CHILDREN IN LOW-INCOME MIGRANT HOUSEHOLDS IN RUSSIA (Part 1)

Between 0.6 and 1 million child migrants permanently reside in Russia. Their parents, the vast majority of whom are not entitled to social benefits, find themselves in a difficult life situation, facing problems with accessing the labor market, housing, healthcare, and education for their children. Irregular legal status, informal employment, and insufficient human capital of migrants determine the level of their income not allowing them to provide their families with a decent standard of living. Children of migrants living in poverty and facing problems with their physical and psychological development, socialization, and integration into the host society are especially vulnerable. This work aims to solve following problems: assessing the prevalence of poverty in families where migrants live; analyzing the socio-demographic characteristics of migrants from low-income families; the level of Russian language proficiency of child migrants and their parents; the availability of preschool and school education for children from low-income families, as well as the housing conditions in which these children are growing up; an analysis of the human and social capital of parents of low-income family children; an assessment of the level of integration and migration strategies of respondents from low-income families. The work is based on sociological surveys conducted in 2011, 2017, 2020, and 2023, which collected data on 2,760, 7,245, 673, and 2,697 households respectively, for which budget information was available. According to surveys, approximately three-quarters of migrant children live in poverty in Russia. Between 22% and 34% of children lived in deep poverty. Children in low-income households have worse starting conditions and are more likely to fall into a “poverty trap”.