A visitor to a multi-purpose migration centre in the village of Sakharovo, outside Moscow, where social services are offered to labour migrants. This complex, the largest such centre in the country, was visited by Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin. Photo (c): Maxim Blinov / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.Russia has still not come to a final decision on its policy towards migration, despite having produced a raft of strategic government documents on the subject. During the 2000s the country experienced a “demographic dividend”, with a surplus in its working age population, along with fewer children and elderly people. However, since 2009 the supply of labour has been dropping every year relative to demand. To sustain economic growth, external labour supply sources are increasingly in demand — namely, migrant workers.
Recent figures show that there are around seven to eight million foreign workers in Russia. Most of them are from Central Asia — Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. These countries will also supply the future of migrant labour in Russia. Many migrants come from rural areas; the large Russian cities where the demand for their labour is concentrated represent their first ever experience of city life. Labour migration is, as a rule, linked to downward social mobility: the education they have received in their home countries is rarely reflective of the jobs they have to take here.
Most migrants from Central Asia are men: women make up less than a fifth of those from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and fewer than 40% of those from Kyrgyzstan. Those from Kyrgyzstan are also more likely to be young: their social norms dictate that women should marry before the age of 25 and start having children in the first three years of marriage. They are expected to marry “at the right time”, have children, take responsibility for the health of the marriage — and earn a living. All this takes place in a situation where few are educated about sex, with a consequent lack of contraceptive measures.
