Producing <i>Kartinka:</i> Street-Level Bureaucracy and Implementation of Russia’s Tolerance Policy in St. Petersburg
Journal: Nationalities Papers
Year: 2022

Abstract In 2006, a “tolerance policy” was launched in St. Petersburg to address the growing xenophobia and the need to integrate labor migrants. Applying a bottom–up perspective, this study finds that this policy was symbolic – aimed at changing public attitudes, not at providing material outcomes. The direct implementers (the street-level bureaucracy), operating under governmental constraints, drew on informal mechanisms: behind-the-scenes negotiations, unwritten rules and hierarchies, persona