No. 4 19 March 2009 Abkhazia South Ossetia caucasus Adjara analytical digest Nagorno- Karabakh www.jeffersoninst.org www.laender-analysen.de www.res.ethz.ch www.boell.ge Migration, refugees and IDPs ■ ANALYSIS Leaving and Being Left Behind: Labor Migration in Georgia 2 By Teona Mataradze and Florian Mühlfried, Halle/Saale ■ OPINION PoLL Motives and Views of Migrants from Georgia 5 ■ ANALYSIS Becoming “Locals”: Refugees Before and After the State Housing Program in Armenia 7 By Milena Baghdasaryan, Halle/Saale ■ ANALYSIS Russia’s “Internal South Caucasus:” The Role and Importance of Caucasus Societies for Russia 11 By Sergey Markedonov, Moscow ■ STATISTICS Migration from and to the Countries of the South Caucasus, 1990–98 15 Remittance Flows 18 Refugees 20 ■ CHRONICLE From 17 February to 17 March 2009 21 Jefferson Research Centre for East Center for Security HEinRich Böll STifTung DGO European Studies, Bremen Institute Studies, ETH Zurich SouTH CauCaSuS caucasus analytical caucasus analytical digest 04/09 digest analysis Leaving and Being Left Behind: Labor Migration in Georgia By Teona Mataradze and Florian Mühlfried, Halle/Saale Abstract A survey of labor migration in two villages shows contrasting trends as some migrants seek long-term employ- ment, while others are primarily interested in temporary jobs. However, recent political and economic devel- opments have greatly influenced these patterns. While fewer men now seek construction work in the Russian Federation, women still find employment as maids and nannies in Italy and Greece. The result is changing gen- der roles in the village. Remittances are declining, having a negative impact on Georgia’s economy overall. Russia Cracks Down or South Ossetia. The latter route was considered rela- On 14 October 2006, the Russian immigration office tively safe, but expensive. According to Gogitidze, one and the Federal Security Service (FSB) branches in had to pay approximately $1,500 on the way to diverse Dagestan jointly launched the special operation “Avto- state employees and other authorities. strada,” with the goal of cracking down on illegal labor After the outbreak of war between Russia and Geor- migrants. During this operation, the authorities detained gia in August 2008, the South Ossetian transit corridor the Georgian citizen Giorgi Gogitidze (name changed) to the Russian Federation ceased to exist. At the same and deported him to Georgia, even though he held a time, the world economic crisis crippled other coun- valid one-year visa. He had not registered in Dagestan, tries favored by Georgian labor migrants, such as Spain. however, and consequently violated Russian residence The combination of events has had severe consequences regulations. for the many Georgian families dependent on incomes According to Gogitidze, he tried to register, but was generated abroad, as well as for the Georgian economy unable to do so because the Dagestani administration in general. refused his request, even when offered bribes. In earlier In the following sections, we sketch the current state years, registration was never a major obstacle for Gogiti- of migration affairs in two Georgian villages and outline dze, but after Georgia arrested four alleged Russian spies the local consequences of international and national pol- in the summer of 2006, things became difficult for Geor- itics. In our conclusion, we extrapolate from the com- gians like him who came to the Russian Federation as parison of our two field sites to identify general trends seasonal workers. He heard about mass deportations of regarding labor migration in Georgia. The empirical Georgians from Moscow and St. Petersburg in the news, data for this comparison come from our one-year field- and his inability to register turned him into a potential work conducted in the two respective villages in 2006/07 deportee, too. Before he was actually deported to Geor- within the framework of the research group ‘Caucasian gia, Gogitidze said that he was held at a camp close to Boundaries and Citizenship from Below’ at the Max the Dagestani border for a couple of days and forced to Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. work. Yet, his main complaint was that he was not able to secure the money he had expected to earn in Dag- Migration in Sats’ire (Western Georgia) estan to support his family. Sats’ire is located in the Tq’ibuli district (Western The case of Gogitidze is far from unique. According Georgia), which has the highest rate of outmigration to Georgian sources, approximately 4,000 Georgians in Georgia. Within the last twenty years, the popula- were deported between September 2006 and February tion in Tkibuli city has dropped from 22,000 to 13,900 2007 on grounds of violating the Russian residency rules. persons, and the decline in Sats’ire is equally dramatic. After their return home, however, many of the deportees Forty-six of the officially registered 275 households managed to enter the Russian Federation again, despite have left the village, meaning that roughly one fifth being officially banned from the country for a couple of the families are now gone. Twenty-seven of the 100 of years. Some of them bribed the border guards, but households we interviewed in Sats’ire (2007) have most considered the border between Georgia and the migrants residing either abroad, or in the Georgian Russian Federation too difficult to cross. Consequently, capital Tbilisi (qualified by the villagers as “migrants”, most Georgian labor migrants took other routes, either too). The overall number of migrants from these fam- via Ukraine (a country they can enter without a visa), ilies is 48. 2 caucasus analytical caucasus analytical digest 04/09 digest The gender and age distributions of the migrants Migration in Kvemo Alvani (Eastern say a lot about the general pattern of migration. 75% Georgia) of migrants are men and 25% are women. The larg- The village Kvemo Alvani, with roughly 3,500 inhabit- est group of migrants (41.7%) is between 31 and 40 ants, nestles among the foothills of the Caucasian moun- years old. Accordingly, middle-aged males make up tain range in the province Kakheti. It is predominantly most of the migrants. Their absence from their native inhabited by ethnic Tushetians, traditional highland- villages and the disproportionately high number of ers who were settled to Kvemo and Zemo Alvani by the women, children, and old men who remain have dras- Soviet authorities mainly in the 1950s. While Sats’ire tically changed the structure of labor power at the local is located in a region with the highest rate of outmigra- level. tion in Georgia, the percentage of households with out- The educational background of the migrants contra- migrants is even higher in the village of Kvemo Alvani dicts popular “brain drain” arguments, since only 25% (26.2%). These high figures reflect the fact that seasonal of the Satsire migrants had higher education. We should migration has been a part of the Tushetian household note, however, that higher education is more common economy for centuries, an explanatory factor we elabo- in Georgian cities, than villages. Additionally, the spe- rate further in the conclusion. cific features of the Tkibuli District have to be taken into In Kvemo Alvani, the majority of migrants are men account. During Soviet times, it was a highly industrial (59.5%), but women play a far more significant role area, acquiring less qualified labor power, which influ- (40.5% vs. 25%) than they do in Sats’ire. This differ- enced the number of people with higher education. Post- ence is directly related to the migration destination: soviet Georgia liquidated the enterprises (mines, facto- Whereas the Russian Federation (27%) is considered to ries, agricultural units), where the majority of the local be a place for male labor migration, primarily for con- population worked, and jobs for poorly qualified labor struction work (total 29,7%), women favor countries became a scarce resource. Before migrating, the local like Greece (37,8%) and Italy (10,8%) where they can migrants were mostly employed within state institutions work as maids and nannies (total 35,1%). Most of the (35.4%) or were unemployed (35.4%). migrants are between 21 and 40 years old (67,5%), but In their host countries, half of the migrants live people older than 50 also leave their hometown (21,6%), without legal documents. The lack of appropriate papers usually driven by need and despair. is the first restraint for the migrants, since it deprives As in Sats’ire, most migrants from Kvemo Alvani them of access to lucrative and legal employment, and were formerly either unemployed (29.7%) or worked in forces them to take jobs for unskilled workers (39,6% of state institutions (24.3%). In contrast, however, at least migrants are construction workers). The villagers have 16.2% were involved in agriculture before migrating – a some ideas about which destinations are more profit- sector of no relevance in Sats’ire. In Kvemo Alvani, even able or easily accessible, but the decision on where to fewer migrants have finished higher education (18.9%), go depends on various factors: having social connec- which again points to the fact that no “brain drain” can tions there, employment possibilities, language skill, be observed in the Georgian countryside. and so on. The Russian Federation is the destination A striking difference between the two cases is the for the largest number of local labor migrants (70,4% time span of migration. Whereas most migrants from of outmigrants are living and working in Russia). The Sats’ire had been away for at least 2 years (79.2%), almost massive migration flow from Sats’ire to Russia started half of the Kvemo Alvanian migrants (43.2%) left their around 1993–94 because villagers had an easy oppor- village in the previous few months.