By Rafis Abazov

Uzbekistan is undergoing a strategic shift from reliance on traditional labor migration destinations toward a regulated, skills-based mobility model targeting high-income markets in Europe, East Asia, and North America. Under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the establishment of a centralized Migration Agency institutionalizes vocational training, language certification, and bilateral labor agreements aligned with international standards. With over 2 million citizens working abroad and remittances reaching nearly US$ 14 billion annually, approximately one-fifth of GDP, migration remains central to economic stability. The reform aims to diversify risk, increase remittance quality, enhance human capital accumulation, and position Uzbekistan as a structured and reliable partner in global labor markets while strengthening domestic development through reintegration and entrepreneurship.

BACKGROUND:

Uzbekistan is entering a new phase in its migration policy. Long characterized by unregulated large-scale labor outflows to Russia and other post-Soviet destinations, the country is now deliberately repositioning itself as a regulated supplier of skilled labor to high-income markets in Europe, North America, Japan, and South Korea. Under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, migration is no longer treated merely as a social safety valve but as a strategic economic instrument. The newly established Migration Agency signals an institutional shift toward managed mobility, vocational certification, and international labor standards—embedding migration policy within Uzbekistan’s broader economic modernization agenda. For over two decades, Uzbekistan has been one of Central Asia’s largest labor exporters. Economic restructuring, demographic pressure, and limited domestic job creation pushed millions of citizens to seek employment abroad. According to official data, almost two million Uzbek citizens (2023, official est.) were working abroad in 2023, the majority in Russia. Remittances have played a decisive role in the national economy: inflows reached approximately US$ 13.9 billion in 2023, accounting for nearly 18–20 percent of GDP. While these remittances have stabilized household incomes and supported domestic consumption, overdependence on a single labor destination exposed structural vulnerabilities. Currency fluctuations, geopolitical tensions, and regulatory shifts in host countries directly impacted migrants’ earnings and employment conditions.

Recognizing these risks, Tashkent has embarked on a policy recalibration. The government’s new migration strategy emphasizes diversification toward high-income economies where wage levels, labor protections, and skill requirements are higher. This pivot is not simply geographic; it is qualitative. It aims to transition from low-skilled, often informal labor migration toward regulated, skills-based, contract-driven mobility. The new Migration Agency coordinates with ministries of education, labor, and foreign affairs to align training curricula with employer demands in Europe, Japan, South Korea, and the Gulf states. Specialized programs now provide certification in healthcare assistance, construction trades, agricultural technologies, and industrial maintenance—sectors experiencing labor shortages in high-income economies. Language proficiency has become a central component of this strategy. Uzbek vocational centers now offer certified courses in German, Korean, Japanese, and English, increasing employability and reducing risks of exploitation. In parallel, bilateral labor agreements are being renegotiated to include stronger social protection clauses, insurance coverage, and mechanisms for dispute resolution. These agreements also aim to reduce irregular migration flows by expanding legal quotas and transparent recruitment procedures.

IMPLICATIONS:

Uzbekistan’s approach reflects a broader global shift toward managed migration frameworks. Rather than allowing informal recruitment networks to dominate the process, authorities are introducing structured pathways that protect workers and enhance the country’s reputation as a reliable labor partner. The economic rationale behind Uzbekistan’s migration pivot is multifaceted.

First, diversification reduces systemic risk. By expanding destination markets beyond Russia, Uzbekistan shields remittance flows from regional economic volatility. Even modest wage differentials matter: average earnings in South Korea or parts of the EU can exceed Russian wages by two to three times for comparable skills. Second, higher-income destinations generate larger remittance volumes per worker. If managed effectively, even a partial reallocation of labor flows toward high-income economies could significantly increase foreign currency inflows. With remittances already reaching nearly US$ 14 billion, incremental improvements in wage levels and contract stability could strengthen macroeconomic resilience. Third, the government views migration as a vehicle for human capital accumulation. Returning migrants often bring savings, technical skills, and entrepreneurial experience. Policy frameworks increasingly emphasize reintegration programs, small-business grants, and credit access to channel return migration into domestic economic development.

Uzbekistan’s recalibration also carries significant geopolitical implications. Diversifying migration destinations reduces overdependence on a single external partner and enhances foreign policy flexibility. By negotiating labor agreements with EU member states and East Asian economies, Tashkent strengthens diplomatic and economic ties beyond the post-Soviet space. Domestically, migration reform intersects with demographic realities. Uzbekistan’s population exceeds 36 million (up from 21 million in 1992), with a median age under 30. Each year, hundreds of thousands of young people enter the labor market. While domestic job creation remains a priority, international labor mobility offers a complementary pathway to absorb demographic pressure. By embedding migration within vocational education reform, authorities attempt to align external labor demand with internal skills development. This integration reduces the historical gap between education outputs and labor market requirements—both domestic and international.

Despite its strategic coherence, the migration pivot faces structural constraints.

An important challenge lies in balancing external labor exports with domestic industrialization goals. As Uzbekistan pursues manufacturing and services expansion, excessive outward migration of skilled workers could create internal shortages. Policymakers must calibrate mobility to avoid brain drain while still leveraging remittance benefits. Geopolitical uncertainties also remain. Immigration policies in high-income markets are subject to domestic political debates and regulatory fluctuations. Uzbekistan’s strategy depends on sustained openness in receiving countries. Finally, the success of reintegration programs will determine whether migration fosters long-term development. Without structured incentives for investment and entrepreneurship, returning migrants may struggle to translate overseas experience into domestic opportunity.

CONCLUSIONS:

Uzbekistan’s reforms may set a precedent for other Central Asian states grappling with similar migration dynamics. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan also face outward unregulated labor mobility, albeit on different scales. If Tashkent successfully institutionalizes managed mobility while maintaining remittance stability, it could provide a replicable governance model for the region.

In this regard, migration policy intersects with regional economic cooperation frameworks. Skills harmonization, cross-border vocational partnerships, and data-sharing mechanisms could enhance Central Asia’s collective bargaining power in negotiations with destination countries.

With over 2 million citizens working abroad and remittances nearing US$ 14 billion annually, migration remains central to Uzbekistan’s economic stability. The new framework aims to maximize these benefits while reducing vulnerability and enhancing skill formation. Uzbekistan’s migration transformation represents more than a policy adjustment; it is a structural repositioning within the global labor economy. By institutionalizing managed mobility through the newly established Migration Agency, aligning vocational training with international standards, and diversifying destination markets toward high-income economies, Tashkent seeks to convert migration from a reactive necessity into a strategic asset.

If implemented effectively, this pivot could deepen Uzbekistan’s integration into regional and global economic networks—not merely as a labor exporter but as a regulated, skills-oriented partner. The long-term success of this strategy will depend on sustained institutional capacity, international cooperation, and the ability to translate institutionalized mobility programs into domestic development.

AUTHOR’S BIO: 

Rafis Abazov, PhD, is a director of the Institute for Green and Sustainable Development at Kazakh National Agrarian Research University. He is author of The Culture and Customs of the Central Asian Republics (2007), An Effective Project Manager (2025) and some others. He has been an executive manager for the Global Hub of the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) on Sustainability in Kazakhstan since 2014 and facilitated the International Model UN New Silk Way conference in Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries.

By Oleg Salimov (08/07/2015 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Tajik labor migrants are again at the center of political games between Russia and Tajikistan. At the end of June, Tajikistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs delivered a note of protest to Russia’s Ambassador in Tajikistan, objecting to an article in the Russian newspaper AiF, which describes Tajikistan as a country of labor migrants. Soon thereafter, the Russian government allowed the reentry to over 1,000 Tajik migrants earlier deported from Russia for violating immigration laws. This step, as well as the removal of the article from its original source, tempered the Tajik government’s reaction. However, the problem of Tajik labor migrants is far from resolved.
The original article published in the popular Russian newspaper was titled “The country of guest workers. AiF’s special report from Tajikistan.” The article’s central theme was the urgent need for a visa regime between Russia and Tajikistan. Tajikistan’s government as well as the Russia-based social movement Tajik Labor Migrants found the article highly derogatory and offensive. The official statement of Tajikistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs pointed to the destructive consequences of such publications on the Tajikistan-Russia relationship. The ministry appealed to the Russian government to prevent publications that distort the truth and contribute to a negative image of Tajikistan.
At the same time, Karomat Sharipov, the chairman Tajik Labor Migrants, published the group’s response to the article on its website. Sharipov asserted that the article was part of a dirty political campaign by Russian pseudo-patriots, aiming to discredit Tajikistan and denigrating the Tajik people. Sharipov agreed that the visa regime for labor migrants is needed, but mainly in order to protect Tajiks arriving in Russia as opposed to protecting Russia from Tajiks as argued in the article. He also noted that such publications are unacceptable for countries seeking to build a strategic partnership.
Following the public outrage in Tajikistan, the Russian government on July 2 pardoned over 1,000 Tajiks, who had previously been deported from Russia for violating the rules of their legal stay. According to Abdullo Kodiri, the press-secretary of Tajik Migration Services, the agreement was reached after negotiations between the two countries’ migratory services. Russia hosts close to a million Tajik migrants as of June 2015, according to Russian Federal Migratory Services. The number is about 200,000 lower than in December 2014.
The amount of money transferred from Russia to Tajikistan by labor migrants in the first quarter of 2015 is also down by 42.4 percent compared to the first quarter of the last year, according to Tajikistan’s National Bank (TNB). TNB reported a total of US$ 289 million transferred to Tajikistan from Russia in the first quarter of 2015. Russia’s Central Bank instead reported transfers of US$ 364 million from Russia to Tajikistan and a drop of 87 percent in the first quarter of 2015, as compared to the same period in 2014. The coefficient of money transfers from Russia to Tajikistan’s GDP is down from 30.8 percent in the first quarter of 2014 to 19 percent in the first quarter of 2015, according to TNB.
The lower number of Tajik labor migrants and the significant drop in money transfers to Tajikistan can be explained by the slowing Russian economy as a result of falling oil prices and economic sanctions implemented by the U.S., EU, and some other countries. While Tajikistan is not part of West-Russia confrontation, the country feels the effect of these sanctions firsthand. Tajikistan could have avoided this situation if the Tajik government would have been genuinely concerned about the problem of outmigration from Tajikistan, unemployment, and the dependency of its economy on money transfers from labor migrants.
While provocative, the AiF article describes a problem that the Tajik government continues to neglect. While expressing its outrage over the article, the Tajik government has failed to outline any actions to address the problem of labor migrants, whose input into Tajikistan’s economy reached 42 percent of the country’s GDP at its peak in 2013. Instead of negotiating with Russia on pardoning labor migrants, Tajikistan’s government should focus on fighting unemployment at home and building a self-sustaining economy. This will create a far more positive image of Tajikistan, which was the primary concern of the government’s protest.
Tajik Labor Migrants warns about the growing number of Tajik migrants disillusioned with their own government and the prospects of employment back home, which become radicalized and join extremist groups like ISIS. In the beginning of July 2015, Radio Ozodi/Freedom reported that Tajikistan’s embassy in Moscow had received a letter from Russian ultranationalists requesting the immediate return of all Tajik migrants to Tajikistan to avoid “dire consequences.” Tajik labor migrants are frequently treated as a point of leverage in political negotiations between Russia and Tajikistan, but are simultaneously a highly vulnerable group whose real needs are rarely recognized.

By Nurzhan Zhambekov (04/29/2015 issue of the CACI Analyst)

The slowing Russian economy suffered a triple shock in the form of Western economic sanctions, falling oil prices, and the plummeting Russian ruble in 2014, resulting in a negative impact on Central Asian states. In addition, tighter migration regulations in Russia, in force since early 2015, are having an effect on the flow of migration from Central Asia, particularly from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. These three countries rely heavily on remittances from their migrant workers in Russia. The drop in remittances could increase socioeconomic disaffection in parts of Central Asia that are dependent on labor migrants’ earnings.  

By Yelena Sadovskaya (01/07/2015 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Despite a short history of current migration from the PRC to Kazakhstan – 25 years only – it is accompanied by growing tension in the receiving society. Deeply ingrained phobias and prejudices in relation to Chinese migrants, as well as “mythologization” of Chinese migration are specific phenomena rooted in the dramatic history of Kazakh tribes’ struggle against Dzungarian tribes and the Qing government. One can trace the phobias regarding Chinese migration to history (collective memory of the Kazakh people) and contemporary issues such as lack of knowledge.

Political scientists in Kazakhstan have conducted studies of myths about China and the Chinese presence in Kazakhstan. A typology of myths and phobias was offered by Konstantin Syroezhkin and includes a threat of “Chinese expansion” and control over Kazakhstan’s mineral resources; a threat of economic dominance and of Kazakhstan turning into a raw-materials supplier for China; a fear of Kazakhstan being divided and its parts annexed by China; migration of the Han Chinese to Xinjiang and further west, settling in Kazakhstan and occupying agricultural lands; and a threat of environmental disaster due to irrigation activities on the Chinese part of the Irtysh river. Each of these myths has been reproduced for years in mass media, internet and virtual commentaries. 

A lack of knowledge about China was identified as one of the causes for fear in representative monitoring sociological studies conducted under the author’s supervision in 2007 and 2012, covering the urban population. The respondents demonstrated weak knowledge of Chinese culture (literature, art, traditions), as well as insufficient knowledge of its current affairs. Though the knowledge of China’s current economic, social, and political life increased from 39 percent to 49 percent between 2007 and 2012, their familiarity with Chinese culture and history remained at the same low level: 9 percent in 2012 and 10.2 percent in 2007. 

It is then no wonder that this vacuum is being filled with subjective images, not based on fact and often brought in from outside. Of particular concern are the lack of reliable information and difficult access to migration statistics on China and analytical data on its economic presence in Kazakhstan, as well as the social practice of Chinese migrants’ “parallel existence” in receiving communities accompanied by an absence of communication with local people. 

The fears regarding “Chinese expansion” are not new: in the 1990s, arguments against the migration of workers from China were based on concerns that it would contribute to Chinese colonization of Kazakhstan and the formation of “Chinatowns.” According to the 2007 sociological survey, 24 percent of the respondents believed that Chinese migration would negatively impact Kazakhstan’s labor market because it would raise competition. In 2012, this share increased to 31 percent.

It is in fact a myth because the number of Chinese workers amounts to a tenth, or even a hundredth of a percent of the workforce throughout the country. It does not have any serious impact on the labor market either by sectors or by regions. Moreover, Chinese workers are employed only in a few limited sectors of the labor market, or recruited to joint Chinese-Kazakhstani projects.

According to the 2012 survey, 11 percent of the respondents believed that Chinese migrants arrived to obtain Kazakhstani citizenship and 11 percent that they intended to marry Kazakh women. Contrary to popular fears, Chinese migrants do not naturalize in Kazakhstan en masse – only 80 Han Chinese have obtained Kazakh citizenship and 393 have stayed on as permanent residents in Kazakhstan in the period between 1995 and 2014, according to the Kazakh Ministry of Interior Affairs, data as of November 5, 2014.

Indeed, citizenship and permanent residence immigration to Kazakhstan is represented mostly by ethnic Kazakhs repatriates. The majority of Han Chinese arrive for temporary work or trade and do not stay for permanent residence. Kazakhstan in fact is not the most attractive country for Chinese citizens, the majority of whom prefer to move to the economically better developed eastern regions of China, South-East Asia or developed Western countries.

The 2012 survey revealed a “crystallization” of attitudes towards Chinese migrants among Kazakhstan’s urban population: “positive” and “very positive” attitudes to Chinese migrants decreased to 23 percent (from 26 percent in 2007) while the share of “negative” and “very negative” attitudes increased to 33 percent (from 18 percent in 2007). As a result, the share of those indifferent to Chinese migrants decreased by 11 percent and amounted to 44 percent in 2012. These findings can be further tested against a few hypotheses about the socio-psychological and socio-cultural processes: is it that prejudices towards the Chinese grow, or that national stereotypes become stronger?

It is also valid to question to what extent there is an increase of “xenophobia” towards migrants from China and other non-CIS countries. This has been confirmed by the results of other social surveys, such as by the Kazakhstani institute for socio-economic information and prognosis in 2010: Kazakhstani people are more tolerant to labor migrants from Russia and Central Asia than to those from China or Turkey, though migrant-phobia is present there too. Specifically, 62.9 percent of respondents have a positive or neutral attitude toward Russian migrants, out of which 27.5 percent is positive; only 19.8 percent have a negative attitude. Toward migrants from Central Asia the corresponding figures are 52.4 percent, 15.4 percent, and 31.9 percent, respectively. Toward migrants from China and other foreign countries 41.6 percent are positive or neutral, of which 15 percent are positive, and 40 percent are negative, representing the highest level of negative attitudes of all groups.

Kazakhstan has already witnessed local conflicts between locals and Chinese workers. This calls for further in-depth and applied studies to better understand what causes this low tolerance towards Chinese migrants and the widespread phobias and myths. This and other proactive measures is an important step to prevent ethnic and social tensions and migration-related conflicts, both at local and national levels.