Central Asia: the crisis of the migration model and its potential impact on the EU

Summary:

Over the past fifteen years, the presence in Russia of several million labour migrants from Central Asia has been a key determinant of the region’s stability. This migration has contributed to reducing internal problems and has helped provide a source of income to societies in specific countries. At present, due to the economic crisis, Russia is unable to continue its involvement in relieving socio-economic tensions in the region. Remittances from migrants have declined by 50% over the last three years. Undeveloped Central Asian economies are unable to offer an alternative to labour migration and other states which migrants previously chose as destination, such as Kazakhstan, Turkey and China, are not in a position to replace Russia in this respect.

Potentially, this generates the risk of a destabilisation of the socio-political situation in the most vulnerable countries of the region and may trigger a flow of migration from Central Asia to countries other than these three countries, including to the EU. This latter phenomenon has already occurred on a limited scale in Tajikistan, the state which most depends on labour migration. Over the last two years, there has been a rapid, more than five-fold increase in the number of citizens of this country who have applied for asylum in the EU. Even if large-scale migration pressure from Central Asia to the EU is unlikely, an increase in the number of migrants from Central Asia to the EU is conceivable.

Due to the fact that Russia is a key transit route, Moscow may use this as an instrument of pressure towards the EU, especially the Central and Eastern European states which, in turn, would be more dangerous than the migration pressure itself.