New Policy Advice on Migration and Development in Georgia

Migration is a major factor in Georgia. Many Georgians live abroad, and by some estimates the money they send back accounts for nearly 10% of Georgia’s GDP. Did you know that households in rural areas who receive such aid are less likely to be poor, but that in Tbilisi, the opposite is true? Robert Tchaidze from the IMF and Karine Torosyan from CRRC’s partner institution ISET are about to reveal not only who in Georgia migrates, and when and where they go, but also how the country could take advantage of these migration flows in the future.

Their report “Measuring and Optimising the Economic and Social Impacts of Migration in Georgia” is not yet available online, but you can find an early summary. Robert and Karine’s work is part of the global project “Development on the Move” that was created by the Global Development Network and the Institute for Public Policy Research. It aims at analyzing the impact of migration on development around the world, and how these flows can be profited on with adapted public policy, as we had previously mentioned in our blog.

Georgia is one of six countries that have been selected for in-depth quantitative and qualitative studies. In this particular case, CRRC carried out the fieldwork, and we are happy to see our high-quality data used for valuable public policy advice.

Please let us know if you would like to receive the full document once it gets released publicly.

Migration in Georgia: Launching the "Development on the Move" Project

ISET and CRRC today launched the Development on the Move (DOTM) Project. The aim of this project is to map how migration impacts development in multiple dimensions. DOTM is funded by the Global Development Network, and coordinated by the Institute for Public Policy Research in London. 250 proposals from throughout the world competed to participate in this project, and we were extremely happy to be selected as one of the six winning teams.

Various stakeholders from the Georgian Government including National Bank, international organizations (OSCE, ILO, IOM), embassies, NGOs and leading Georgian researchers participated. Danny Sriskandarajah represented IPPR.


After introducing the project to the audience, a very focused debate followed, highlighting various migration impacts. These include remittance impacts on labor and real estate markets, changing gender roles in families, drug abuse in the absence of social control, de-skilling through low-level exploitative employment abroad, as well as various potential positive impacts, such as attitudinal change, language learning, and exposure to specialized education. (More exhaustive minutes will be available on request.)

A second component was a review of the existing policy gaps. There continues to be a mismatch between EU and local expectations. Citizenship, taxation and custom laws may discourage return migration. Embassies do not really serve as points of contact, but often are avoided, especially by undocumented migrants. Coordination of agencies, systematic gathering of quality data, and data sharing were also highlighted as particular issues.

We encourage anyone interested in migration to get in touch with us if they want to find out more about this project. We're planning a specialized mailing list, and migration-specific website for Georgia will be launched in the next few weeks by the Danish Refugee Council. More details about the international projects are available here.