Pushed and Pulled Apart
Migration is part of Armenia’s ancient history, but it has come to
threaten the country’s future. by Marcin Monko 19 January 2012
YEREVAN | The Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts is
housed in a modern, stone-coated structure that sits atop a rise in
the middle of Armenia’s capital. On one wall of its main exhibition
hall hangs a world map covered with dozens of red dots in different
sizes.
The dots point to the origins of the Armenian books and documents on
display at the institute, from early medieval bibles to 19th-century
legal papers. Predictably, a red swarm hovers south of the Caucasus,
between the Black and Caspian seas. But then the dots spread to other
regions, countries, and continents – from Italy to Iran to India.
The red dots are more than a bibliophile’s record. They tell a story
of people who for centuries traveled, studied, and worked far away
from their ancestral lands. Migration is nothing new for Armenians.
But today it is approaching crisis levels, and doing damage that could
take decade to undo – to the country’s demographics, its families, and
its skilled work force.
In charge of managing Armenia’s current wave of migration is Gagik
Yeganyan, head of the State Migration Service. His 35 employees occupy
an old office building three metro stops from Yerevan’s city center.
`During our long history, and due to our geographical location at the
crossroads of the Persian, Byzantine, and Roman empires, Armenia has
always been somewhere in the middle, and that has led to a lot of
forced movements of people,’ Yeganyan says. `And Armenians, like other
nations, try to follow their interests and try to find better
conditions to live. This is what you call push and pull factors.’
Seventy-five percent of Armenians who leave the country do so to find
work, Yeganyan said.
`Journalists or people from civil society organizations often ask me,
`What are you doing to decrease emigration?’ What can I say? To tackle
migration you have to go deeper, you have to tackle the reasons. I’m
not in a position to create job opportunities here. That’s the task of
the whole government. I can only try to provide services to people who
are moving abroad or coming back.’
And there are many of them. In the early 1990s, as many as 1 million
people left Armenia as a result of the collapse of the Soviet economy
and the war with Azerbaijan. They joined already sizable Armenian
diasporas in Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and Europe. Today
some 3.1 million people live in Armenia, down from 3.5 million a
decade ago.
Reliable statistics on migration in Armenia are hard to come by, but
according to the Armenian Statistical Service, more people leave the
country than enter it each year. In 2007, departures exceeded returns
by about 22,000. In 2008 the gap rose to more than 32,000 before
dropping to 21,000 in 2009.
A 2009 International Labor Office study on migration and development
in Armenia revealed that on average about 60,000 labor migrants go to
seek jobs in Russia annually. Usually, these migrants return home to
visit their families at least once a year.
Aram Asatryan, 73, went to work in Russia for the first time in the
summer of 1980. He picked watermelons on a farm in the Volgograd
district. He later switched to construction, working for himself or
managing other laborers, overseeing building sites, and setting up a
business with relatives in Russia. He continues to shuttle between the
countries.
In December, when I met Asatryan in his apartment in the Jrvezh suburb
of Yerevan, he had returned from Moscow a month before.
Over 30 years, Aram Asatryan has gone from migrant laborer to
construction businessman, all in Russia.
`I’m an old man and there are no opportunities for me in Armenia,’
Asatryan says. The domestic construction business is heavily
monopolized, he adds. `You never know what will happen to your
investment, you don’t want to risk your money.’
His son has a doctorate in agricultural sciences and lives in the
United States. His daughter lives in Australia.
`In summer, go to Sarukhan,’ he tells me. `It’s a small town east of
Yerevan. You’ll meet women, kids, and grandpas. But no men of working
age. They’re all gone, working in Russia.’
Asatryan says he doesn’t know if he will go to Russia next year. Then
again, he hasn’t known each year since 1980. And yet he kept going
back, for five, six, eight months at a time.
Ruben Yeganyan, a demographer at the Caucasus Research Resource Center
in Yerevan, says that even among the so-called seasonal workers, up to
15,000 leave Armenia for good every year.
`This is a social, demographic cost,’ he says, ticking off the
results: declining birth and marriages rates, brain drain, capital
flight. `Children don’t live in normal families. With parents
separated, children grow up in feminine environments at home and in
schools.’
On the other hand, the value of remittances sent home nearly equals
the national budget, reaching $2 billion in a good year, or 20 percent
of GDP, according to the State Migration Service. There are also new
skills and knowledge acquired abroad; when migrants return they can
bring new ideas, new culture. Armenia is a mono-ethnic society, for
good or ill, and these days not being aware of other societies,
cultures, and traditions is a handicap.
Square One is a modern, American-style cafe, right in the middle of
Yerevan, just at the entrance to a newly built district my guide
called `an elite block.’ The cafe is frequented by Yerevan’s expats
and young, well-off people. In the evenings the flicker of laptops,
tablets, and smart phones illuminate the tables.
There I met Zaruhi Gasparyan, 26, who works at the American Bar
Association of Armenia. She studied linguistics at Yerevan State
University and afterward applied to several universities in the
European Union. She was accepted by three of them and chose to study
EU affairs in Parma, Italy.
`Studying was just a way to see the world, see how it is to live in
another country, to live somewhere else. I didn’t go abroad to earn
money. I was bored in Armenia and wanted to experience something
different,’ Gasparyan says.
Zaruhi Gasparyan has studied in Italy and trained in Brussels. She’s
among the lucky Armenians to find a good job in her home country.
At first, when she came back to Armenia after a year abroad, her
foreign experience didn’t help much in getting a job. What made a
difference was a traineeship she did later at the European Commission
in Brussels. Only then did employers notice her. She received 13 job
offers from private companies and government agencies in Yerevan. She
chose the Bar Association, which helps to implement legal reforms in
the country.
`It’s not jobs or money that attracted me to the EU,’ she says. `It’s
the freedom – personal freedom, political, economic. If I ever move
abroad this will be the reason.’
Freedom is probably not the first reason to move for the men in
Arevashogh, a village in the mountainous northern region of Lori, 10
kilometers (six miles) from the epicenter of a deadly earthquake that
struck the area in December 1988.
Arthur Magoyan, 43, married with two teenage children, worked to
rebuild the place after the disaster. Then, in 1995, he started
traveling to Russia to work. How do these journeys work in practice?
`At the end of October I came back after five months of laying tarmac
on roads in Moscow. In May I’ll go back again. I’ll pay some 100,000
Armenian drams [200] for the ticket and take a plane to Moscow. I
take this bag’ – he displays a midsize knock-off Reebok bag – `and I
fill a good part of it with bottles of local brandy and semisweet wine
for my Armenian relatives, who sort out a job.’
Arthur Magoyan works on roads in Moscow.
Hrahat Kostumyan is in charge of finances for the village of about
3,200. He says 90 percent of the men of working age go abroad
regularly.
`The only stable jobs here are at the local elementary school and the
village health center. There are some occasional public works too,’
Kostumyan says.
`A worker in the Lori region in Armenia can earn $200 a month. In
Russia he will get $1,000. And Russia is the only realistic
destination for these men: they know the language, they don’t need a
visa, and they usually know someone there. The best people leave –
highly skilled workers, master craftsmen. It’s difficult to do
anything here at home without these people.’
Kostumyan admits that some men leave their families and don’t return.
`Most of them keep sending money for a while, but they have a second
family over there. That men have parallel family lives – one in
Armenia another in Russia – is an open secret in many Armenian
families.’
Back in Yerevan, at a local organization called the International
Center for Human Development, I meet Vahan Asatryan, an expert on
migration. `Take whatever problem in Armenia – economic, financial,
demographic, political – and indeed you’ll have migration as a
dominant factor,’ he says.
Well over half of Armenians declare they would leave the country given
the chance, Asatryan adds.
`Eighty percent of Armenian migrants go to work in Russia and other
post-Soviet countries. But you’ll hardly find a migrant who is
properly registered, with access to health care, social insurance,
etc.,’ he says. `The fact is that in Russia most migrants get
low-skilled jobs, and that doesn’t benefit the Armenian economy in the
long run.’
In an effort to improve the lot of its labor migrants and import those
skills learned abroad, Yerevan and Brussels forged an agreement in
October aimed at stemming illegal migration while creating more
opportunities for legal migration from Armenia to self-selected member
states. The EU already has similar pacts with Georgia and Moldova.
Asatryan says the authorities don’t want to completely change
emigration patters, `but we would like to shift the flow of migrants
from Russia to the EU a little. In Russia the working conditions are
usually poor and people often don’t get paid.’ The new EU agreement
`can help by opening possibilities for more regulated labor migration
with proper safeguards, social rights, visa facilitation, and better
working conditions.’
At the same time, Yerevan should help those about to leave with
services like job searches and vocational and language training, says
Ummuhan Bardak, a labor market specialist at the European Training
Foundation, an EU agency based in Turin, Italy, that is surveying
former and potential migrants in Armenia.
Those who do go back home should get government help reintegrating
into the Armenian labor market or support in setting up businesses,
Bardak said. Surveys show that many migrants are game to become
entrepreneurs, having gained the necessary savings and experience
abroad.
By the time I finished the tour of the exhibition at the Mesrop
Mashtots Institute, I’d learned the story of a nation that developed
its culture and economy, preserved its traditions, and enriched the
lives of its foreign neighbors while being on the move. It was a tale
of suffering and longing, but also a tale of accomplishment and
national rebirth. As Armenians continue to move, this story goes on.
Story and photos by Marcin Monko, communications officer at the
European Training Foundation.
http://www.tol.org/client/article/22949-armenia-migration.html