A prominent sphere of the employment of migrants in Russia is trade: according to different estimations, the share of all migrants employed in trade varies from 9% (Florinskaya et al. Reference Florinskaya, Mkrtchyan, Maleva and Kirillova2015) to about a third (Mukomel Reference Mukomel2016). There is evidence that bazaars are among the trade niches that are popular with migrants (Agadjanian and Zotova Reference Agadjanian and Zotova2012), and this holds true even despite the regulations introduced in 2007 that limited the opportunities of foreign citizens for employment in retail trade (Mikhailova and Tyuryukanova Reference Mikhailova, Tyuryukanova, Vitkovskaya, Platonova and Shkolnikov2009). These measures were part of a state initiative intended to “civilize” the retail trade, which has led to the displacement of hard-to-control open-air markets in favor of shopping malls and supermarkets (Dyatlov Reference Dyatlov2014)—the share of the former in the Russian retail trade has decreased over the last 20 years,Footnote ⁵ as many open-air markets were transformed into permanent structures (shopping malls or shopping centers) or underwent other changes. Despite these transformations, the vernacular name stuck, and most of those places are still seen and known as bazaars—and part of them stayed, to a large extent, “migrant” spaces. Additionally, it is important to note that these transformations affected mostly retail trade bazaars, whereas most wholesale bazaars were left to be. Presently, every large Russian city has several bazaars, varying in size and type: they can be wholesale, retail, or a combination of both and sell a variety of goods—food, clothing, etc.

Research Design

The purpose of the research was to determine under what conditions migrant residential concentration areas around bazaars do and do not emerge, using the comparison of the cases to explain their origination. That is, we left the consideration of the consequences of segregation processes (e.g., poverty rates and integration perspectives) to further research on the topic, instead focusing on the factors that may contribute to the emergence of segregation in general and spatial and socioeconomic segregation in particular.

In accordance with this purpose, we undertook a multicase study.Footnote ⁶ This research method, although relatively underused so far, has advantages that are similar to those of a single-case study, including paying special attention to the contextual factors and reliance on multiple sources of data (Yin Reference Yin2018, 45–46). However, unlike a single-case study, this method builds on the comparison and contrast of several cases under scrutiny and thus allows for richer analysis opportunities (Stake Reference Stake2013; Yin Reference Yin2018). For our research, we targeted studying bazaars and adjacent residential areas in all Russian cities with over a million residents (N = 15). The focus was on finding out in which contexts migrant residential concentration areas emerge, delineating factors underlying their formation, and providing an explanation for why they emerged or not. According to our research, a “case” is thus defined as a bazaar with an adjacent residential area.

The research consisted of four stages: the preparatory stage, the pilot fieldwork stage, the main fieldwork stage, and the analysis stage. In general, a variety of methods has been used including the analysis of the residential statistics, academic and nonacademic literature and media on the topic, expert in-depth and express interviews, observation, and digital ethnography. The way these methods were applied is described in the following paragraphs.

During the preparatory stage of work, a desk-research phase and a series of expert interviews (N = 108) in all cities in Russia with an official population count of at least 1 million were organized to select cases and get acquainted with the research contexts. Those include Cheljabinsk, Kazan, Krasnojarsk, Moscow, Nizhnij Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Perm, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, St. Petersburg, Ufa, Volgograd, Voronezh, and Yekaterinburg. The desk research mainly entailed analysis of academic and nonacademic publications as well as statistics and social media. The set of experts in each city could vary, but the basis for the sampling was an agreed-upon protocol set, which consisted of a scholar specializing in urban history, a migration researcher, and a head of a migrant-oriented nongovernmental organization (NGO); however, in most cases the number of experts exceeded those three. There are limitations to expert interviews, which were considered while analyzing their results: specifically, the bias that any interview entails. To ensure objectivity, the data from the interviews were compared with the data from the research literature and official state sources. The combination of this information allowed us to select 37 cases—main bazaars in all the cities—as well as to get acquainted with the urban history and migration situation within each city. As a rule, we selected a minimum of two bazaars for each city: one selling food and the other selling consumer goods, wholesale, retail, or both. Selected cases were then further studied by the research team of the authors of this article, using interview and observation as the main methods. Data collection was performed in accordance with the case study protocol developed and tested during the pilot stage.

The pilot fieldwork stage was directed at the preliminary testing of the developed methodology of field research. It consisted of the three out of four researchers from the research team studying bazaar-adjacent areas in Moscow and the Moscow region, where researchers #1 and #2 studied cases in one city and researchers #2 and #3 in another. In total, seven cases were collected and later included in the body of the present research. Upon the analysis of the pilot stage, the initial case study protocol was edited based on the field research experience. Along with the protocol, a casebook was developed to normalize the process of data collection. The concept of a casebook is similar to that of “table shells” described in Yin (Reference Yin2018, 143): it helps researchers working on various cases stay “on the same page” and be sure to focus on the same main topics.

During the main fieldwork stage, another 30 cases were studied by the researchers individually in accordance with the developed case study protocol. Within an individual case study, the task was to describe the bazaar and the adjacent residential area, decide whether it can be classified as a migrant residential concentration area or not, and then provide an explanation of why a migrant residential concentration area was or was not formed there.

In discussing the process of data collection, it is important to consider the baselines that were used for the cases. Arguably, the most straightforward way to classify residential areas would be to analyze statistics for the corresponding units. However, in the Russian context there is a problem that arises from the unreliability of statistical data, especially on the level of smaller areas. This makes the process of properly defining the geographical distribution of migrants contingent on quantitative research; however, in the case of this study we focus mostly on the qualitative aspect. Russian census data contain some categories that are useful for identifying migrants such as citizenship, country of birth, and ethnic category. However, there are several important hindrances that did not allow us to rely solely on the census data for these purposes. First, the smallest census unit for cities of a million residents or more is too large: as a rule, it is an administrative area (administrativny rayon) with a population varying from several thousand people to more than 200,000 people, and such a scale did not allow us to single out the smaller units we needed, like districts and neighborhoods. Second, there are serious deficiencies in the most recent Russian census of 2010 related to the overall collection of data and data of migrants, specifically (Andreev Reference Andreev2012; Beloborodov Reference Beloborodov2014). Finally, the latest census was conducted in 2010 and thus is quite outdated, and the new one planned for 2020 was postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As an alternative to the census, we considered statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs based on the addresses of registration of foreign citizens. Unfortunately, though, registration addresses are rarely identical to the real residences of migrants, making it unsuitable for the specifics of the research in discussion. Due to this overall situation, we could not rely solely on the statistical data and had to undertake field research.

Within each case’s fieldwork (during both pilot and main stages), the following combination of observation and interviews was used. To start, we conducted driving interviews around different parts of the researched cities (For more about this method, see Kusenbach [Reference Kusenbach2003] and Brown and Durrheim [Reference Brown and Durrheim2009]) with city experts such as researchers, real estate agents, or tour guides. This, along with further contextualization of the data through supplementary literature analysis, helped us gain understanding and extrapolate preliminary knowledge on the variance of the socioeconomic and spatial characteristics of the cities as well as the geographical distribution of migrants.

Next, observation and interviews with informants at the bazaars helped to pinpoint various groups of people working there and get preliminary cues of the residential distribution of migrants employed there. This information, together with data from the previous research steps and an analysis of maps, laid the grounds for the selection of residential area or areas nearest to the bazaar. Using the combination of methods, we identified their boundaries, classified buildings, and sampled buildings and their entrances (podjezd) where we conducted observation and interviews with their inhabitants—migrants and nonmigrants. These interviews varied in length from several minutes to an hour and a half, but the majority lasted less than 30 minutes. The essential minimum of these interviews included questions on the number of migrantsFootnote ⁷ in the building and in the apartments next door to an informant. If possible, the interviews also included other topics such as the personal characteristics of the informant including their migration history, if any, and living conditions; history of the building and characteristics of the dwellers; characteristics of the area in general including schools, comparison with other areas in the city, and future residential plans.

These interviews were conducted up to the point when we received a consistent image about the share of migrants in a building and each subsequent interview and observation confirmed this image. From an analytical standpoint, starting from buildings and expanding to the overall area and complementing this data with evidence from interviews with local experts such as school principals and local shop assistants (the total number of all interviews within the case studies was 877), we were able to classify an area as a migrant residential concentration area or not. This method of research has its limitations, and because we could not use precise statistical figures, we could neither get an accurate numerical value for the share of migrants in the area nor set an a priori cutoff point for the share of migrants to identify migrant residential concentration areas in the study. The research did, however, provide us with the understanding of whether the areas in question were (a) (almost) absolutely nonmigrant, (b) mostly nonmigrant, (c) nonmigrant with a considerable percentage of migrants, (d) mostly migrant. Although they are not the most accurate division of the areas, these categories allowed us to set the framework for our areas of interest. Based on the categories above, we used the following criteria to define migrant residential concentration areas: (1) the share of migrants residing in this area is considerable (over 20%), (2) it is higher than that in other comparable areas of the city, and (3) the area has a high number of residents relative to the city. The share of over 20% of migrant population correlates with most ideal types of migrant residential concentration areas used in international contexts (For an elaborate description of those, see Seol [Reference Seol, Wong and Rigg2010]). This framework allowed us to estimate the boundaries of residential areas for the research as well as to pinpoint the discrepancies between Russian ideal type and other international cases.

The fieldwork conducted in each case, together with the preliminary desk study and expert interviews, provided a basis for the within-case analysis presented further in interim summaries created for each case. These summaries included case descriptions, reasons for classifying residential area(s)Footnote ⁸ within the case as a migrant residential concentration area, and theoretical suggestions of why in this specific case a migrant residential concentration area was or wasn’t formed. After getting acquainted with these interim summaries, we gathered for the cross-case analysis. During several analytical sessions, we undertook several actions. First, we constructed an ideal type of a migrant residential concentration area and differentiated our cases according to their relation to this ideal type (all cases are listed in Appendix). Second, we came up with the factors that are essential for forming a migrant residential concentration area and constructed a theoretical explanation of how such areas come into being in the context of postsocialist cities. When developing this explanation, we oriented ourselves toward the analytical sociology tradition with its focus on mechanisms (Hedström and Bearman Reference Hedström and Bearman2009).

Such methodology has some limitations as mentioned above. To summarize, (1) in some cases, the bazaar-adjacent residential area had clear-cut boundaries, but in others the boundaries were vague (e.g., a residential area seamlessly merged into the rest of the city), which prompted a researcher to make a deliberate decision of what to include in a case, and setting boundaries in different ways could influence the resultant share of migrants in a case under study; (2) because we could not ground our classification of cases in reliable and suitable statistical data, our analysis is quite rough and approximate. However, we believe that the multicase study method, with its constant comparing across a large number of cases, provided us with the opportunity to meaningfully address the research question.

Case Description: Temernik Area in Rostov-on-Don

Rostov-on-Don, the largest city in Southwest Russia, has a population of 1.1 million people. Originally founded as a small fortress, it underwent significant growth during the late 19th century, leading to the development of a prestigious city center surrounded by low-rise unauthorized construction. The establishment of the Rostselmash factory (Rostov factory for agricultural machines) to the northeast of the city center had a significant effect on the urban development of Soviet-era Rostov-on-Don. Its existence gave rise to the new residential development around the factory, whereas the spare land was occupied by the detached houses. The prominence of major areas of detached houses is marked by the fact that Rostov-on-Don is among the cities of over a million residents with the highest share of this kind of development in Russia (SmartLoc Geomarketing Company 2019). During the last 30 years, new high-rise buildings have emerged across the city including the central part of it as well as the areas surrounding factories and more remote areas.

In the 1980s, high-rise blocks were constructed on the northeast border of the city—in an area known as Temernik. These blocks consisted of apartment-type dormitories (obschezhitiya kvartirnogo tipa)—that is, small studio apartments for Rostselmash factory employees. The post-Soviet period witnessed the emergence of economy-class high-rise buildings in the area. Currently, Temernik is one of the cheapest areas of Rostov-on-Don: it’s ranked in the third quartile for property prices and fourth quartile for rent costs (PwC and Avito Nedvizhimost’ 2018b). The L-shaped area of Temernik is clearly defined by the river Temernik, the “Temernik” bazaar, and a forest (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Temernik area (indicated with a solid line) and the bazaar (indicated with a dashed line). Source: Google Maps (n.d.). https://www.google.com/maps/. (Accessed January 20, 2020).

The bazaar was founded on the previously bare lot of land in the 1990s and gradually took up all the territory between Lelyushenko Street and the block of detached houses. Today, its area equates to about six hectaresFootnote ¹⁰ and consists of three de jure independent bazaars (Vostochny, Pervy Temer, and Temernik). According to the website of one of these bazaars, it boasts over 3,000 shops within its premises (Rynok ‘Vostochnyi’ n.d.). Considering this, it can be inferred that the combined number of shops and, significantly, the number of employees in all three bazaars is even higher. A considerable portion of these positions is filled by migrants.

Rostovskaya oblast, the region of which Rostov-on-Don is the capital, holds the 13th position among Russian regions in terms of receiving migrants. However, migrants from Central Asia make up only a small portion of this migrant population and find employment in sectors such as construction, agriculture, and trade. One notable workplace for Central Asian migrants in Rostov-on-Don is the Temernik bazaar.

The bazaar and the residential area near it are kept apart by a busy street with chaotically moving pedestrians and cars (see Figure 2). The street is surrounded by dormitories that were constructed in the Soviet era and new economy-class blocks of apartments, which are the nearest to the bazaar. Newer buildings that are slightly more expensive are situated at a greater distance from the bazaar. The proportion of apartments occupied by migrants in the buildings nearest to the bazaar tends to be at least 40%. However, as one moves further away from the bazaar, the percentage of migrant residents diminishes. For instance, in a new building located 400 meters away from the bazaar, migrants represent a minority, occupying only one out of every six apartments on a floor. The influence of the bazaar’s proximity also extends to the adjacent street of detached houses, where several two- to three-story houses have been converted into hostels or dormitories. However, this effect gradually decreases after five or six streets.

Figure 2.

Lelyushenko Street separating the bazaar (on the left) and the residential area (on the right). Source: Authors’ photograph.

Overall, the concentration of migrants in this area is contingent on the size of the bazaar, reasonably small size of the residential area, and high percentage of dormitories and economy-class new construction. Additional factors are isolation from other areas and location across the street from the bazaar. The area also lacks a tightly knit local community of nonmigrants, which contributes to a lower retention rate of nonmigrant residents. There is a high turnover of new residents in the area as well. Some apartments in the new buildings are allocated to individuals from the city’s accommodation waitlist, who are predominantly nonmigrants. However, these individuals often move out once they observe the presence of migrants among their neighbors.