Every year a couple of stories come out about serf labor in the cotton fields of Central Asia, right about the time that the cotton crop gets harvested.  That day has again arrived this year, but with new, tougher problems for Central Asia's agricultural laborers and for the state leaders that have made this choice.

The wreck of human capital equals the wreck of state capital
Some judicious reading over the past six months has taught me that the conditions for agricultural labor are poor: the accommodations are inadequate, the food is lousy/not enough.  The pay is small, it is paid less than 100% of the time, and paid whenever the state feels like it, which is Not Right Now.  All sorts of people, including those better utilized elsewhere, are pressed into cotton harvesting.  These include: schoolchildren; teachers; university students.  None of these impressed workers are moving forward in their own lives.  Nor are they moving the state forward as part of an educated, thinking, and contributing populace.  their lives and their studies are interrupted in order to fund today's dwindling state export dollars on a crop which is essentially ruining Central Asia's ecology and future ability to earn income from agriculture. 

Yet there's more than one train wreck here
The newest problems are those which concern those that want to work and can't.  Little by little, the options of the desperate but willing continue to disappear.  The cost of working — and the barriers to it –become higher and higher.

Uzbekistan, for instance, has recently forbidden its agricultural workers to enter Kyrgyzstan to find work.  According to this Ferghana.ru article, the cotton crop in Uzbekistan is already harvested, and Kyrgyzstan is just beginning its work–jobs are available.  This would be a prime chance for agricultural workers to bring money home to their Uzbekistan families under the remittance economy model.  Security fears post-Andijan fuel this directive.   The cost to the people and to the state for heavy security continues to mount–and increasingly fails to work.   Without outlets for legal commerce, only illegal commerce becomes available.

Previously, Uzbekistan has been charging its migrant workers to leave: an exit visa of sorts, and then taxing their remittance monies to the family, and then charging them when they enter the country again.  Immigration is further limited by Uzbekistan's strange sense of public relations: denying that the people need economic assistance and/or jobs, they have created policies where people cannot act as if they need work.  Thus, people who need work cannot find work, and people who could bring money to Uzbekistan cannot obtain it.  This circular reasoning contributes to a spiral of economic instability and eventually, security instability.

Government response: more limits, less opportunities
CIS labor ministers are concerned about labor migration, but they have only one-half of the equation.  One can possibly stop illegal migrants, but the urge to migrate for economic reasons occurs when there are less opportunities at home.  Building state capacity in these states will reduce the enforcement cost of stopping them. 

For many of us, these stark facts form an object lesson in how governments have the power to impede markets, virtue, and even the pursuit of necessity.  For those that live it, it is a grim reality that means lost opportunity, lost earning power, malnutrition and for some, death.  The cycle of lost capacity continues to drag Central Asia's economies down.  One thing is certain: the people work.  But the other thing is, their governments frequently ensure that they work in vain.

Further reading:
Short great article on migrant flows in 2006 at Ferghana.ru, with pictures

Map: Washington.edu