TRANS Nr. 16: Dinora Azimova (Tashkent, Uzbekistan): Report: Issues of Internal and External Migration in Post-Soviet Central Asia

Nearly 30 scholars from all over the world expressed their interest in the session, and nineteen of them were accepted as paper presenters. Ultimately half of those found the resources which enabled them to participate in the session.

Francoise Rollan, Senior Researcher from the Institute of Migration (France) concentrated on political migration, presenting case studies which were supported by numerous statistics from the “Cold War” era and the last decade. Currently political migration has been substantially reduced in scale, giving way to economic migration, noted Dr. Rollan, who expressed her concerns over the growing pressure on the labor market in Europe, caused by the shift of production from West to East, especially to the countries of South and Southeast Asia. Concerning the Andijan event in Central Asia, she notes that the number of political migrants in this case was limited. Professor Gabriele Rasuly Palachek from the University of Vienna illustrated parallels between Turkish migrants in Europe and Central Asian migrants in Russia. Based on the positive experience of the Turkish Government, she offered a proposal to improve the national policy of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan towards their own labor migrants. Some peculiarities of the lifestyle and mutual assistance system of migrants from Uzbekistan in France and Great Britain were investigated in the presentation of F. Alimuhamedov (France). The contribution of labor migrants to the economy of Western Siberia and the Far East as well as its future necessity and potential was researched in the report of Dr. Vladimir Boyko (Barnaul University, Russia). Jef Shadeo (Carlton University, Canada) connected the migration flow with complicated socio-economic conditions in the country of origin, presenting statistics, by means of which he compared the GDP (or its share in the USSR economy) and the HDI for each country of the region. He noted that the dynamics of migration flow during last 60 years has been investigated and made the prognosis that it would increase in the future. Prof. D. Azimova (Uzbekistan) described the need to create new mechanisms to cope with human trafficking, to coordinate migration flow and to smooth the problems of readapting to the country of origin after several years of migration. He also dealt with such issues as migrants' remittances and migrants' participation in the local economy by means of small and medium-sized businesses. Prof. Jafar Ghamat and Dr. Habib Shirazi from Tehran Azad University (Iran) talked about the cotton industry and its influence on migration, emphasizing the difficulties caused by the transformation from a planned to a market economy, a shift which resulted in especially great hardship for the agrarian sector because of the fact that the majority of the Central Asian population lives in rural areas.

The development and realization of a new national strategy based on organizational and legal management was the central focus of the report “Legal Issues of Migration,” presented by Prof. I. Khamedov (Lawyer, expert of the National Parliament, Uzbekistan). The paper of N. Kamalova from Kazakhstan (read by D. Azimova) presented different case studies, illustrating the life experiences of migrant laborers.

The main result of this session was the creation of a network of researchers, who specialize in issues of migration and who are capable of attracting the attention of national governments and international organizations about ways to manage migratory flow. During only ten months of the year 2005, more than 170,000 bodies of unknown people, Asian by nationality - most probably illegal labor migrants - were found in Russia(1). This disturbing statistic substantiates the importance of the reports and issues discussed in this section. In addition, establishing contacts and forming partnerships with leading specialists/experts in migration might also prove helpful in guaranteeing the utilization of international expertise in formulating legislation about migration on both the national and international level.

(1) Information of top official from Committee of Defense and Military Industrial Sector, Russian Federation

For quotation purposes:
TRANS Nr. 16: Dinora Azimova (Tashkent, Uzbekistan): Report: Issues of Internal and External Migration in Post-Soviet Central Asia. In: TRANS. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften. No. 16/2005. WWW: ../../../index.htmtrans/16Nr/13_2/azimova_bericht16.htm