Rural Migration in Kyrgyzstan: Drivers, Impact and Governance

The development of Kyrgyzstan reveals two important trends: declining agricultural production and a steady increase of remittances from labor migration. These trends suggest a transformative effect of migration, negating an overly simplistic investment effect of financial remittances on long standing livelihood activities. Although many studies agree that labor migration contributes to poverty reduction in rural Kyrgyzstan, only little attention has been paid so far to the question: What effect does migration have on rural development? This research paper is based on a desk study that focused on investigation of the state of knowledge about migration, rural change and migration policy in modern Kyrgyzstan, and suggests recommendations of prominent areas for future studies. Acknowledgements The deep and inspiring discussions with Dr. Roman Mogilevski and Dr. Lira Sagynbekova helped me consider migration, rural change and development nexus from a new angle. I am also thankful to Dr. Fraser Sugden for structural guidance and Dr. Roy Sidle for review and valuable comments that helped improve this paper. This research paper was completed within the framework of the project “Leaving something behind” – Migration governance and agricultural and rural change in “home” communities by the University of Central Asia’s Mountain Societies Research Institute (UCA MSRI). The project is funded by the European Union, Horizon2020 program (No. 822730). AGRUMIG Project website: http://agrumig.iwmi.org UCA MSRI publications can be found in website: https://ucentralasia.org/Research/MSRI_Publications/EN Research paper # 7, 2020