Immigration, Contraception, and Abortion in Urban Russia: The Role of Legal Status and Ethnicity

Victor Agadjanian, Arizona State University
Natalya Zotova, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russia

Migrants’ reproductive behavior is typically examined through the prism of disruption and adaptation. We engage these theoretical perspectives to compare contraceptive use and recourse to induced abortion between native and migrant women in the Russian Federation. We use mainly survey data collected in 2012-13 in three Russian cities. The survey sample included working women aged 18-40—international migrants from three Central Asian countries as well as Russian natives. The analyses focus in particular on the role of migrants’ legal status as well as of their ethnic background. The results of the preliminary logistic regression and proportional hazards models point to instructive variations by nativity, legal status, and ethnicity. These models will be further refined and will be complemented by analyses of data from in-depth interviews with survey respondents and health care providers to better understand the constraints and barriers faced by migrant women in accessing reproductive care services.