7 - The Inclusive Face of Welfare Nationalism

Summary

Chapter 7 turns to ethnic return migrations, Russia’s Compatriot Resettlement Program and the Poland’s Karta Polaka (Pole’s Card) program. In these cases migrants entered ‘virtuous inclusionary cycles’ : societies were receptive to them as co- ethnics, political elites sponsored and financed their resettlement and media, mostly state-controlled in both states, lauded their contributions. The chapter analyzes the motives of the Polish and Russian governments in sponsoring re-settlers, including demographic replacement for declining populations, workers to fill labor shortages, and symbolic nationalist political agendas. It shows that welfare nationalist grievances did emerge over the resetlers’ social privileges and nationals’ competition with them for scare social resources. There were also disputes over the boundaries of national belonging. In sharp contrast to the exclusionary migrations, Russian and Polish political elites managed and mitigated grievances rather than mobilizing them for political gain. Resettlers confronted obstacles to integration: severe restrictions on residence and job rights in Russia, limited language fluency in Poland. Still, inclusionary policies gave resettlers social, economic and civil rights denied to those in exclusionary migrations.