Feedback On 28th November another training for schoolchildren by ADC ‘Memorial’ took place. In one of the halls in the Central public children’s library by the name of Pushkin 7th grade pupils of 256 secondary school played the board game “Russia is the land of opportunities?” and discussed migrants problems with the expert of ADC “Memorial” A.Yakimov.
The board game “Russia is the land of opportunities?” is a human rights manual published by ADC “Memorial”. It allows players to learn about migrant’s life and to live through a hard way of labor migration – to enter Russia, process required papers, get a job, overcome all difficulties due to discrimination (police violence and outrage, inter-ethnic conflicts, fines and wages nonpayment, attacks of nationalists, etc.) and return back home. Having played migrants, the children concluded that illegal documents checkups, forced labor, bureaucratic difficulties and plenty of cheatings at the intermediary market are very dangerous not only for foreigners but also for Russian society.
However, migration situation was not a new subject for schoolchildren: 15 out of 20 pupils were not born in Saint-Petersburg but in different regions of the Russian federation and even in countries of CIS. So it turned out that there are a lot of similarities between lives of migrant workers and native citizens of Saint-Petersburg.