The project aims to estimate the impact of foreign students on Georgia’s economy.

Since 2013, ICMPD has been carrying out the EU-funded project “Enhancing Georgia's Migration Management” (ENIGMMA). The project assists the Georgian government in managing and improving the conditions for migrants in Georgia.

Within this project, ISET-PI will help to assess the impact of foreign students on the Georgian economy. Within the scope of this cooperation, Giorgi Papava (ISET graduate and currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago) and Laura Manukyan (ISET graduate and research associate at the Social Policy Research Centre of ISET-PI) collaborate with Tamar Zurabishvili (migration expert at ICMPD) and Professor Biagio Speciale (Paris School of Economics). While there are not as many international students in Georgia as there are in countries like the USA and France, preliminary analyses already suggest that foreign students make a non-negligible contribution to Georgia’s economy through their consumption spendings and tuition payments as well as in non-monetary ways.