Introduction How is a Tajik woman portrayed in the story of Tajikistan and Central Asia in general? How much this notion of lack of geopolitical interest in the country and zero economic resources is creating a vacuum around the Tajik woman? How invisible are they? What does it take to bring the voice of women […]
In my last pair of blog posts I discussed the impact of sanctions imposed on Iran on Iranian emigration rates. I first addressed the effects of recent sanctions on the Iranian economy to provide a bigger picture of what has been going on in the country. I then looked at larger trends in Iranian migration […]
In the first part of my final blog post I briefly discussed the migrant population of Iran and specifically addressed the importance of Iran as a labor migration destination for Afghans. For the final portion of my post, I will be examining what happens when a nation is so devastated economically that it cannot support […]
The oil crisis of 1973 had profound effects on the world economy and spurred trends in labor migration that have continued to amplify to today. The oil crisis began with the Yom Kippur / October War between Israel, supported by the United States, and Egypt and Syria, supported by the Soviet Union.1 In response to […]
The Workforce The struggle for gender equality is a familiar foe of Armenian women. Since the fall of the soviet Union in 1991 when the female unemployment rate was a mere 2.19%, women in Armenia have struggled to maintain their place in the workforce (World Bank, 1991). Let’s talk more numbers. Armenia first […]
For hundreds of years, Afghans have migrated to Iran in order to improve their livelihoods. In the 20th century, the first major wave of Afghan migration to Iran came with the monumental upswing of the Iranian oil industry. Through recruitment by the Iranian government, thousands of Afghan laborers came to Iran.3 The workers enjoyed better […]
When we talk about migration to the Russian Federation, the main receiving countries that come to mind are those in Central Asia, but rarely do we think about Russia’s southwestern neighbor, Turkey. Towards the end of the Cold War, Turkey improved their relations with the Soviet Union through trade deals, which allowed Turkish companies to […]
For my blog post, I decided to watch a short documentary which I’ve been wanting to check out for quite a while titled, “Moscow’s Little Kyrgyzstan”. The documentary is approximately 25 minutes long and highlights the experiences of Kyrgyz migrants in Moscow. The documentary was produced by a UK-based company named Journeyman Pictures. All of […]
Once countries started recovering from the devastation of WWII, economies needed to be rebuilt. The USSR had built its command economy around the idea of high levels of extensive growth achieved by a division of labor between countries in Eastern Europe (Comecon) and industrialization. This depended on large amounts of labor as extensive growth meant […]
The discussion in the lecture on using female labors as the soviet solution to labor shortage reminded me of some popular Chinese propaganda from the Great Leap Era, where a giant poster reads “women can hold up half of the sky”. It is known to a saying from Mao Zedong. This public poster has left […]