Why Central Asians Continue to Migrate to Russia

In 2021, according to the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry, 9.7 million Central Asian citizens officially migrated to the Russian Federation. That amounts to nearly 13 percent of the estimated total population of the five former Soviet republics, which now stands at around 75 million. The vast majority, more than 82 percent of the total, stated “work” as their purpose for entering Russia. Over the course of 2021, a full tenth of Central Asia’s total population was working in Russia. Many migrate for seasonal labor in Russian fields, but a significant portion of those who migrate are professionals – doctors, for example – seeking better salaries and with ambitions to stay in Russia.

It is little surprise that maintaining strong relations with Russia remains a priority for the leaders of Central Asia. Central Asia needs to be able to export the workers its economies cannot employ to Russia, but the opposite is true, too. Russia needs Central Asian migrants as much as Central Asian workers need to migrate.

In the 1990s, commentators began to warn of a looming demographic crisis in Russia. A 1997 RAND Issue Paper examining the issue noted that in 1992, “Russia's population entered a period of negative growth – that is, the number of deaths exceeded the number of births combined with the number of immigrants.” But the paper dismissed any framing of the situation as a “crisis,” stating that “[t]he new demographic realities in Russia are not fundamentally different from those facing most industrial nations – a decreasing population, aging, shifts in family composition.”

The population of Russia peaked around 1994 at 148 million before declining over the next decade to around 143 million by 2007. After a brief period of positive increases in the 2010s, the 2020 coronavirus pandemic dealt Russia a significant blow. In the 12 months between October 2020 and September 2021, Russia’s population suffered its worst peacetime decline. Demographer Alexei Raksha calculated that Russia’s natural population – registered deaths and births – declined by 997,000 in the aforementioned period. Importantly, that number excludes the impact of migration but serves to support the importance of migration to the Russian economy.

What the 2021 migration data suggests is that after a slump in 2020, due to closed borders and closed businesses, migration resumed at a meteoric clip. What will this mean for Russia and what does it tell us about Central Asia?

For Russia, the matter of Central Asian migrants has occasionally triggered nationalistic reactions. As in the West, migrants are often viewed in stereotyped ways as low-skilled workers stealing jobs. This sentiment has inspired greater restrictions in some years, such as entry bans introduced in 2013 for migrants who committed more than two administrative offenses over a span of three years and language tests for would-be migrants. But practicalities have inspired retreat, too: In October 2021, 150,000 Tajiks and 150,000 Uzbeks subject to entry bans were amnestied by the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry.

Specific circumstances differ widely across the five Central Asian states. Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan send the fewest migrant workers to Russia, the former given its small population and the latter its relatively greater domestic labor market. In 2021, 82,538 Turkmen citizens migrated to Russia, the vast majority for studies in Russian universities, only a little over 7,000 for work; the same year, more than half a million Kazakh citizens entered Russia, but less than a third for the purposes of work.

The heart of Central Asian labor migration to Russia remains Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The three countries each had more than a million citizens enter Russia in 2021: 1 million from Kyrgyzstan, 3 million from Tajikistan, and 4.9 million from Uzbekistan. Of those, more than 800,000 Kyrgyz, 83 percent of the total, stated “work” as their purpose; 79 percent of the Tajik migrants and 91 percent of the Uzbeks came to Russia for work.

When put in contrast with each country’s total population, the importance of working in Russia becomes even more apparent. In 2021, around 25 percent of the entire population of Tajikistan (2.4 million out of 9.5 million people) entered Russia for work. For both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan that figure sits around 13 percent (4.5 million out of 34 million Uzbeks; 884,000 out of 6.5 million Kyrgyz).

One interesting facet is the subdued place of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) in informing these numbers. The Russia-led economic bloc counts Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, as members. Ostensibly, belonging to the union smooths the pathway for citizens to enter and work elsewhere in the union; it’s a major point for Moscow in pitching Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on membership. But the data, and recent programs, demonstrate that membership is not required, but migration is.

Last year, Russia and Uzbekistan began piloting a program that would enable prospective migrants to undergo the multi-step process to obtain a work permit in Russia while still in Uzbekistan, considerably easing the burden and risks of migrating. The program is aimed at recruiting 10,000 workers for the Russian construction industry, where Central Asian migrants make up a significant workforce. If successful and institutionalized, this would bring Uzbekistan some of the benefits of EAEU membership without the burdens.

Employment opportunities in Russia present Central Asian states with a kind pressure valve to relieve the immediate problem of domestic unemployment. But there are consequences: As RFE/RL’s Farangis Najibullah reported last month, it’s not just field laborers and construction workers making the trek to Russia, but also doctors. They are not just migrating for a season but aiming to move permanently, and Russia is more than happy to take them.

Farrukh and his wife, Saodat, left their jobs at a village hospital in Tajikistan’s northern Sughd Province last summer and moved to Russia, taking advantage of a new government program that makes it easier for white-collar workers to live in the country and gain citizenship.

The couple, both doctors in their late 20s, now work at a district hospital in Russia’s Perm region, where the family has also been offered subsidized housing and financial aid.

At about $1,200 a month each, their salary is nearly four times higher than what they earned in Tajikistan.

The full impact of this “brain drain” requires deeper analysis, but bodes ill for the long-term development of Tajikistan. Arguably this is true of the rest of Central Asia, where the best and the brightest are looking to escape their countries’ stalled economies and instability. Although from a Western perspective, Russia is hardly an economy or a sociopolitical environment to envy, from Central Asia it doesn’t look so bad.