Labourers and Couriers: Uzbeks in the Balkans at Risk of Exploitation
In search of better-paid employment, a growing number of workers from Uzbekistan in Central Asia are arriving in Serbia and other Balkan states. Many are vulnerable to exploitationโฆ
Uzbeks represent the fifth-biggest foreign worker contingent in Serbia; in 2020, Serbian authorities issued 57 visas for Uzbek nationals. By 2023, that number had shot up to 1,069.
Many of them, in Serbia and elsewhere in the Western Balkans, face poor living conditions, exploitation, and the threat of deportation.
In a 2023 report, Serbian anti-trafficking NGO Astra identified two main factors behind migrant worker vulnerability: a limited ability to defend their rights and regulations that tie their work permits to their employerโฆ
In 2024, Russia imposed restrictions on Central Asian migrants in the wake of an attack on a concert hall in Krasnogorskโฆ
BIRN has identified several Telegram groups in which middlemen offer recruitment services without contracts; discussions in these groups reveal significant gaps between the conditions promised by brokers before departure and the realities migrants faced upon arrivalโฆ
โฆanother Uzbek man who flew to Serbia, only to find himself sharing a room in a hostel with 20 other people and unable to afford a plane ticket home. Then his passport was confiscated. He had paid a deposit of 1,000 euros just to get to Serbiaโฆ