Signs that read: “Wanted: Salespeople. Must be Russian.”
Migrant workers in Russia found themselves legislated out of a job yesterday after a controversial new law reserving retail jobs for ethnic Russians came into force.
The legislation, which has been described as state-sponsored racism by human rights activists, bans non-Russians from working in large swaths of the country’s retail sector.
It will affect Russia’s food and clothing markets and the thousands of roadside kiosks that sell anything from newspapers to cosmetics .
Until yesterday it was not uncommon to visit a market staffed exclusively by migrant workers from across the former Soviet Union. Now hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from countries such as Georgia, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan are looking for new jobs.
In Russia’s Far East such positions have typically been filled by Chinese migrant workers and many of them appear to have already returned home.
At Ussuriysk’s vast market near the Chinese border almost all the stalls were reported to be deserted.