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On May 22-23, 2025, the XXIII International Likhachev Scientific Readings “Transforming the World: Problems and Prospects” were held.

May 23:

At Section 3. “The Economy of the New Multipolar World” the employees of the Center for Comparative Socio-Economic and Political Studies of IMEMO presented their reports.

The report by Elena Sadovaya, Head of the Department of Complex Socio-Economic Research, Cand. of Science (Economics), is devoted to the analysis of the factors of multipolar world formation. The report states that the economic system generated by globalization has come to its logical conclusion, having exhausted the resources for further development. After a period of fairly harsh confrontation, the world system is transforming into a multipolar one. The author emphasizes that such a system of world order implies the formation of several centers of power, and their number a priori cannot be large. Too many factors must come together for one or another state to be able to claim the role of a new regional center of development in the post-global world.

In her report, Elena Sadovaya dwelled in more detail on the analysis of the action of two of them, directly related to the formation of human resources. One of the most important, in her opinion, will be the demographic factor, which in methodological terms should be considered, firstly, as a component of a single social dynamics, and, secondly, in the context of those deep transformations that humanity is experiencing today. In the context of deglobalization of the world economy and division of the world into separate macro-regions, the task of maintaining the required level of division of labor (level of technological development) implies a certain market capacity and, consequently, a corresponding population size. The solution of this problem will require the state to revise its approaches to understanding demographic policy.

Not only market capacity, but also human resources that enable the creation of a high-tech economy will determine the country's place within the emerging multipolar world order. The development of modern technologies is impossible without human resources of appropriate quality. This factor (the struggle for competencies) can also be considered one of the most important in the struggle for the future.  

The report by Irina Tsapenko, Head of the Sector for Socio-Economic Development and Migration Processes Studies, Dr. of Science (Economics), is devoted to the instrumentalization of population migration. The author emphasized that cross-border human movements, clearly reflecting geopolitical transformations and the formation of a new, polycentric and multidimensional system of world order, are themselves becoming an increasingly important factor in world politics. In the context of increasing scale of movements and the interdependence of states on migration, the possibilities for some states to use migration to exert foreign policy influence on others are expanding, while at the same time their exposure and vulnerability to such influence are increasing. With the concentration of flows between a limited number of states, the concentration of migration power in the latter also increases.

The speaker drew attention to the fact that the status of the main participants in migration processes is being converted into positions of leading players on the migration platform of foreign policy – centers of migration power. These actors operate a wide range of migration persuasive tools: from levers of hard coercion through artificial generation and manipulation of human flows, indiscriminate sanctions anti-migration barriers to instruments of cooperation in the field of migration and soft promotion of an attractive image of the country through liberal and inclusive measures of migration policy. At the same time, in comparison with the list of world and regional powers, the composition of migration power centers is more mobile due to the variability of migration flows, the suddenness, sporadic occurrence and limited duration of cases of migration weaponization, instability of migration partnerships, etc.

The increasingly widespread use of migration instrumentalization techniques and the frequent achievement of results, especially when positive and constructive practices are used, allow us to judge the increase in the activity and role of migration power centers in international relations. 

At Section 5. “What Kind of Person of the Future Will We Bring Up? (Problems and Prospects of Russian Education)”, Marina Khokhlova, Senior Researcher of the Center for Development and Modernization Studies of IMEMO, Cand. of Science (History), presented a report: “Professional Choice of Youth: Education and Employment (in the Acquired Profession) as a Criterion of Educational Success”.

The report was devoted to the youth labor market, the analysis of which is a kind of forecast, because those who are now 15-29 years old will determine the state of the labor market in the next 30-40 years. Due to their training and readiness to work in their chosen profession, young people in conditions of personnel shortage become an important reserve for attracting additional groups of labor force to the labor market, a mechanism to compensate for the personnel shortage. The youth labor market as a system includes professional training and employment of young people, the most important quality criterion of which is employment in the profession for which young people were trained and their subsequent adaptation to it in the labor market.

The lack of connection between the received vocational education and subsequent employment is extremely serious, since it is not only a question of direct loss of funds for training and shortage of qualified personnel in the economy, but also of negative consequences for the personality of a young person who has not adapted to the professional labor market.

The author of the report turned to foreign experience, because the reasons for this phenomenon reflect the peculiarities of educational systems, as well as the extent to which the system already at the first stage, when choosing a profession, allows you to act on a cognitive, rather than emotional and evaluative level, and if necessary, gives a chance to correct the initial mistake.