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Paper abstract:

This paper focuses on the Russia-Ukraine war and its impact on the socio-economic, political, and cultural life of the neighbouring country, Georgia. In 2022, 222,274 Russian immigrants entered Georgia, and their influx triggered the debate about migrants' lives in Georgian society and its socio-economic and political dynamics. The research tries to answer the question, what are the Russian migrant's experiences in Georgia, and how are they dealing with social, political and economic life? The study is based on qualitative sociological research and data collected through in-depth interviews with Russian migrants. Research reveals that most of the migrants were economically active, and the majority of the immigrants were men, that somehow reflects the gender-specific phenomena.

Interestingly, 30% of the respondents were self-employed, the remaining 70% were earning their livelihood by depending upon the labour market of the other countries, and most of them were engaged in IT-related fields. Migrants invested in real estate or started small businesses such as opening cafe-bars, entertainment facilities, sports, yoga halls, and dog hotels and started new unexploited economic activities. All the respondents opened bank accounts in Georgia and were not having problems from the structural level institutions. Apart from this, some respondents were sceptical and perceived that at the societal level, their presence was not welcomed. In this regard, one of the respondents shared “Russians are not welcomed in Georgia. I have never seen such attitude in Turkey. This makes me feel uncomfortable”. This research concludes that the Russian migrant in Georgia can be a possible source to generate new economic activities, can be considered as potentially productive human resources, and may impact the labour market. However, there is a potential threat connected with the growing economic activities of the Russian migrants, so this is the state’s responsibility to adopt precautionary measures which may safeguard the interest of the state and its people since people have a reservation about the growing influx of Russian in Georgia which is based on the historical deals between Georgian and Russia.