Review of legal and labour migration mechanisms in the Republic of Azerbaijan: Assessment Report

This assessment report ‘Review of legal and labour migration mechanisms in the Republic of Azerbaijan’ outlines the main legislative provisions regulating legal and labour migration from/to Azerbaijan and offers recommendations for improving this legislation.

The report was drafted within the EU-funded ‘Support to the Implementation of the Mobility Partnership with Azerbaijan’ (MOBILAZE) project and its Component 2 on legal/labour migration. It is based on desk research on the existing legislation and practices in Azerbaijan, an expert mission to Baku and meetings with the stakeholders (agenda available in Annex II) and a thorough analysis of both the legislation and the information gathered from the meetings.

The report begins with an overview of the legislative framework of the Republic of Azerbaijan concerning the management of labour mobility and the national labour market, as well as issues related to academic mobility, family reunification and visas (Section 1 of the report). The subsequent section (Section 2) describes the major relevant institutions, including governmental authorities, social partners and international organisations, especially in terms of their competency and responsibilities in the area of legal migration.

Section 3 focuses on labour migration, specifically labour immigration, labour emigration and national labour market regulation. The labour immigration section of the report (subsection 3.1) is dedicated to the procedures on acquisition of residence and work permits, while labour emigration section (subsection 3.2) looks into practices concerning the employment of Azerbaijani citizens abroad.

A special emphasis within the labour migration section is made on the current methodology on establishment of foreign labour demand in the domestic labour market, including recommendations for improvement of the methodology, as well as on how the MOBILAZE project can contribute to further enhancement of the labour migration framework in Azerbaijan (subsection 3.3). The section ends with a synopsis of the current regulation of labour migration quotas (subsection 3.4).

The following sections describe issues concerning academic mobility for researchers and students in the Republic of Azerbaijan (Section 4), family reunification (Section 5) and visa related issues (Section 6), all of which are highly relevant due to the recent conclusion of the EU – Azerbaijan Visa Facilitation Agreement2.

Each section includes recommendations for improving current legislation and practices based on the analysis carried out as well as the expressed needs and priorities of the Azerbaijani stakeholders. The report concludes with a description of the general outcomes and observations made while working on the report.

The report has three annexes: Annex I ‘Overview of the national legislation on legal/labour migration in the Republic of Azerbaijan’, a starting point for drafting the report; Annex II ‘Expert mission agenda’ and Annex III ‘Data and figures’, summarising statistics gathered during the meetings with the Azerbaijan stakeholders.