Securitization of Labor Migration and Organization Assistance to Tajikistani Labor Migrants

Abstract

The securitization of labor migration by the Russian media, police and political elites has pushed labor migrants to hide in informal economy as it provided enough means to get into a labor market and to somehow survive arbitrary power from Russian law enforcement. However since informal economy is not protected and regulated labor migrants render vulnerable to the practices of exploitations by businesses and national diasporas in Russia. That gradually impacted on the process of integration a labor migrant has embarked on further distancing him-self or her-self from assimilating to local culture. Furthermore, the absence of normal social interactions with local population but rather humiliation due to obvious cultural differences a labor migrant get an easy target for radical groups in Russia. In response to the demand that a labor worker has created various organizations appear to assist the needs of labor migrants. These organizations could be divided into business oriented and social oriented. Whereas business oriented organizations such as formal diasporas proved to play ambiguous role in terms of the protection of human rights of a migrant worker; humanitarian organizations like NGOs’ and IGOs’ seem to be effective only to a limited extent due the absence of legal mechanisms to protect a labor migrant and the dependence on private funding. In this context informal organizations have rendered rather effective and appealing to an average Tajikistani labor migrant since low the costs and high the benefits informal networks and infrastructure might generate.