Abstract

This chapter explores dynamics of regional migration governance within the former Soviet Union. It examines relevant processes of inter-state cooperation and regional integration leading to the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). It argues that the EAEU Treaty has constituted a new supranational model of interaction between several states of the post-Soviet region with unprecedented consequences for regional migration governance: it has provided conditions for basically unlimited labour migration of EAEU member states’ citizens within the Union and has abolished important organizational boundaries in member states’ welfare systems. The chapter identifies certain parallels with the European Union (EU) and discusses whether migration governance within the EAEU borrows from EU experience. Finally, the chapter argues that migration governance within the EAEU cannot be equated with migration governance at the regional scale comprising the Eurasian migration system. Instead, the EAEU creates one of several partially overlapping sub-regional migration governance regimes within the post-Soviet space.