Russia’s Impending Migrant Worker Exodus

A few weeks after the Ukrainian crisis reached its nadir with the downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over the summer, U.S. President Barack Obama gave a wide-ranging interview to The Economist, detailing the myriad reasons the West maintained leverage over an apparently resurgent Russia. “It’s important to keep perspective,” Obama said. The West’s advantages were legion, and Russia’s shortcomings were obvious. The reasons Obama cited were largely correct: that Russia was not a manufacturing powerhouse, that the average Russian male had nowhere near the lifespan of his Western counterpart. But then Obama added, “Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity.”

On this, the president was largely incorrect. Multiple analysts quickly pointed out that Russia was, in fact, not only a magnet for migrant labor, but that it boasts the second-largest immigrant population in the world, trailing the United States. The misconception, at least among Western prognosticators, is perhaps understandable. Not only is Russia barely ahead of Germany, but the populations “rushing to Moscow” aren’t the African and Latin American populaces buttressing American and European economies, acting as nannies and busboys and landscapers alike. Russia’s immigrant populations, rather, come largely from Moscow’s former colonies – from mountain villages in Kyrgyzstan, desiccated towns in Moldova, impoverished families in Tajikistan. All have little economic opportunity back home. Populations Western commentators aren’t especially familiar with, or even aware of, propping up their local and national economies back home with remittances from Russia.

But then, maybe the president was on to something, if obliquely. Because there’s a kernel of truth in what he was saying – or at least what he was foreshadowing. One of the earliest victims of Russia’s continued slide into recession wasn’t the elite claque missing their Venetian visits and Parisian foie gras; rather, those most battered during the initial phase of Russia’s economic crumble will be the same migrant laborers who’d been forced by economics in their native countries to relocate to Russia. Moscow may still boast the second-largest immigrant population worldwide, but it’s quickly ceding its ground as a destination to which migrants are “rushing.”

The magnitude of this shift is simultaneously breathtaking, and only just being realized. It’s worth keeping in mind just how dependent multiple former Soviet republics remain on the remittances received from migrant laborers – largely young males, with wives and parents and children relying on their efforts. Tajikistan, for instance, passed something of a psychological threshold in early 2014, with the World Bank noting that remittances now buttressed over half of the country’s GDP. At 45.5 percent only four years prior, the arrow pointed upward. The World Bank added that approximately half of working-age males in Tajikistan were working abroad, largely in Russia. These migrant laborers helped morph Tajikistan into the world’s leading nation for reliance on remittances. Kyrgyzstan isn’t far behind, with a recent World Bank report noting that 31 percent of the country’s GDP stemmed from remittances, good for the second-highest rate in the world. Uzbekistan rounds out the trio, with the remittance rate recently reaching low double-digits as a portion of the country’s GDP.

To be sure, Russia isn’t the only destination for migrant laborers from Central Asia – many can be found in Turkey, or the Gulf, or even in Kazakhstan. But for obvious reasons – proximity, linguistic overlap, cultural legacy – Russia has presented the most appealing, if not necessarily the most welcoming, environment for those who can’t find work in their home countries. Until 2014, this trajectory showed little signs of slowing.

And then Crimea happened, and Putinism morphed from a push for sovereign democracy to neo-imperialism. And then the sanctions began take effect, widening from the Kremlin’s inner circle to banks and industry, cutting capital and investment alike. Meanwhile, the price of oil began its long tumble, dragging the ruble with it. With each step along the way, the migrant laborers suffered. Construction projects dried up and drifted away. Disposable income for domestic help disappeared. Employers retrenched. Toss in added shades of Russian nationalism – an expected, if unfortunate, side-effect of economic downturn – and the Central Asians who had uprooted as migrant laborers suddenly found themselves in a vice of fiscal squeeze and xenophobic fallout.

This fallout is only beginning to be tabulated, and the full ramifications may not be known for some time. As of now, commentators are simply trying to get a handle on the demographic shift unfurling – how many will stay, jobless; how many will head home; how many will head elsewhere. As of this writing, the numbers remain in flux. Mukhammed Amin, the head of the Federation of Migrants of Russia, recently noted that at least 2.5 million migrants intend to leave Russia in the coming months. Analyst Paul Goble has shared estimates of up to 70 percent of Central Asians in Russia uprooting, while numbers from Russia’s Federal Migration Service found that labor migration to Russia had fallen by 70 percent compared to the same period last year. While the numbers won’t find firm footing for some time, the trends – macro-economically, demographically – remain constant. And within that constancy a few realities have emerged.

First, it’s clear that the Central Asian nations that had previously produced the migrant labor have no plans for repatriating the workers currently streaming home. There are no ideas, no industries that can house the millions of migrant laborers, upon whom millions more depended. Both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are without the resource wealth of their neighbors, which can act as added cushion for fiscal downturns. Uzbekistan, meanwhile, cannot hope to house the wayward workers within its cotton or hydrocarbon industries. And while China can help stem some of the job-loss through infrastructure projects under the rubric of its Silk Road Economic Belt, the scale of development, at least in the near-term, won’t be nearly enough to stall the exodus of the unemployed.

Second, as Central Asia’s migrant laborers begin uprooting, Russia’s influence in Central Asia diminishes. It’s little surprise to note that Russian influence in Central Asia – linguistically, politically – has been waning since the fall of the Soviet Union. This reality accelerated during 2014, when it became obvious that the Kremlin’s Russkiy Mir (“Russian World”) and Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) projects were simply attempts at Moscow-first neo-imperialism, rather than equitable allocations of import and influence. With the drain of migrant labor from Russia, however, Moscow loses one of its main levers in haranguing Central Asian autocrats. Indeed, threats of migrant labor blockage presented one of the main cudgels Russia used in coaxing Kyrgyzstan toward the EEU, and remains the primary stick in attempting to recruit Tajikistan. But as these migrant laborers look for work elsewhere, the utility of the stick fades, and the balance begins sliding back toward the Central Asian governments.

There’s little telling if the Central Asian governments will have either the time or wherewithal to put this newly strengthened leverage to use. Bishkek, Dushanbe, and Tashkent to a lesser extent, will be – or should be – scrambling to find work and income for the newly jobless returnees set to swamp whatever strained social services remain extant. Unfortunately, there’s been little hint of any governmental initiative to cushion the migrant laborers returning, aside from a distinct bit of fear-laced chatter that those returning will turn toward Islamist, anti-state extremist organizations. Nepotistic corruption remains as rampant as it ever has in Tajikistan. Clan-based polities remain as entrenched as ever in Kyrgyzstan. And Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov, who turns 77 this month, is surely in the twilight of his presidency. The upsurge in jobless migrant laborers has been cited as one of the catalysts for the Arab Spring in 2011; the same ingredients appear to be present in 2015’s Central Asia.

Any talk of political fallout, however, remains to come. The current focus is on tabulating the economic fallout. Already, Tajikistan’s remittance rate has collapsed nearly 20 percent over the course of just a few months. When the next numbers are posted, Kyrgyzstan will, in all likelihood, have followed suit. And there’s no reason to think the numbers will recover for the foreseeable future. Obama may have slipped up when he noted that migrants weren’t streaming toward Moscow – but if he’d waited a few months, his analysis would have been right on the mark.