MOSCOW In front of the service center of the Russian Federal Immigration Service in the Sakharovo district, the migrants do not criticize the conditions in Russia.
– We work normally. We send money home. God grant that everything is normal for all of us, Uzbek Aziz Dzurayev says.
– The pay is good, says the Tajik Husral Hurbonov. He lives in Kotelnik, a suburb of Moscow, and works as a loader in a warehouse.
He says that he earns 3,000 rubles a day, or about 30 euros, and that he gets 120,000 rubles a month, or about 1,200 euros.
The streetscape of Russia’s big cities shows that construction sites, deliveries and courier services are run largely by Central Asian immigrants.
There is plenty of work, as the Russian economy will grow by 2.2 percent this year, estimates the International Monetary Fund IMF. In the economy, you can already see signs of wartime overheating.
Unemployment is now very low, only three percent in August. In many fields, employers have already complained about the labor shortage. It has been made worse by last autumn’s business launch and the flight of hundreds of thousands of young men from Russia.
A weak ruble eats up income sent home
This year, however, the emigrants’ earnings have been hit by the weakening of the ruble. It hits hard because migrant workers usually exchange rubles for dollars, less often for euros.
– It strongly affects both the number and quality of labor migrants, warns the chairman of the organization representing the Uzbek community in Moscow Bahrom Ismailov.
– Specialists who used to work in the production of goods and services, transport and logistics, and agriculture are leaving these fields. They will be replaced by other workers from the same countries, but they are less skilled and productive.
In Moscow, the restaurant industry in particular has complained about the labor shortage due to the expensive dollar.
Representative of the association of restaurateurs and hoteliers Sergei Mironov said For the RBK economic newspaperthat the shortage of workers in Moscow is in the order of 20–30 percent.
– There has never been such a vacuum, Mironov told the newspaper.
However, it is still too early to say that labor migrants have started to leave Russia en masse.
Political researcher familiar with labor migration Mihail Burda says that the fluctuations in the number of migrant workers are mostly in the tens of thousands.
The changes are not significant in the overall picture, when millions of migrant workers work in Russia.
Burda says that the number of foreign workers practically returned to the level before the corona pandemic last year. This year’s statistics show the same development.
Migrants from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan make up 75–80 percent of the foreign workforce working in Russia.
Burda estimates that 3–3.5 million of them work legally in Russia. Approximately the same number of people work without a work permit, so we are talking about 7–8 million foreign workers.
Central Asian labor migration will only increase in the future
Bahrom Ismailov, who represents the Uzbeks in Moscow, says that due to the weak exchange rate of the ruble, some of the workers may return to their homeland in the medium term. In the long term, however, serious problems will arise in Central Asia, which will accelerate migration in search of work.
Climate change is hitting agriculture, where most of the jobs in Central Asian countries are. The countries of the region have a young population, and up to half a million more young people enter the labor market every year.
For Russian employers, Central Asians are cheap labor, while for Central Asian rulers, the Russian labor market is also an important social safety valve: a young population and widespread unemployment is a vulnerable combination in autocratically run states.
The region’s rulers have also warned of the rise of hard-line Islamism in Muslim-majority countries.
The raids raise fears of forced recruitment
Recently, there have been reports that the authorities are pressuring immigrants who have received Russian citizenship to become contract soldiers at the front.
– This is a myth that is spread very strongly, says Ismailov.
According to him, Russia has enough of its own citizens to serve as contract soldiers.
Ismailov says that migrant workers are rather attracted to the construction sites of the “new regions” in Mariupol and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, i.e. regions occupied by Russia in Ukraine.
Information about raids on migrants still circulates in Russia.
Recently, Russia in the media was reportedthat in Kotelnik, a suburb of Moscow, the Omon riot squads gathered a large number of people from the mosque after Friday prayers and transported them to the summons committee.
Another issue is societal attitudes. Cultural clashes and prejudices are common, especially in areas with large numbers of immigrants.
Bahrom Ismailov says the situation is not as bad as in the early 2000s, when neo-Nazi groups attacked and even killed people.
– There is no such thing anymore, thank God, but there is everyday fear of strangers and politicians support it in every way. Unfortunately, we cannot avoid that, says Ismailov.
Researcher Mihail Burda says that there is a demand in Russian politics and society for a more regulated immigration policy and a more precisely targeted attraction of migrants.
Ideas about limiting the use of migrant labor in certain sectors have been presented in the State Duma. Russian regions have already had the right to this before, for example in the case of public transport and taxi drivers
– Everything depends on you. How you behave will be answered. If you behave normally, the attitude is normal, reflects Tajik Husral Hurbonov.