Engaging with Labour Migrants: Emigration Policy in Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

Tajikistan is one of the main migrant origin countries in the post-Soviet world, with about one million labour migrants living and working in Russia. It is also one of the world’s most remittance-dependent economies. By exploring how and why the Tajik government has engaged with labour migrants since 1991, this article analyses the development of emigration policy in Tajikistan. In doing so, the article de-reifies the state and illustrates the complexity of policy processes: many actors are directly and indirectly involved in policymaking and implementation. Four aspects are analysed: shifts in emigration policymaking over time and the influence of different domestic actors; the assistance offered to labour migrants; the impact of Russia as the main host country; and the influence of international organisations in the context of the nascent global governance of migration. This article argues that Tajikistan’s emigration policy has gradually moved from a laissez-faire phase, through a proactive, then a “messy”, to a reactive one. It shows that Tajik authorities have followed often contradictory pathways of (non)involvement with labour migrants and thereby illustrates how declared policies can be distinguished from informal practices performed by the state.

KEYWORDS:

• Central Asia
• emigration policy
• former Soviet Union
• global migration governance
• international organisations
• labour migrants
• migration
• policymaking
• Russia
• Tajikistan

Acknowledgements

We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments which greatly helped us improve the argument and the editorial team of Asian Studies Review for their support and assistance in preparation of this article. We are also grateful for helpful suggestions from participants in the seminar “Authoritarian Governance of Overseas Citizens” at the University of Amsterdam (21–22 September 2015), where the first draft of this paper was presented, and participants in the session “Migrant Workers: Rights, Policy and Practice” at the 11^th International Convention of Asia Scholars at the University of Leiden (15–19 July 2019). Finally, we thank all interviewees for sharing their experiences and impressions on Tajikistan’s emigration policy.

Conflict of Interest Statement

None declared.

Notes

1. For a typology of migration policy models in Central Asia, see Ryazantsev and Korneev (2013).

2. For an alternative account, see Bahovadinova (2016a, Chapter 4), who argues that post-Soviet Tajikistan has been actively exporting labour.

3. US$16.40, according to the average exchange rate for 2015.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the following projects: Knowledgeable Governors of Uncertainty? International Organizations in the Absence of a Global Migration Regime (the European Union Marie Curie Programme, grant number 331925); Contested Global Governance, Transformed Global Governors? International Organisations and “Weak” States (the French National Research Agency, grant number ANR-16-ACHN-0034); Tomsk State University competitiveness improvement programme (Tomsk State University, grant number 8.1.27.2018); and Collaborative Research Centre SFB/TRR 138 Dynamics of Security (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, grant number 227068724).