This week’s CAPS Unlock podcast does something different. Instead of our usual regional round-up, we devote the full episode to Turkmenistan, a country too often left at the margins of Central Asia analysis, or reduced to caricature.
We speak with Gulshat Chmaisse, a PhD candidate at the Australian National University’s Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, about her new paper, Turkmenistan’s migration policies: Reshaping economy and society, published as part of CAPS Unlock’s The Argument series.
The paper centres on a striking paradox. Turkmenistan depends heavily on labour migration. Remittances sent home by citizens abroad help sustain household consumption, offset low wages and limited state support, and reduce pressure for domestic economic reform. Yet the state also obstructs migration through passport restrictions, opaque rules, exit bans, blacklists and informal payments.
Rozyyeva explains why official data badly understate Turkmenistan’s dependence on remittances, how informal transfer networks and the black-market exchange rate shape household survival, and why Turkey has become the main destination for Turkmen labour migrants while Russia remains important for students.
The conversation also explores the feminisation of Turkmen migration. As men face greater scrutiny at borders and through military-linked restrictions, women increasingly migrate independently and become primary earners abroad, especially in domestic and care work. That shift brings new economic agency, but also legal insecurity, family separation, exploitation and trafficking risks.
Listeners can find Gulshat Chmaisse’s paper at CAPS Unlock’s website: www.capsunlock.org
