UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

16-18th February 2006

12:00 – 1:30: Panel A3: Borders

Sabrina Vidalenc (Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris): ‘Delimiting and opening Sino-Russian border: territories and migrations at stake’

Just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian and Chinese States started intensive negotiation in order to set the demarcation for the Sino-Russian Eastern border (some 4,300 km). Concerned about carrying out an exhaustive and continual demarcation to better assert the sovereignty of States, this new demarcation enabled them to transform a massive and expensive military presence into a new and visible borderline. Reviving territorial assertion by delimiting borderline aims at making explicit the exclusion of each neighbouring part as well as the inclusion of their own part. This demarcation process perturbed some Russian bordering population. Sovereignty of some islands is still controversial today.
Moreover, it seems that the border is crossed by the new migrant flows emerging from the post-Cold War world. The Sino-Russian border is mishandled by the number of Chinese migrants, who cross it by pendulum movements of inclusion and exclusion in and out Russian territory. Even though borders are supposed to assume protection of the outlines, cross bordering bears witness to inability of the new Russian Federation to control this flows. Some bordering populations in the under populated Russian Far East feel threatened by Chinese migrations coming from the overpopulated provinces of North-Eastern China.

I thus intend to analyse, as previously above, the antithetical movements of demarcation and migration. And concerning to the Chinese migration in Russia, my aim is to examine its characteristics and the diverse reactions of the Russian side at the State level, at the regional level as well as among Russian society. I will show afterwards what are the modes of adaptation that the Russian State implements to face this new mobility. I will analyse if the Russian State is able to use the Chinese migration to resolve some domestic problems or the Chinese migration is considered as a burden and even a threat to the Russian sovereignty and to the border integrity.