Resettlement of Ecologically Displaced Persons Solution of a Problem or Creation of a New? Eco-Migration in Georgia 1981-2006
Publisher: ECMI Volume: 72 pages, pdf Description: Resettlement and internal migration is not a new phenomenon in Georgia. Already in the 19th century, Georgians were relocated to populate sparsely inhabited border regions. Later with the Soviet collectivization of the 1930s-1950s, thousands of mountainous people were resettled, forcibly or voluntarily, to lowland parts of the country. In addition, regions that had been emptied of their indigenous populations during Stalin’s mass deportations of the 1940s were then repopulated with Georgians from other regions. In the 1950s and 1960s in particular, much of the population of the mountain regions of Ajara was resettled into other regions, in order to regulate the demographic balance and avoid over-population in the mountains.