Civilitas Foundation’s research fellow Irena Grigoryan, who has been conducting research since December 2013 as part of the Open Society Foundation’s Young Professional Development Program, has successfully accomplished her study.
The results of her study “Return and Other Forms of In-Migration in Armenia: Overview of Policies and Practices” will be sent to all institutions engaged in migration policy-making and program implementation, as well as other researchers working in the field. Civilitas will continue discussing both the issue of in-migration policy-making and the recommendations endorsed by Irena in her study.
The study rightfully observes that the topic of emigration receives a large share of public attention and concern and the grand narratives of media and political debates are woven around the escalating scale of emigration from the country and the threats of depopulation.
Yet the migration flows in Armenia are not unidirectional. Talking about emigration while overlooking the actual and possible inward flows, provides only a part of the whole picture. Without understanding the motivations and reasons behind in-migration, it is impossible to have a comprehensive solution for mitigating the out-migration, because those two are interrelated processes. The in-migration issues in Armenia receive less policy, programmatic and public attention, despite the fact that Armenia is a receiving country for various groups of people – returning migrants, repatriates, refugees (mainly of Armenian descent) and, on a smaller scale, immigrants.
The aim of the study is to suggest policy and institutional improvements for migration management in Armenia, with a focus on return and other forms of in-migration. The goal of the study is to review Armenia’s migration-related policies and national strategies in order to extract and introduce information on return migration and other forms of in-migration occurring in the country. The scope of the study is limited and does not include issues related to refugees or internally displaced persons.
The paper is structured around four parts, each of them concluding with a summary of observations and findings by the author.
Part I is an introductory section about the relevance of the return migration management agenda, the definitions and types of return, and the perceptions about the return phenomenon. The section also refers to the international trends of the return migration policies and their common features.
Part II helps explain how integrated the migration issues are in the current normative frameworks of Armenia. This section introduces the migration-related legislation and policies in the country, and the share of in-migration in those documents. Among the reviewed documents are the national strategies and the migration-related legal and policy frameworks (national and international), especially those focusing on return migration and other forms of in-migration.
Part III introduces the return and reintegration strategies implemented in Armenia and the actors currently involved in the institutionalization of return migration programs in Armenia.
Part IV suggests policy and institutional improvements that have been used in other countries sharing common migratory trends with Armenia, namely Poland, Estonia and Slovenia. This section is followed by a number of recommendations.
The full paper in English is available here. An Armenian synopsis is available here. Civilitas encourages readers to provide feedback by emailing at info@civilitasfoundation.org and participate in forthcoming discussions.