Uzbekistan’s Transformation with the New Uzbek Strategy: Shifting Policies towards Mediation of Labor Migration through Migration Infrastructure

Abstract

Because of the post-independence economic problems in Central Asian countries, Russia became the center of immigration, but as time passed, immigration shifted to Kazakhstan and Turkey. Uzbekistan is the most populous Central Asian country and the one that benefits the most from worker remittances. The New Uzbek Strategy, announced after Mirziyoyev's election in 2016, is transforming economy and society of the country. This paper aims to examine migration infrastructure through the New Uzbek Strategy as the way of protecting citizens abroad. It is critical to protect the rights of migrant workers in the destination countries to keep them from facing marginalization, exclusion, and poverty. Migration infrastructure is made up of regulatory, commercial, technological, humanitarian, and social elements. In this framework, the new Ministry of Labor structure, bilateral agreements, labor market regulation, allowing private recruitment companies, railway projects, development of cooperation with international organizations, and migrant networks all indicate the development of migration infrastructure components. In addition to economic liberalization, good neighborhood relations and foreign policy are important to develop migration infrastructure and institutionalization of migration. As a result, it is expected that the migration infrastructure development will increase migration, diversify of the countries and be beneficial to economic growth and transformation the country. Although these studies are still in their early stages, it has been concluded that significant steps have been taken in the infrastructure development, and the safe and regular migration will increase migration to the new destination countries in the future .