Experts discussed the Impact of COVID -19 on Migration in Kyrgyzstan

On 14 April the OSCE Academy held an online-event: “The impact of COVID -19 Pandemic on Migration and Migration Governance in Kyrgyzstan.” The event was organized within the framework of the OSCE Academy’s AGRUMIG project (“Leaving something behind” – Migration governance and agricultural and rural change in “home” communities: Comparative experience from Europe, Asia, and Africa), supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme. The project looks at the issues of rural migrants, impact of migration on agriculture and the migration governance policy in Kyrgyzstan.

This event aimed to discuss the consequences and implications of the pandemic on labor migrants and migration governance in Kyrgyzstan. Experts presented and discussed following topics: Rethinking the meaning of migration for rural Kyrgyzstan; Lessons from Covid-19 (Dr. Asel Murzakulova, Researcher, University of Central Asia); The precarity of transnational migration and the COVID-19 pandemic: addressing female return migration in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (Nodira Kholmatova, Ph.D. Candidate, European University Institute, Italy); Impact of the COVID19 pandemic on migrants remaining in the host country (Mahabat Tynarbekova, Chief Specialist, State Agency for Migration in Kyrgyzstan); The view from Russia, working towards a post-COVID-19 return to normal migration (Dr. Caress Schenk, Associate Professor, Nazarbaev University, Kazakhstan)

Among the participants of the event were researchers, experts, representatives of international organizations, NGOs and civil society and everyone who is interested in the migration issues in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia.

The full recording of the event is available on both English and Russian languages on our Youtube channel.

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