How people perceive immigrants' role in their country's life: a comparative study of Estonia and Russia

In addition to traditional growth models, 3T (Technology, Talent, Tolerance) approach, initially proposed by Richard Florida, has gained popularity since the beginning of the 21st century in explaining determinants of economic growth and development. This approach emphasizes the important role of technology, talent and tolerance in attracting and retaining diverse people and thereby creating new challenges for economic growth. In our paper, people's attitudes towards immigrants are considered as proxies of tolerance to ethnically diverse population as possible precondition for future economic growth. Interesting cases for analysing people's attitudes towards immigrants are provided by two neighbour countries Estonia and Russia - the countries with post-socialist path-dependence and ethnically diverse population. The share of minorities in the total population is remarkable in both countries - around one third in Estonia and one fifth in Russia. Thus, these countries have favourable preconditions for economic development as well as threats that due to the weak integration policy, social and political tensions will increase and as a consequence business environment become worse. The paper aims to conduct a comparative analysis of possible determinants of peoples' attitudes towards immigrants in Estonia and Russia mainly focusing on the examining the role of individual's socio-demographic and economic characteristic in forming their attitudes towards immigrants. The overwhelming aim of the study is to elaborate empirical evidence-based grounds for policy proposals that through favourable business environment can support economic growth and development. The empirical part of the paper relies on information provided in the European Social Survey (ESS) fifth round database and on implementing the methodological framework that includes principal component factor analysis and microeconometric methods. The results of the study show that on average the attitudes towards immigrants are lower in both Estonia and Russia than in the European countries with advanced economies. Estonian peoples' attitudes towards immigrants are somewhat better in all aspects of country's life - economy, culture and country as a living place, comparing to Russia. Ethnic minorities, people with higher income and religious people are more tolerant to immigrants in both countries. Unemployed people are less tolerant towards immigrants only in the case of Russia not of Estonia. Surprisingly, better education improves attitudes towards immigrants in Estonia but does not have any statistically significant relation to the attitudes towards immigrants in all monitored aspects - economy, culture and country as living place in Russia.