Looking for Compatriots: Repatriation Politics in Russia and Beyond

With a new draft law on “repatriation into the Russian Federation”,
Russia intends to make it easier for compatriots abroad to become
Russian citizens. According to the draft law, it will be possible
for “peoples and their descendants who have historically lived on
Russian territory” to obtain a Russian passport. But what exactly
is meant by that? Who is deemed a compatriot within this framework?
Together with Tsypylma Darieva and Tatiana Zhurzhenko, we look at
Russia’s repatriation politics since the collapse of the USSR and
discuss the concept and the broader aims of repatriation politics.
With repatriation laws, nation states give former citizens or
members of an ethnic diaspora the right to return or try to
maintain ties to those communities abroad. Famous examples are
Israel’s Law of Return or Germany’s Vertriebenen- and
Aussiedlergesetz. After the dissolution of the USSR, repatriation
also became an issue for Russia and other post-Soviet nation
states.