Global atlas

Eastern Europe · data through 2024

Russia

Russia is at once one of the largest destinations for labour migration in the world and the source of one of the largest populations living abroad.

Twenty five year view

Movement in both directions

These lines show migrant stock, meaning people living outside their birth country at each point in time. They do not show annual arrivals.

Why people move

Leading documented drivers

  • • Wage differences across the post Soviet region
  • • Language and visa arrangements inherited from a shared history
  • • Political change and conscription since 2022
  • • Sector demand in construction, transport, and services

Millions of workers arrive from Central Asia, mainly Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, under seasonal and permit based arrangements, while emigration of Russian nationals rose sharply after 2022, especially among younger professionals.

Connections

Where movement connects

Common destinations

Germany, Kazakhstan, Israel, Georgia, Armenia, Serbia

Common origins

Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan

Adapting and finding support

What helps

Migrant workers depend on permits tied to employers, which makes reporting abuse costly. Recent emigrants abroad face banking and documentation problems that outlast the move itself.

Independent legal aid organisations and diaspora mutual aid groups are the usual first stop, alongside international agencies.

Use the support guide

Research that explains this pattern

What the scholarship says

Anthropology

Why corridors keep themselves alive

Each person who arrives lowers the cost and risk for the next, through housing, jobs, information, and trust. The route becomes self sustaining.

Corridors persist long after the original cause has faded, and policy alone rarely closes them.

Douglas Massey and colleagues, cumulative causation and network theory

Behavioural economics

Scarcity and mental bandwidth

Living with too little money, time, or certainty consumes attention itself, leaving less capacity for planning and paperwork.

Missed appointments and delayed applications are effects of hardship rather than proof of carelessness.

Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity, 2013

Psychology

Ambiguous loss

Grief without a body or an ending, a parent alive but unreachable, a home that still exists but cannot be returned to, resists ordinary mourning.

Families hold the loss open for years, and closure focused support can do harm rather than help.

Pauline Boss, ambiguous loss theory

Read the full scholarship library

Support inside and beyond Russia

Organisations people actually use

IOM Russia and regional offices

Information, return, and reintegration support in the region.

Labour migrants and returning people

Open

UNHCR Help

Country by country guidance for refugees, people seeking asylum, and stateless people.

Refugees and people seeking asylum

Open

Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies

Family tracing, first aid, food, shelter, and restoring family links.

People in transit and newly arrived families

Open

These are public organisations. The project is not affiliated with them and cannot guarantee outcomes. Nothing here is legal advice or an emergency service.

Ask for support in Russia

This is guidance and connection to organisations. It is not legal advice and it is not an emergency service.

Sources and reading

Russia data in the UN DESA International Migrant StockRussia data in the IOM World Migration ReportRussia data in the Migration Policy Institute data hubUNHCR Global Trends

Figures are rounded published estimates. Causes and adaptation differ within every country and should not be read as a verdict about any person.