Migrant workers in Russia

Comprising as much as 25% of the workforce, the majority of migrant workers come from Central Asia and the South Caucasus, and often work in low-level jobs.

As among the least-affected, Russia began to take in large amounts of migrant labourers from fellow ex-Soviet states in the early 1990s, with President Boris Yeltsin signing a decree to prevent their exploitation.

Numbers of Central Asian and Transcaucasian migrants remained low until the late 1990s, and, as the Russian economy continued to improve in the early 2000s, increased labour demanded resulted in a newfound rise in labour migration, primarily from post-Soviet Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

[8] Conditions for migrant labourers have been described as poor by news reports and human rights organisations alike, with Human Rights Watch saying that "large numbers of these workers are subjected to abuse and exploitation by employers, employment agencies, and other intermediaries, and are victims of extortion and abuse by police and other officials.

[11] Migrant labourers significantly impact the economy of both Russia and their countries of origin; remittances form large parts of the gross domestic product of Armenia, Georgia, and Tajikistan,[10] while adding 386 billion rubles to the Russian state budget between 2015 and 2021.

[12] According to Vladimir Volokh, a professor at the State University of Management, migrant labour forms as much as 7-8% of Russia's annual GDP.

Since 2000, however, laws have increasingly restricted criteria for citizenship along ethnic lines, and politicians and Russian media have engaged in nativist rhetoric against migrant labourers.

[18] Migrant workers have also been arrested on occasion and accused of association with Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic fundamentalist group which is banned in Russia.