Crossroads Asia | Economy | Central Asia

Britain’s Farms Run on Central Asian Labor Now

As Russia squeezes migrants, Central Asians now fill nearly four in five U.K. Seasonal Worker visas.

Central Asians now do most of the picking on Britain’s farms. 

In 2025 they received 78.5 percent of all U.K. Seasonal Worker visas issued, up from 7.6 percent in 2021. In the first quarter of 2026, Central Asians again received over three-quarters of the visas. Today Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan are the four largest source countries for the temporary workers scheme, ahead of Kenya, Moldova, and every other supplier.

Ukraine sent roughly 19,900 seasonal workers in 2021 but just 530 in 2025; Russia fell from 2,276 to 11. The 2022 invasion trapped Ukrainian men in uniform and shut off Russian recruitment. British operators turned to a region with a young, surplus workforce and shrinking places to send it: Central Asia. U.K.-wide applications to the route rose 23 percent in the year to March 2026.

Russia’s turn against Central Asian labor pushed in the same direction. Since January 2025, visa-free migrants may remain in Russia only 90 days per calendar year. After the 2024 Crocus City Hall attack, which was blamed on Tajik nationals, deportations rose 17 percent in the first half of 2025 and residence permits fell by about a third, alongside xenophobic raids recorded across the country. 

Britain is a hedge against that hostility, but a very narrow one. Fewer than 40,000 six-month visas a year, region-wide, sit against the millions of Central Asians still working in Russia, the source of remittances equivalent to 45 percent of GDP in the region’s poorer states. The British visa offers no settlement, no dependents, and six months’ work in any 10 before a mandatory exit. The U.K. is trimming it, too. The quota........

© The Diplomat