Youth migration in the montane Levashinsky district of Dagestan

The article discusses local features of the migration behavior of rural youth based on the results of an expedition survey of a mountainous rural district of Dagestan. Among the sources of information were official and school statistics and the results of interviews with the local population. There is a significant post-Soviet population growth in the Levashinsky district, among other things, due to the low emigration of the rural population. It was found that a significant part of young people remain in rural areas. The reasons are the presence of relatively profitable places of employment in the agricultural sector, trade and other economic activities. The most common variants of migration behavior of rural youth are: “Studied until grade 9, and stayed in the village to work”, and “Studied until grade 9/11, and left for work”, while the least common is: “Studied until grade 11, went to study and returned”. The migration behavior of rural youth in the district differs both from Russia as a whole and the region, and for particular settlements. The differences in migration attitudes of the surveyed rural communities are described for four villages of the Levashinsky district, i.e. Levashi, Kutish, Naskent and Ulluaya. It was found that each local settlement community of the Levashinsky district has its own specifics of migration situation, which, for example, is not directly related to the ethnic structure of the population.