printFamily Migration and Integration:
Securitizing Discourses Versus Empirical Research Data
Grigor’eva K.S.
Cand. Sci. (Sociol.), Leading Research Fellow, Institute of Sociology of FCTAS RAS, Moscow, Russia ksenia_grig@mail.ru
Grigor’eva K.S. Family Migration and Integration: Securitizing Discourses Versus Empirical Research Data. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2025. No 12. P. 92-105
Family migrants constitute the majority of permanent migrants in OECD countries and Russia, but family migration has long been overlooked by researchers and remains insufficiently studied to this day. In particular, highly politicized questions about the impact of family migration on integration remain unanswered. Most scholars focus on the employment rate of family migrants, ignoring the fact that employment is only one indicator of structural integration. This article aims to contribute, on the one hand, to the empirical analysis of the inclusion of family migrants in the host society using H. Esser’s concept of integration and, on the other hand, to the study of securitizing discourses on family migration. The empirical basis of the study is data from mass surveys of foreign citizens conducted by the Center for Ethnopolitical and Regional Studies in 2017 and 2023. To analyze securitizing discourses, we used the texts of draft laws on combating sham marriages, prohibiting labor migrants from bringing their families to Russia, restricting or completely closing access to Russian school education for migrant children, explanatory notes to these draft laws, and related media statements. The study’s results demonstrate that policy arguments that family migrants are non-working dependents are inaccurate, as are assertions that family migration negatively impacts integration by contributing to the social exclusion of migrants.
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