printSeasonal Work (Otkhodnichestvo) in the 2020s:
What Has Changed in Ten Years (the case of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast)
Pozanenko A.A.
Senior Lecturer, School of Politics and Governance, Faculty of Social Sciences, HSE University, Moscow, Russia apozanenko@hse.ru
Pozanenko A.A. Seasonal Work (Otkhodnichestvo) in the 2020s: What Has Changed in Ten Years (the case of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast). Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2026. No 6. P. 64-71
Due to persistent territorial socio-economic imbalances, some residents of Russian villages and small towns leave for a long time to work without changing their place of permanent residence. Such internal temporary labor migration is referred to by some researchers as otkhodnichestvo, and migrants as otkhodniks, by analogy with the pre–revolutionary and early Soviet migration of peasants to work in the city. In the early 2010s, with the author’s participation, a sociological study was conducted, which made it possible to identify the areas and specializations of otkhodnichestvo, the peculiarities of the social type of migrants, and their place in the local social structure; the analysis was based on observations and indepth semi-structured interviews with otkhodniks, family members and neighbors, taken at their place of residence in 15 regions, including the Nizhny Novgorod region. In 2022, on the basis of this region, the author conducted a study similar in subject and methodology, the purpose of which was to record changes in the nature of the phenomenon. The following new trends were highlighted: the return of some of the otkhodniks to work at their place of residence; partial reorientation from work in large cities and in oil-producing regions to work in their own or neighboring regions; a decrease in the share of informally employed; an increase in the share of those employed at enterprises of the military-industrial complex.
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