ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses more on countries' individual policies and analyse how Central Asian states control labour migration. Central Asia, a region geographically including five countries Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan is rather new to global population movements, when compared to old migrant destinations such as Europe and North America. Labour migration policies in these states, be it with regard to outward or inward migration, have nevertheless undergone dramatic changes in less than a decade. In 21st century labour migration has definitely taken a leading role in all population movements within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) by outnumbering ethnic migration. Before starting with an analysis of development of labour migration control in individual Central Asian states, one should note that these countries had never been independent before joining Soviet Union in the 1920-1930s. The social protection of migrants is another challenge faced by the Kazakh government: while the 1994 CIS Agreement guarantees such protection, it only concerns legal migrants.
