26 March 2022

...Zebo and Nazarmamad, a married couple from Tajikistan, lost their jobs at a Moscow warehouse owned by a Western retail company...Zebo, 43, fears that it will only get worse for migrants, because many newly unemployed Russians “might soon start looking for jobs they didn’t want before, the jobs that were too low or too [labor intensive] for them.”

Most migrants are employed either in the service sector, in construction, or agriculture in jobs that often involve relatively low-paid physical work.

“If the war goes on for a few more months, Russians will have no choice; they’ll be less picky and take any job to survive,” Zebo says. “There will be even less work left for us migrants.”

Hundreds of Western consumer goods and retail firms, food chains, and energy companies said they were suspending their activities across Russia. Among them are Nestle, IKEA, Adidas, Nike, McDonald's, Burger King, Starbucks, Exxon Mobil, BP, and Shell.

Even many domestic companies had to scale back their business, with airports being hit the hardest...

Desperate to pay their rents and send money home to their families, many migrants say they have no time to waste...

The majority of Central Asian migrants are expected to stay in Russia despite the declining job market and the badly weakened ruble. They don’t have better alternatives in their home countries, which also suffer from chronic unemployment and low wages...