CONF./CFP- Labor Migration in Post-Soviet States, Vienna, December 2007
Posted by: Dinora Azimova <dazimova@yahoo.com>
Mentioned Session is part of the conference "KCTOS: Knowledge, Creativity and
Transformations of Societies" to be held in Vienna, 6 to 9 December 2007
Conference patron: President of Austria, Dr. Heinz Fischer
Information may be found at:
http://www.inst.at/kctos/sektionen_a-f/azimova.htm#f1
Paper abstract should be send to Dinora Azimova, email: <dazimova@yahoo.com>
Deadline for abstract submission: August 1, 2007
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 with low infrastructure and
limited chances 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 34 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:
a) 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.
b) Legal exit to another country through various channels, and forced
employment in illegal types of activities, such as prostitution,
slavery, narco-trafficking, etc.
c) Illegal exit from country of origin and illegal penetration to
another country (using huge refrigerators, boats, and so on)
d) 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 developing theoretical basis of
research, practitioners, who is dealing with labor migrants as lawyers
or officials, 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.
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