Authors

Discussion

This paper analyses the educational choices of Russian migrants in Georgia following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the resulting mass emigration. Drawing on ethnographic observation, qualitative interviews, and digital ethnography, it explores how families make schooling decisions within a context of legal ambiguity, social liminality, and political uncertainty. The study identifies five main educational trajectories currently available to Russian migrants in Tbilisi: Georgian schools, Georgian schools with Russian-language sectors, newly founded Russian schools, international schools, and Russian online education. These options reveal a complex spectrum of strategies that reflect families’ future orientations, political views, and socioeconomic positions.

Rather than interpreting these choices within the established binaries of “integration” or “continuity,” “migrant” or “expatriate,” the paper argues that Russian migrants’ educational decisions constitute a field of negotiation where personal aspirations intersect with political constraints. Schooling becomes a decisive element of migrants’ broader life strategies—whether to integrate into Georgian society, maintain connections with Russia, or prepare for further re-emigration. These decisions are informed not only by practical considerations such as affordability and accreditation but also by moral and political evaluations of belonging and distance from the Russian state.

By situating educational choice at the intersection of migration, politics, and everyday uncertainty, the paper contributes to rethinking education as an arena where migrants enact agency and construct new forms of social positioning in post-imperial and post-conflict settings.