New economic, political
and demographic trends show that the entire world enters an epoch of
growing migratory pressure: it is estimated that there are more than
80 million migrant workers around the world.(1)
Therefore, labor migration becoming a top question in elaboration of
strategy for many governments in the world.
Transformations of the last 15 years made labor
migration driven force for economic development. At the same time, this
is social therapy for less developed and over-populated places, such
as rural areas and small cities in East Europe.
Due to its demographic and socio-economic features,
Central Asia is related to a category of so-called "labor exceeding"
regions. It is caused by all traditional views towards having many children,
by national mentality, and also constantly increasing surplus of agricultural
population.
Active demographic development of Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan has stipulated the fact that nowadays the
population of the countries has exceeded 31 million people, 50 percent
of which are of labor age. Nearly half million young people enter here
the labor market annually. Although the rates of an increase in population
were steadily reducing during the last decade (in 2004 it reached 1,
1%), according to the forecasts of experts in the year 2060 Central
Asia population might be doubled.
There are a lot of dilemmas around the migration
phenomenon, especially concerning the labor migrants, their security
and human rights, contribution to GDP and GNP of receiving countries,
remittances back home, etc. This is very sensitive issue for those small
countries, who have no enough domestic market to survive, and who experience
difficulties in both: creating contingent policy towards own labor migrants
and collaborating with governments of accepting stated in elaboration
of better policy towards migrants whom they host.
Migration is both:
natural absorber of the socio-economic shocks of the globalizing world
and human response to the imperfect markets of globalizing economy.
Economic reasons for migration are stipulated by low standards of living,
and contrasting situation in the neighboring or remote countries. The
most complicated type of labor migration is
1. Illegal
labor migration
It has few forms:
- Legal exit from EE/CA state to another
country as a tourist, or for studies/short business trip, and the
subsequent illegal employment taken up voluntarily in small "unnoticeable"
businesses, in order to "legalize" eventually residence
in the given country (work permit, residence permit, or citizenship).
Different sources of statistics indicate the significant scale of
illegal migration from CA for the entire period of 1991-2005. The
experts’ estimations show that this form of migration has not
lost its intensive nature in the 21st century.
- Legal exit to another country through
various channels, and forced employment in illegal types of activities,
such as prostitution, slavery, narco-trafficking, etc.
- illegal exit from country of origin
and illegal penetration to another country (using huge refrigerators,
boats, and so on)
- illegal exit from the country and
participation in "mafia" structures activities abroad.
2. Seasonal (short term) labor migration
One of the most common forms of migration from
Central Asia is the so called "job-hunting". It is particularly
widespread in the country’s agricultural regions, as well as small
towns, with poor infrastructure, where unemployment is a quite serious
problem. In some regions, every third able-bodied man regularly leaves
the country for seasonal work abroad.
In case of Eastern Europe, this stream is going
towards Central and Western Europe, in case of CA; trend is mainly towards
Russia (around 75 percent of them) and other CIS countries (25 percent).
Seasonal work starts in spring and ends well
into autumn and is mainly comprised of work on large constructions or
in house repair companies. This particular group of workers has general
and all-purpose skills, with the exception of a small group of specialists
with skills in uncommon construction-repair works.
Peculiarities of 21 century migration is participation
of woman in the process, those who left their families back home to
create condition for children education, health insurance and so on.
This section welcomed those researchers
who are interested in collecting new statistics and develop theoretical
basis of research, practitioners, who is dealing with labor migrants
as lawyers, NGOs and human right activists. Case-studies, related to
the topic is highly appreciated. Especially important for us
is concentration on issues of migrant woman.
1 International Organization
for Migration. The Migration Agency report http://www.iom.int/jahia/page706.html
