1. Introduction. – 2. Literature Review – 3. Methodology. – 4. Discussion. – 4.1. General Analysis of the Migration Situation in Kazakhstan Based on Statistical Data. – 4.2 Comparative Analysis of Labour Migrants’ Digital Rights and Their Protection in the Context of International and Kazakhstani Legal Regulation. – 5. Results. – 6. Conclusion.
Background: The digitalisation of migration governance and labour regulation has fundamentally changed the conditions under which labour migrants exercise their rights. In Kazakhstan, migrants increasingly depend on electronic public services, digital identification, biometric verification, interoperable databases, and platform-based labour intermediation. While these technologies may improve administrative efficiency, they also generate new legal risks, including opaque processing of personal and biometric data, excessive data collection, identification errors, digital exclusion, and limited access to effective remedies. These developments require a clearer conceptualisation of the digital rights of labour migrants and a more precise assessment of whether existing legal mechanisms in Kazakhstan are sufficient to protect them.
Method: The study employs a doctrinal and comparative legal methodology. It examines the legal content of digital rights of labour migrants through the analysis of international human rights and data protection standards, including Convention 108+, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (the EU AI Act), and the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law. These standards are compared with the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the fields of migration, labour, and personal data protection. The study also employs a risk-oriented analytical framework to identify regulatory gaps related to biometric processing, inter-agency data exchange, automated decision-making, and digital service delivery.
Results and Conclusions: The research demonstrates that Kazakhstan’s legal framework contains important baseline guarantees but remains fragmented in its approach to digital risks affecting labour migrants. The law does not sufficiently articulate the principles of proportionality, purpose limitation, storage limitation, transparency, and accountability as operative legal standards. It also lacks explicit obligations concerning privacy-by-design, privacy-by-default, and data protection impact assessment for high-risk processing, particularly where biometric data or algorithmically supported decisions are involved. Procedural safeguards are also underdeveloped, particularly regarding the right to information, the correction of inaccurate data, the explanation of adverse digital outcomes, and the effective contestation of decisions.
The article argues that the digital rights of labour migrants should be understood as a structured set of guarantees that ensure lawful, proportionate, and transparent data processing, non-discriminatory access to digital services, and procedural protections against harmful digital decisions. It proposes strengthening Kazakhstan’s legal framework through clearer data protection principles, mandatory impact assessment for high-risk systems, enhanced safeguards for biometric data, and stronger procedural rights in digitally mediated migration governance.