Migrant workers from Central Asia key to Russia’s smooth-running World Cup
MOSCOW — Behind the veneer of Russia’s smooth-running World Cup are legions of migrant workers from Central Asia, who built the stadiums and keep them running, staff concession stands, and clean up after fans who revel through city streets.
They are among millions of migrants who perform menial jobs across Russia, and face routine police harassment and ethnic profiling. They are accused of depressing wages and plotting terrorism, yet unlike in Europe or the U.S., no one talks of building a border wall to keep them out. That’s because they form a pillar of the economy and aid Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical strategy — and without them, Russia might not have managed to host a World Cup at all.
As world-class soccer unfolds in their midst, orange-vested migrant workers take selfies with fans and steal glimpses of a match on a co-worker’s cell phone, or watch replays on a dormitory TV after a 12-hour shift. You won’t hear them complain. “This country took us in,
and gives us work,” said Bobur Ulashov, who left his village in southern Uzbekistan five years ago in search of a job. Today, the 37-year-old sweeps rubbish into his dented mental dustpan and plucks beer cups out of bushes at Moscow’s official World Cup fan zone.
He has little interaction with the visiting crowds — “they see the orange vest and keep walking,” he shrugs. He doesn’t hesitate when asked who he’s rooting for. “Russia. Who else?”
Russia provides work to people like Ulashov, who sends $100-200 home every month to his 6-yearold son, wife, parents and siblings.
And people like Ulashov provided Russia cheap labor to prepare for the World Cup.
“Migrants made up the main workforce” in the construction of stadiums and transport infrastructure for the tournament, said Valery Solovei, a professor at Moscow’s MGIMO foreign policy institute and an expert on immigration and nationalism. “Without migrant workers, Russia couldn’t have built all these things so quickly.”
Despite promises by soccer’s governing body FIFA, the work wasn’t always safe, or humane.
Building Workers International says 21 people died on World Cup construction sites. Human Rights Watch documented hundreds of complaints from World Cup workers, finding that many had no written contract of any kind, and some were working in temperatures of minus 13 Fahrenheit with one indoor break in a nine-hour shift.
Russia’s World Cup organizing committee says it worked with FIFA on an inspection system to root out alleged labor violations, and FIFA said last year that it had seen a sharp fall in the “number of issues” at Russian construction sites after its inspections.
Neither the Russian organizers nor FIFA provided figures or details on what they found, or said whether anyone was prosecuted.
That’s a concern for Russia’s workers and for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where migrant workers perform nearly all menial labor and have few legal rights.
Migrants staffing Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow’s 81,000-seat primary venue, insist their conditions are good — 30,000 rubles ($470) a month during the tournament, with one or two days off per week.
But most didn’t want their full names published for fear their employers would punish them.