Trading Labour: The 2025 India–Russia Mobility Initiative and Migration Governance in International Law

Ridam Gangwar is a final-year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) student at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow. His research interests include international law, migration governance, and global economic regulation, with a particular focus on labour mobility and the interaction between trade and migration regimes.

Introduction

In December 2025, Russia announced plans to expand labour migration from India as part of a broader recalibration of its economic strategy in response to persistent labour shortages and the structural effects of international sanctions. Following President Vladimir Putin’s visit to New Delhi, senior executives of Sberbank highlighted rising demand for Indian workers across industrial and service sectors, citing record-low unemployment and a projected shortage of nearly three million workers by 2030. The senior executives framed this initiative as an extension of economic cooperation (alongside trade expansion and import substitution) rather than as a reform of Russia’s migration policy. In this way, the proposal reflects a pragmatic convergence of interests: India, facing persistent employment pressures, is positioned as a supplier of labour, while Russia seeks to stabilise its workforce amid demographic decline and geopolitical isolation.

This piece argues that the India–Russia labour mobility initiative is best understood not as migration policy, but as an instance of trade-based labour mobility governance. Structured around temporary, employer-driven, and sector-specific movement, the initiative reflects the legal logic of international trade law—particularly the framework governing the temporary movement of natural persons under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). In doing so, it illustrates a broader shift in which labour mobility is increasingly governed through trade instruments that facilitate movement while avoiding the legal obligations associated with migration law.

Yet, the legal design of this initiative reveals more than its economic rationale. The emphasis on temporariness and contractual deployment sidelines questions of migrant status, residence, and integration—core concerns of migration law but peripheral to trade law. This approach is not new. Scholarship on GATS Mode 4 and preferential trade agreements shows how trade law enables cross-border labour movement while insulating states from broader governance commitments. Against a backdrop of rising xenophobia and forced labour militarisation in Russia, the initiative provides a lens to examine how international trade law is quietly assuming a governance role over migration, thereby reshaping who moves, under what conditions, and with what legal protections.

Labour Mobility Framed Within Trade Law Architecture

International trade law provides a structured, if limited, pathway for cross-border labour movement. Under GATS, mobility is governed through Mode 4, which covers the temporary movement of natural persons supplying services. Crucially, this framework does not recognise workers as migrants. Instead, it treats mobility as a component of services trade restricted to categories such as contractual service suppliers and intra-corporate transferees.

Mode 4 is defined by three features: impermanence, employer linkage, and restricted access to domestic labour markets. Mobility is temporary by design. Thus, entry is tied to specific contracts and sectors, with no pathways to permanent settlement. Questions of social protection, residence security, and integration fall outside its scope. As Panizzon and others have shown, this architecture enables states to facilitate labour mobility while retaining extensive discretion and avoiding the legal commitments traditionally associated with migration governance.

This model has extended beyond the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Preferential trade agreements and bilateral economic partnerships increasingly replicate Mode 4 provisions, embedding trade logic into diverse geopolitical contexts. A useful comparison is the movement of professionals under agreements like NAFTA (now USMCA), where categories such as the TN visa facilitate temporary, employer-linked mobility without conferring migrant status or long-term rights. These arrangements demonstrate that trade-based labour mobility is not an outlier but part of a wider pattern: labour movement is enabled where it serves economic objectives but tightly contained within non-migration frameworks.

The India–Russia Initiative (2025) as Trade-Based Labour Mobility

Seen in this context, the India–Russia Initiative closely mirrors trade-based mobility structures. Although framed as bilateral economic cooperation, it reproduces key features of Mode-4-style movement: temporary entry, sectoral targeting, and employer-driven recruitment. Indian workers are positioned not as migrants, but as labour inputs deployed to address specific shortages within defined timeframes.

Official discourse reinforces this framing. Statements emphasise skills, productivity, and economic complementarity, while remaining silent on residence rights, family reunification, or long-term security. This omission is not incidental. By structuring mobility around contracts and sectoral demand, the initiative situates labour movement within economic cooperation rather than migration governance, thereby limiting associated obligations.

The geopolitical context supports this approach. Russia’s labour shortages—intensified by sanctions and demographic trends—coincide with declining labour supply from Central Asia due to concerns over discrimination and security risks. India’s emergence as an alternative labour source reflects economic diplomacy prioritising flexibility over rights-based frameworks. The result is a mobility regime shaped by market needs rather than rights-based commitments. Importantly, the initiative operates largely outside formal multilateral trade frameworks yet remains deeply informed by their legal logic. Even outside formal trade agreements, the initiative draws on trade law’s underlying logic, showing how this model can be replicated through bilateral arrangements.

The India–Russia case, therefore, demonstrates how international trade law’s approach to labour mobility is not confined to treaty text but functions as a broader governance template—one that increasingly structures cross-border labour movement in the absence of robust international migration law.

Migration Without Migration Law: Fragmentation and Legal Gaps

The initiative highlights a broader structural issue: the absence of a coherent, rights-based binding framework for governing international labour migration. While trade-based mechanisms actively facilitate mobility, migration law remains fragmented and weakly institutionalised. Trade law benefits from binding commitments and enforceable dispute mechanisms. International migration law, by contrast, relies heavily on soft-law instruments and state discretion, thus lacking cohesion. This creates a regulatory imbalance in which labour mobility is more effectively governed when framed as trade than as migration.

The consequences are tangible. Workers admitted under trade-style schemes often do not receive robust legal protections. Their status depends on contracts and administrative discretion, limiting their access to social protection, residence security, and remedies. As Cholewinski has noted, migrants admitted for employment under such arrangements frequently occupy a precarious legal position. Under GATS Mode 4, entry is facilitated, but the conditions of staying in Russia remain underregulated. The India–Russia initiative demonstrates how these gaps operate in practice.

Why Trade-Based Migration Governance Matters

Understanding this initiative as an instance of trade-based governance clarifies its implications. First, when labour mobility is structured through trade law logic, mobility becomes selective by design. Access is limited to workers who meet narrow economic criteria, such as skill, sectoral demand, and employer sponsorship, while others are excluded. This selectivity is not incidental; it is a structural feature of trade-based mobility frameworks that treat labour as an economic input rather than as a subject of migration governance.

Second, legal responsibility is reshaped. States benefit from foreign labour without assuming obligations linked to long-term migration, residence security, family unity, or integration measures. The legal relationship between the worker and the host state is mediated primarily through contracts and administrative discretion, limiting avenues for protection and accountability.

Finally, this model embeds mobility within asymmetric economic relationships. For labour-sending states, it ties migration opportunities to external demand rather than rights-based guarantees, reinforcing structural inequalities in global labour markets.

Conclusion: Trade Law as Migration Governance

The India–Russia labour mobility initiative reflects a broader transformation in international law. Labour mobility is increasingly organised through economic cooperation that mirrors trade law frameworks rather than migration frameworks. Temporary entry, sectoral deployment, and employer control are not incidental—they define this model.

This does not mean labour mobility is unregulated. Rather, it is governed through a different legal register. Trade law now functions as a substitute for migration governance, enabling states to access foreign labour while avoiding the obligations traditionally associated with migration.