Problems and opportunities for effective regulation of labor migration in the Republic of Uzbekistan

Demographic trends in Uzbekistan have a specific character associated with the active natural growth of the country’s population (in the past 50 years, the country’s population has increased by 2.86 times and amounted to 35 million people). In the early 1990s, there was an outflow of people to their historical homeland, the migration balance is still having a negative character. The article analyzes the gender and age composition of the population, changes in the dynamics of indicators of the natural movement of the population, in which the fertility rate decreases, life expectancy increases (73.4 years). The high proportion of young people (up to 60% in the population structure) and the annual high growth of labor resources (about 500 thousand people) creates a burden on the internal labor market. There is a significant flow of labor migration to foreign countries, in which the Russian Federation occupies a leading place. The article analyses of the current reforms in the field of regulation of labor migration, which have been significantly developed under the new government of the country (since 2016), including the establishment of organized forms of labor migration. There are highlighted the present main targets of the Government of Uzbekistan, to create conditions and mechanisms that contribute to ensuring managed and regulated migration flows, legitimate rights and interests of citizens of the country. The author analyzes the trends in the normative and legal regulation of the sphere of labor migration, the relevance of the development of a new draft “Law on External Labor Migration” aimed at improving the efficiency of state bodies in solving complex migration issues. There is shown the institutional reform of the Agency for External Labor Migration in the field of migration management. It is proposed to develop a Concept and Strategy of state policy in the field of labor migration, as basic documents relating migration for the future. There are proposed directions of reforms in the migration sphere, establishment of organized forms of labor migration, expansion of international cooperation, powers of various departments of the country, improvement of the system for collecting statistics and data analysis, and conducting scientific research in the migration sphere