Despite an acute labor shortage, the Russian authorities are trying to curtail the numbers of workers arriving from Central Asia. The crackdown intensified after the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in March, which was reportedly carried out by Tajik nationals. But the appeal of Russia’s job market was already diminished prior to these restrictions. Now, Central Asian migrants are looking for job opportunities in other countries, including in Europe.
Historically, Russia has been the main destination for Central Asian migrant workers. Even after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine—and the recruitment of foreign migrants into the armed forces—Central Asians continued to go to Russia. The Crocus City Hall attack was a watershed moment. In its aftermath, labor migrants faced constant document checks, workplace raids, firings, flight delays, and hours-long lines at the border with Kazakhstan. If they were detained by law enforcement officials, they could be subjected to torture, or given a choice between conscription and deportation.
Even diplomats have been caught in the crossfire. In April, police officers burst into the Moscow apartment of an aide to Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador, ostensibly to establish who was living in the property. His wife and children were home at the time.
Afraid of antagonizing Moscow, Central Asian governments usually ignore such excesses. This time, the infractions have been so serious that officials have been forced into action, with both Dushanbe and Bishkek sending notes of protest. Tajik President Emomali Rahmon spoke up for his compatriots in a May meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, urging him to fight terrorism, not Tajiks.
There has been no change in approach, however, and that has caused an outflow of migrant workers from Russia. Since April, the number of job seekers from Tajikistan in St. Petersburg has fallen 60 percent, while the number of job seekers from Uzbekistan dropped 40 percent. St. Petersburg is second only to Moscow in terms of its appeal to migrants.
More than a dozen Russian regions have tightened labor restrictions. As a consequence, the Krasnodar region, a leading producer of wheat, corn, sunflowers, and rice in Russia, is experiencing a shortage of agricultural workers. In the Ural Mountains, the same is true for factories, including those producing military equipment. In Yakutia in Russia’s far north, migrants have been banned from driving taxis and other transportation jobs. In Dagestan, there are not enough workers to dispose of the region’s waste.
As a rule, the impetus for imposing restrictions on migrants comes from regional officials. They claim migrants have taken jobs from Russian citizens and depressed wages. In fact, the reverse is true: the economy faces such an acute shortage of workers that wages are rising rapidly. The war on migrants goes on, however, having clearly been accepted by the authorities as an expression of patriotism.
Should the pressure continue, Russia’s labor shortage will only worsen. According to the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Economics, the country lacks about 4.8 million workers, with deficits particularly affecting industry, agriculture, trade, construction, and utilities: sectors that are generally staffed largely by migrants.
The crackdown is particularly baffling given that migration has gone some way to offset Russia’s demographic problems. At present, Russia’s mortality rate is nearly twice its birth rate, making migration key to maintaining population levels.
Over the past two years, the annual number of migrants entering Russia has remained stable at about 3 million. Most, however, are seasonal workers who do not stay long. Net migration was nearly 500,000 in 2021—the year before the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine—but it fell to 62,000 in 2022 as a result of Western sanctions hitting wages, and the recruitment of migrants into the Russian armed forces.
It might seem an inopportune time for Russia to be alienating Central Asian nations. After all, their governments did not break with the Kremlin after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But it seems Moscow believes Central Asian migrants have no alternative to the Russian job market. In any case, Russia has a history of using anti-migrant campaigns as a political tool. In 2006, Georgian migrants were targeted in raids after a group of Russian spies was arrested in Tbilisi. And in 2011, Tajik migrants were detained after Russian airmen were arrested in Dushanbe on suspicion of smuggling.
The Kremlin has even used threats to punish migrants as a way to squeeze concessions from Central Asian governments on issues from language policy to economic integration. Central Asian leaders may care little about the welfare of their compatriots in Russia, but they do worry about the consequences that a fall in remittances would have for their economies.
Remittances account for up to 40 percent of Tajikistan’s GDP, and more than 20 percent of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan’s. With more and more Central Asians leaving Russia as a result of the pandemic, the invasion, and now the crackdown on migrants, less money is being sent home. In 2023, remittances to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan fell by 42 percent, 12 percent, and 8 percent, respectively.
As a result, Central Asian governments are looking to help their citizens find work elsewhere, with officials facilitating labor migration to other countries and negotiating to reduce entry barriers to foreign job markets. Officials are even assisting laborers with visa applications. All of this is an attempt to soften the blow from the decline in remittances from Russia.
The number of those who have gone to work instead in Turkey, South Korea, and the Gulf states is already in the hundreds of thousands. Europe is also increasingly a destination for Central Asian laborers. In 2022, there were up to 6,000 Uzbek and Kyrgyz nationals working in the UK. In 2024, as a result of Brexit and the Ukraine war, London raised the caps on visas for Uzbek, Kyrgyz, and Tajik migrants to 10,000, 8,000, and 1,000, respectively.
There is also demand for Central Asian labor in the European Union: particularly in Eastern Europe, where many people have left to work in wealthier Western Europe. In Slovakia, 75 percent of companies report a shortage of workers. Little surprise, then, that the Volkswagen plant in Bratislava employed over 1,500 Uzbeks in 2023. Those workers made an average of 1,400 euros a month: far more than they could earn in Russia. Central Asian labor flows to Poland, Czechia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria are also on the rise.
For now, however, Russia remains the leading destination for Central Asian laborers, and no Asian or European job market will displace it anytime soon. Bureaucratic hurdles, language barriers, and cultural differences all act as obstacles in this respect.
Even so, just a few years ago it would have been impossible to imagine hundreds of thousands of Central Asians seeking work in Asia, or tens of thousands going to Europe. Russia is unmistakably losing its allure for Central Asian migrants: yet another unexpected consequence of the war in Ukraine.
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