Labor Practices of Remote Countryside Non-Working Population (on the Example of Khakassia)

Abstract

In conditions of prolonged unemployment, the sphere of labor and employment in rural areas is trans­forming. The labor market is changing, informal practices are spreading, new forms of employment are emerging, the number of villagers who do not want or are unaccustomed to work is growing, etc. The article aims at identifying labor practices among the unemployed population of remote territories using the example of Khakassia. Geographical remoteness is an additional factor limiting the possibilities of rural population labor behavior. The study was conducted based on a sociological survey of region’s remote areas residents (n = 404). The article compares the groups of villagers who are unemployed for different periods. The socio-demographic composition of these groups, as well as the strategies of their work behavior, differ. The first group of respondents, those who did not work for up to a year, can be considered frictionally unemployed. Most of them are able-bodied people living in large villages with a relatively high level of prosperity and focused on various labor strategies. The second group, people who did not work for several years, is quite diverse in its composition and represents almost all segments of the rural population. The respondents of this group are engaged in personal subsidiary farming, which serves as an alternative to formal employment. The third group consists of women of reproductive age who have never worked. They do not aim at finding work or other forms of self-employment, since their main activities are household management and childcare. Casual earnings (extra money made on the side) and fishing activities are common among the unemployed population, but the income from such activities is low and unstable. In general, the labor practices of the remote territories’ unemployed population depend on various factors, but the personal motivation of the villagers, which determines the strategy of their labor behavior, has the greatest influence.