Will Migrant Workers Shift From Russia to Kazakstan?

If Russia’s migration policy gets stricter, labour migrants from Central Asia might going to Kazakstan instead, migration analysts say.



Russia’s new migration legislation introduces quotas on foreign workers and a complete ban on market trading by foreign nationals from April 2007. These measures will affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people from Central Asia, most of whom are employed at Russian markets.



Some estimates suggest that up to 2.5 millions Uzbek citizens, around a million Tajiks and 800,000 Kyrgyzstan nationals are working in Russia. These numbers include seasonal workers.



Kazakstan’s vibrant economy has long made it a net importer rather than an exporter of labour. According to data published by the World Bank last week, Kazakstan is the ninth largest recipient of migrants in the world.



Commenting on this report, Jazbek Abdiev, head of Kazakstan’s Committee on Migration, said on January 22 that new migration policies had to be developed to cope with the influx.



Valentina Kurganskaya, a fellow of the Institute for Philosophy and Political Science, affiliated with the Kazak education ministry, argues that it is premature to predict a major shift of migrants from Russia to Kazakstan.



“Labour migrants have been going there [Russia] since 1992, they use sophisticated networks, and no one goes there randomly. That system will prove flexible enough to adapt to the new realities,” she said. “An exodus of Central Asian migrants from Russia to Kazakstan is highly unlikely.”



However, other observers say the Kazak authorities should be ready for every eventuality, and a new migration policy should be designed to take account of any negative spillover from the changes to Russian migration rules.



Yaroslav Razumov, an NBCentralAsia economic expert, says more migrants would head for Kazakstan if Russia made the rules even stricter and conditions in Uzbekistan deteriorated.



“A lot will depend on how the political, social and economic situation develops in Uzbekistan,” said Razumov. “If it gradually gets worse - which is quite likely - the number of migrants opting for Kazakstan instead of Russia could increase significantly.”



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)