Attitudes towards immigrants in Georgia, and how they differ based on a person’s economic situation

A recent protest in Tbilisi was a reminder of the importance of studying attitudes towards immigrants in Georgia. A previous blog post discussed how these attitudes vary based on whether a person has or has not had personal contact with immigrants. This blog post explores how attitudes towards immigrants differ based on whether people believe or not that immigrants will contribute to the economic development of Georgia, and how they describe their households’ economic condition compared to the households around them, using CRRC’s 2015 Caucasus Barometer survey (CB) data. “Immigrants” was operationalized in the questionnaire as “foreigners who come to Georgia and stay here for longer than three months.”

A plurality of the population of Georgia (45%) report that immigrants will sometimes contribute to the country’s economic development and sometimes not. About one in five (22%) think that immigrants will contribute to the economic development of Georgia, and 18% think the opposite. Among those who think that immigrants will contribute to the economic development of Georgia, 50% report positive attitudes towards them. However, when people think that immigrants sometimes will and sometimes will not contribute to the economic development of Georgia or when they think immigrants will not contribute to it, they generally report neutral attitudes towards immigrants. Notably, among those who believe that immigrants will not contribute to the economic development of Georgia, 17% report negative attitudes towards them, which is the highest share of negative attitudes reported.



Note: For the question, “How would you characterize your attitude towards the foreigners who come to Georgia and stay here for longer than 3 months?” the original 5-point scale (1 – ‘Very bad’, 2 – ‘Bad’, 3 – ‘Neutral’, 4 – ‘Good’, 5 – ‘Very good’) was re-coded into a 3-point scale, with codes 1 and 2 labeled “Bad attitude” and codes 4 and 5 labeled “Good attitude” on the charts in this blog post. Answer options “Don’t know” and “Refuse to answer” are not shown and hence the percentages reported in the charts in this blog post may not sum to 100%.

Interestingly, the better a person’s assessment of their household’s relative economic condition, the better attitudes they report towards immigrants.



Note: For the question, “Relative to most of the households around you, would you describe the current economic condition of your household as …?” the original 5-point scale (1 – ‘Very poor’, 2 – ‘Poor’, 3 – ‘Fair’, 4 – ‘Good’, 5 – ‘Very good’) was re-coded into a 3-point scale, with codes 1 and 2 labeled “Poor” and codes 4 and 5 labeled “Good” on the chart above.

Overall, reported attitudes towards immigrants are rather neutral in Georgia. Importantly though, when people think that immigrants will contribute to the economic development of Georgia or consider the current economic condition of their households to be good, their attitudes tend to be more positive.

To have a closer look at the Caucasus Barometer data, visit CRRC’s Online Data Analysis tool.