Central Asia: Nov-Dec '08

A major report which IWPR commissioned on the effects of financial crisis on the Central Asian migrant population has raised a key issue facing states in the region.

Hundreds of thousands of Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kyrgyz go to their wealthier neighbours Russia and Kazakstan every year in search of work. Most take any manual job they can find, so when jobs started to be cut in the construction industry, in particular, the Central Asians seemed to be first in line to go.

Some have already lost their jobs, and it seems more will go next year. Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are poorly placed to deal with substantial labour forces reappearing and competing in the local job market.

To tackle this important issue, a team of IWPR-trained journalists from across the region, and also in Russia, interviewed migrant workers about their fears as they face leaner times. We also spoke to officials about how they planned to cope with the added strain on economic and social resources, and asked migrants’ families who had stayed behind about how they would manage once the money sent back by relatives dried up.

Because of the relevance of the theme across the region, the resulting story, Testing Times for Central Asian Migrants, was published in Tajik, Kyrgyz and Uzbek as well as Russian and English. This was done in response to requests from the editors of a number of local-language newspapers who wanted to make the report available to their readerships.

“The regional papers are terribly short of special reports and analytical articles,” said Egemberdi Sadabaev of the TV Vremya, a newspaper in northern Kyrgyzstan. “The IWPR article…offers a full picture of what’s going on in the region. Translating it into Kyrgyz means we can reprint it for our readers.”

The fate of the returning migrants was also covered by IWPR’s new radio project, in Fears of Mass Return of Migrant Workers, about Tajikistan, and Kyrgyz Builders Fear Compatriots’ Return.

The special report was the starting point for a conference on December 19 at which experts from across Central Asia discussed ways of mitigating the “migrant crisis”.

The event, held in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, was titled “Migration in Central Asia – the Consequences of Crisis”.

At the meeting, Rahmon Ulmasov, chief editor of the Business and Politics newspaper in Tajikistan, commented, “You’ve hit on a theme that’s incredibly important for the Central Asian region right now; it’s very timely. It’s proved useful to the migrants, to analysts and to human rights defenders.”

One of the findings of IWPR’s reports was that if there was going to be a mass exodus of Central Asians from Russia and Kazakstan, it had not started yet. Instead, many people were either hanging onto their jobs as long as they could or, even if they were sacked, looking for other work abroad rather than going home.

“I was pleased that there was a positive side to it,” commented a representative of the Kyrgyz government, Igor Gromov of the strategy department of the State Committee for Migration and Employment. “The article set out what was really going on, without distortion or exaggeration.”

The conference participants, who included Gromov and other officials, agreed that it was useful for different actors to meet in this kind of forum to discuss major issues raised by this kind of report.