L'impact de la crise financière internationale sur les transferts des migrants : le cas des travailleurs tadjiks

Recently, migrants' remittances have become more and more important for many developing countries. Tajikistan, a landlocked country in Central Asia is no exception. Indeed, remittances sent by Tajik migrants in Russia reached more than 45% of Tajikistan's GDP in 2008 (World Bank, 2009). However, these transfers show a significant decline since the last quarter of 2008. The aim of this paper is to show that this decline is a consequence of the global financial crisis that began in the United States in 2007. The study of the determinants of Tajik transfers supports this thesis by highlighting the role of the Russian economic activity. Remittances seem to depend heavily on changes in Russian production and its rate of unemployment. However, the current crisis affecting these variables, indirectly impacts the Tajik economy through remittances. The hypothesis of countercyclicality of remittances should be rejected here, since remittances seem to be determined more by host country's variables than the origin country's ones. This result is explained by two main factors: Tajik migration flows are nearly unidirectional, thus, Tajikistan is highly dependant on its unique destination country; and the prevalence of altruistic motive. The global financial crisis seems to affect Tajikistan indirectly through the recession in Russia.