Socio-psychological factors of the adoption of the policy of multiculturalism in Russia

On December 22, Marina V. Kotova Candidate of Sciences (PhD) in Psychology, Senior Researcher of International laboratory for Socio-Cultural Research, senior lecturer, School of Psychology, (Department of Social Sciences, HSE), took part in the "Culture Matters" research seminar with the report on "Socio-psychological factors of the adoption of the policy of multiculturalism in Russia".

The report presents the results of analytical work on the review of socio-psychological factors that may influence the adoption of a policy of multiculturalism in Russia.

Foreign researchers distinguish socio-psychological factors, greatly associated with successful adoption of the policy of multiculturalism: ethnic and civic identity of the groups of majority and minority, mutual attitudes of these groups, perceived discrimination, and the relationship to policy of multiculturalism. According to analysis, Russian studies on these factors pay more attention on studing phenomena included in three hypotheses proposed by J. Berry for evaluation the development of multiculturalism in the country (multiculturalism, integration, and contact). The least attention has paid on the study of perceived discrimination, the relationship to policies of multiculturalism.

The reporter also noted that nowadays there is no evaluation of the impact of recent changes in national policy, education and migration policy from the view point of the contribution of these changes in the adoption of the policy of multiculturalism by Russian population.

During the discussion of the report it was offered thorough analysis of the existing state and political documents associated with the theme to understand the level and depth of realizing the problem by politicians and public officials, as well as to identify possible disagreements with existing scientific data in this realizing.