April 22, Georgia – On the Move Caucasus Research Resource Centers & International School of Economics at TSU Robert Tchaidze, ISET & IMF Tina Zurabishvili, CRRC & Telavi State University

April 22, Why Georgia? Socially minded reforms top new government agenda; Rose Revolution & Russian embargo changing migration trends with important impacts and implications for development; Economic and business climate reforms and high growth create prospects for return migration and immigration; IDPs and ethnic minority communities create different patterns within the same country; Only descriptive research with limited policy implications for migration and development carried out. 2

April 22, Migration Dynamics in Georgia Post-soviet reorganization of industrial geography and the resulting movement of labor; The effect of conflicts in the region on movement of people; The “westward” reorientation of emigration is believed to be changing gender and human capital composition of migrants; Radical current reformation of the economic, legal and political life and the resulting change in migration flows.

April 22, Policies Pull Factors European Neighborhood Policy: return and readmission agreements. Push Factors Re-conceptualization of social welfare net, active labor market policies; Development of a regional policy: minimizing push factors in vulnerable communities. Other factors Banking and taxation policies to increase legal flow of remittances; Tax breaks for return migrants.

April 22, Impact Economic: GDP structure; remittances; brain drain/gain; real estate; rural-urban composition; anything else? Social: Ethnic map being re-drawn; Gender roles being re-formulated; Family structures being re-organized; Georgian way of life being re-defined; Anything else?

April 22, Analyzing Migration Impacts, Causality Hard to make causality claims. Additional difficulty posed by self-selection into migration (endogeneity problem). Econometric “toolbox” for dealing with causality issues. 6

April 22, Why us? Interdisciplinary team of sociologists, economists and public policy analysts; Integrated in international network of scholars; Dedicated to high quality and new techniques; Experience in fieldwork; Sponsor and implement migration research in the region; Will do our own and support more research on topics not covered by GDN/ippr. 7

April 22, Timetable Stakeholder interviews – May 2008 onwards Household survey – Fall 2008 Very preliminary results and the DOTM conference – January 2009 Empirical evaluations, policy recommendations – 2009 The DOTM conference, conclusions, datasets go public – January 2010

April 22, Stakeholder Interviews In-depth interviews with experts in the field of migration. The experts will represent government institutions, international organizations, private financial institutions, NGOs. Interviews to be conducted starting from May, 2008.

April 22, Major issues: Migration flows; Brain drain/gain; Remittances; Emigrants’ investments; Migration policy; Other issues you are interested in.

April 22, Household survey Based on experts’ assessments, regions of the country will be selected; in each of these regions, a sample of households will be drawn which gives us a representative sample of households with: Returned migrants; Migrants who are still abroad; Households with no migrants; To be conducted in September-October, 2008.

April 22, Major goals: Collecting countrywide data on the experiences of the households affected by migration and compare to other households without migrants. What other questions do you want to ask?

April 22, More data sources: World Bank Remittances and Migration Survey; Georgia Integrated Household Survey (IHS); CRRC Data Initiative 2007; National Bank of Georgia, official remittance data; OSCE Use of Remittances Survey; ILO Migration Survey. Other sources that you know of?

April 22, Questions? Suggestions? Comments? Recommendations?