№ 5 - 1999
Barsukova S.Yu.
Problems of Refugees and Emergency Migrants in the Mirror of Ideologies

The author analyzes the condition of refugees and emergency migrants as an ideological problem. It turns out, from this point of view, that distinctions in the ways of solving the difficulties involved in the increasing influx of immigrant compatriots, may originate from diversity of the value interpretation of the very status of a refugee. From the viewpoint of classical liberalism, people who have become refugees are thus paying for their having been running, all by themselves, the risk of living in an alien environment, and they are themselves to bear the responsibility. To conservatism, refugees deserve being taken care of as participants of paternalist relations who enjoy the status of «subjects» in distress. Socialist ideology looks upon refugees as, first of all, realizers of a great mission that has, under concrete historical conditions, failed; therefore, it is maintained, they deserve being helped even against the considerations of economic advisability.