Political economy of the migration intentions in the South Caucasus

Abstract

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to study political and economic factors affecting temporary and permanent emigration intentions in the countries of the South Caucasus. Through logistic analysis the study attempts to find out the differences of importance of the economic and political factors in the shaping people’s intentions to emigrate temporarily or permanently. Although many researchers focus on the economic factors affecting people’s migration intentions, our study shows that people’s political attitudes can be more decisive for the permanent migration intentions than economic conditions. Our study also tries to understand whether in more authoritarian countries people’s political attitudes are more important in determining the emigration intentions than economic factors.