ABSTRACT
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, international labor migration became an indispensable feature of everyday life for many families living in the post-Soviet republics, including Georgia. Between 1989 and 2002, the population of Georgia shrank by more than one million people mainly because of decreased fertility rates and increased emigration. 2 However, poor organization of demographic statistics in contemporary Georgia makes it difficult to get reliable information on population movements in general and on the rate of labor migration in particular; hence, it is hard to get precise numbers of Georgian citizens who emigrated in order to work abroad. As various studies suggest, up to 10 percent of Georgian households have at least one emigrant, although this number varies in different regions of Georgia. 3
