This article examines contemporary migration patterns in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug (CAO) and local students’ perceptions of them. It draws on a questionnaire survey of students at Chukotka Multidisciplinary College (n = 150), conducted in late 2025. Respondents reported a marked increase in migration inflows over the preceding one to two years, which they attributed to worsening staff shortages in construction, healthcare, and the service sector. In their view, migrants’ places of origin had also changed over this period: the proportions arriving from the North Caucasian republics, Buryatia, Kalmykia, and Central Asian states had increased. The students surveyed generally expressed reserved, neutral attitudes toward labor migrants. Approximately one-sixth of respondents expressed dislike of them. Notably, these respondents explained their views in social and cultural rather than economic terms, citing what they perceived as violations of public order and unfamiliar or inappropriate behavior by newcomers in public spaces. One in five respondents considered conflict possible in the near future, while 39% were unable to offer a prediction, indicating considerable uncertainty in assessments of how interethnic relations in the region might develop. The students surveyed generally supported stricter migration rules (the introduction of an oral Russian-language examination and testing for migrants’ children), but did not reject integration measures such as free language courses and preparatory classes. Attitudes toward migrants are not uniform across Chukotka’s media environment. Traditional media maintain a restrained, neutral tone, whereas social media and online platforms used by young people occasionally feature critical and negative content about newcomers. The college students surveyed tended to distinguish newcomers by their place of origin—other regions of the Russian Federation, the North Caucasus, or other countries—and assessed them through the lens of behavioral and linguistic characteristics, confirming the role of cultural distance in the emergence of interethnic tensions. On the basis of these findings, proposals were developed to establish a regional testing infrastructure for newcomers (a center in Anadyr), expand adaptation programs and free Russian-language courses for migrants’ children, develop an information strategy emphasizing positive examples, and attract qualified personnel from other regions of the Russian Federation.

Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, migration, students, interethnic relations, factors contributing to interethnic tensions, migration regulation

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