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The article is dedicated to theoretical and practical aspects of how the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) implements is social projects working with foreign labor migrants on the territory of the Russian Federation. The role of the Church is evaluated simultaneously through analyzing the practice of implementing projects for sociocultural adaptation of migrants, which take place under the aegis and with the participation of ecclesiastical institutions. The main research problem of the article is to fund out whether church bodies are ready to work with labor migrants and to evaluate their effectiveness. The study relies on analyzing church-state agreements and ecclesiastical documents on migration and related issues. This made possible defining the legal boundaries for the activities of Orthodox religious associations working in the field of sociocultural adaptation of foreign labor migrants. Critical documentary analysis contributed into characterizing the official position of the Church and the positions of Orthodox activists and representatives of intelligentsia. To identify conflicting opinions the research implied analysis of two opposite positions on the issue of migration: nationalists, who intend to make Orthodoxy the property of the Russian ethnic nation, and supporters of unlimited proselytism. Our vision of grassroots social work with migrants resulted from a qualitative analysis of network data related to social projects of the Orthodox community, as well as from participant observation done by one of the authors who took part in one of such projects. The study concludes that the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in the sphere of sociocultural adaptation of foreign labor migrants should be evaluated as insufficiently effective to become stimulating both for strengthening the Orthodox community and for increasing its social capital.
Ryazanova et al. (Fri,) studied this question.