ABSTRACT

Kyrgyzstan has emerged as one of the most remittance-dependent states in the world, with migrant transfers worth over one-third of the country’s 2018 GDP. The majority of the country’s 800,000 migrant workers (from a population of 6.2 million) travel to Russia, where visa-free access, an abundance of low-skilled work, and the presence of an extensive informal infrastructure for accessing the housing and labour markets has facilitated the emergence of a well-developed migration corridor. This chapter explores the emergence and functioning of this corridor with a particular focus on the impacts on sending communities. It argues that migrant work abroad has increasingly come to serve as a livelihood strategy in land-poor districts of Kyrgyzstan’s south. Migration has become integral to the articulation of socially-recognised adulthood, particularly for young men seeking to meet the demanding costs of marriage; and it has had significant impacts on development potentials in Kyrgyzstan, affecting both the rural economy and the urban housing market. The chapter suggests that, while there has been a diversification of migrant destinations in the wake of Russia’s financial crises, ritual inflation and cash shortages in rural areas mean that migration is likely to remain a primary livelihood strategy for the foreseeable future.