Russian Women at the International Marriage Market

Migration flows in modern Russia became widespread after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time, a multitude of people began consider of moving to another country. International migration took various shapes, such as labour migration, educational migration, family reunification etc. Numerous Russian women were involved in marriage migration that became one of the most characteristic features of the post-Soviet era.

At first, the high volume of marriage migration was stipulated by the fact that it was regarded as the simplest way of emigration from the country. Nowadays the reasons for moving are different. Women tend to move to their husband-foreigner for love, for inability to create a family in their country and so on. As a whole, over the last 26 years, marriage migration from Russia has seen various reasons that formed several stages. Each of the stages is characterised by a particular attitude to Russian wives abroad. In this regard, there seemed to appear the specific difficulties in adaptation and integration of Russian women in a foreign society.

Up to now, several sustainable directions of marriage emigration from Russia have been formed: North-American, Near East, European, and Asian.

This research is to be empirical. It will be devoted to analysing the scales of the marriage migration from Russia, defining its stages, examining basic directions, revealing the reasons for the marriage migration. It also focuses on detecting the main issues of adaptation and integration of women in a receiving society based on cases-studies. Thus, the research is aimed at outlining a quite full picture of the place and role of Russian women at the international marriage market.