Putin's return for a third term as president spurred the active development of increasingly securitised migration policy. Parallel changes to migration law and the administrative code that have made violations of basic migration rules punishable by deportation and an entry ban of five or more years are indicative of this trend. But do these changes reflect an increasingly overt nationalist campaign directed by the Kremlin?

Several of the contributors to the original New Russian Nationalism volume (Kolstø and Blakkisrud 2016) argued that even prior to Putin's return to the presidency a new phase of national fervour had begun, in which nationalist ideas became more mainstream and were utilised more strategically by the regime. A parallel upsurge in antimigrant media rhetoric has also been noted (Tolz and Harding 2015; Hutchings and Tolz 2016). Putin began laying the groundwork for key migration-related policy projects, such as reforming registration and work permits, language exams for labour migrants and stricter control over migrant entry, even during his re-election campaign in 2011. Many of the migration policies adopted since 2012 can be said to be compatible with major strains of nationalist ideology. However, this chapter questions whether the Kremlin's migration rhetoric actively taps into available nationalist frames.

Here I analyse three common migration myths as a framework for evaluating the nationalist content of the Kremlin's rhetoric. Migration myths take the form of populist slogans that are utilised by politicians and the media to blame various problems on migrants. These myths gain power through their resonance with the public, rather than as a function of their veracity. Slogans claiming that migrants take jobs, are culturally incompatible with the host society, and represent a threat to security are played up in the media and by some politicians as populist rhetoric. Populist rhetoric is often consistent with public opinion, as shown in the NEORUSS survey results. However, as I will show through an analysis of Vladimir Putin's policy speeches and public statements, migration myths are not actively utilised by the Kremlin.

A migration crisis?

Russia has been among the three largest immigrant-receiving countries (along with the United States and Germany) since the fall of the Soviet Union. The first wave of migrants coming to Russia after 1991 consisted primarily of Russian-ethnic repatriates from other former Soviet republics. After the turn of the century, there came a fundamental shift from permanent migrants to temporary labour migrants (Mukomel’ 2005).