Russia’s clampdown on Tajik migrants raises economic and security risks

When Abubakr Yusufi boarded a flight to Moscow in July, he thought he wouldn’t be home for years.

The 23-year-old from a small village in Tajikistan hoped to join his uncle and cousins working in construction in the Russian capital and save enough money to return home and find a bride. But Yusufi only saw Moscow from the airplane window.

Held for six hours at Vnukovo airport, he said border authorities stamped his passport with a deportation order and put him on a plane back to the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, the next day. Reuters could not determine why he was denied entry.

“I wanted to go to Russia to earn money,” Yusufi said, standing by his family’s cotton fields outside Hulbuk, a district capital some 15 miles (24 km) from the border with Afghanistan.

“Now I don’t know what to do.”

Nearly nine months after Islamist militants from Tajikistan attacked the Crocus City Hall, a concert venue near Moscow, killing 145 people, migrant workers from Central Asia describe growing hostility towards them in Russia.

More are being turned back at the border or deported as changes to the law make it easier to expel them, while a drop in the number of Tajiks leaving to work in Russia underlines how an economic model both countries have relied on is under strain.

Reuters spoke with six Tajiks who lived in Russia or who aspired to do so to discover how their lives changed after the March 22 shootings, one of the deadliest militant attacks on Russian soil.

Three, including Yusufi, said they had been eager to work in Russia but were turned away at the border. They expressed dissatisfaction with their situation back in Tajikistan, where they are working menial jobs and accumulating debts.

The three in Russia said a rise in street harassment and frequent police raids were making life there more difficult for migrants, a concern also raised by rights advocates.

The trend has economic and security implications for both nations.

Russia’s roughly 6 million migrant workers play a crucial role in keeping its wartime economy afloat at a time when labour shortages are fuelling wage growth and high inflation. Central Asian states including Tajikistan – a landlocked, heavily agricultural country with a history of Islamist violence – supply the bulk of that workforce.

President Vladimir Putin said in February that Russia needed 2.5 million more workers to grow its economy, pointing to shortages in construction and manufacturing, sectors traditionally favoured by migrants.

At the same time, nationalist politicians emboldened by the war in Ukraine and militant violence are ratcheting up rhetoric against foreigners and pushing legislation that impacts the lives of migrants working in Russia or those wanting to do so.

Impoverished Tajikistan, for whom the export of labour to Russia is an economic lifeline, has criticised the changes.

“We cannot but be alarmed by the trend of widespread violation of the fundamental rights and freedoms of our citizens,” Tajik Prime Minister Qohir Rasulzoda told a meeting of Russian and Tajik officials in October, using unusually blunt language.

Regional analysts warn that the combination of joblessness at home and no longer being wanted in Russia could ignite domestic political unrest and leave migrant workers more susceptible to recruitment by extremist groups.

Security analysts say dozens of Tajiks have joined a branch of Islamic State based in Afghanistan, which shares a border with Tajikistan. The group known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) claimed the Crocus City Hall attack.