Tajikistan Emigration and Immigration

Finding the Town of Origin in Tajikistan
If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Tajikistan, see Tajikistan Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Tajikistan Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Immigration into Tajikistan

 * Tajiks are a Persian-speaking Iranian ethnic group native to Central Asia, living primarily in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Tajiks are the largest ethnicity in Tajikistan, and the second-largest in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.
 * According to Richard Nelson Frye, a leading historian of Iranian and Central Asian history, the Persian migration to Central Asia may be considered the beginning of the modern Tajik nation, and ethnic Persians, along with some elements of East-Iranian Bactrians and Sogdians, as the main ancestors of modern Tajiks.

Emigration From Tajikistan

 * In 1989, ethnic Russians in Tajikistan made up 7.6% of the population; by 1998 the proportion had reduced to approximately 0.5% following the Tajikistani Civil War which had displaced the majority of ethnic Russians. Following the end of the war, Russian emigration continued.
 * The ethnic German population of Tajikistan has also declined due to emigration: having topped at 38,853 in 1979, it has almost vanished since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 * The population of Tajiks in Russia was about 200,303 according to the 2010 census, up from 38,000 in the last Soviet census of 1989. Most Tajiks came to Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, often as guest workers in places like Moscow and Saint Petersburg or federal subjects near the Kazakhstan border. There are currently estimated to be over one million Tajik guest workers living in Russia, with their remittances accounting for as much as half of Tajikistan's economy.
 * There are an estimated 220,000 Tajiks in Pakistan as of 2012, mainly refugees from Afghanistan.[ During the 1990s, as a result of the Tajikistan Civil War, between 700 and 1,200 Tajikistanis arrived in Pakistan, mainly as students, the children of Tajikistani refugees in Afghanistan. In 2002, around 300 requested to return home and were repatriated back to Tajikistan with the help of the IOM, UNHCR and the two countries' authorities.

Records of Tajik Emigrants in Their Destination Nations

 * United States Emigration and Immigration
 * Pakistan Emigration and Immigration
 * Afghanistan Emigration and Immigration
 * Russia Emigration and Immigration