Merab’s hostel lobby is crowded with English men mid-way to Monogolia, where they will donate the car they are driving there and take the plane back home. Twenty of them taking part in the ‘race’ to Mongolia stayed in Merab’s hostel last night, one of the few cheap places to stay in a city where living costs are low but budget accommodation is rare. The sky-high prices of the Marriott or Radisson hotels don’t appeal to the penny-pinching backpackers who are a new brand of tourist in Tbilisi.

This is the niche market which Merab is hoping to capitalise on, in this high-ceilinged apartment on well-known Barnov street which he has turned into a homely but affordable hostel. He has had a personal hand in all the renovation work, having worked in this sector during the 16 years he spent living in Berlin.

Merab moved to Germany in the 90’s to study, just like many Georgians in the years following the fall of the Soviet Union. He finished his studies, got married, and set up a business in Berlin. Last year, however, a combination of factors led to his decision to return to Georgia: he had divorced, and no longer had the right to stay on in Germany as the spouse of a citizen (he had not himself been awarded citizenship), and his father passed away, leaving his mother alone in Tbilisi. So he returned, with experience of the world and a healthy bank balance, and threw himself into making a business work in his home city.

Merab benefitted from the €2000 business grant which the EU Targeted Initiative for Georgia (launched simultaneously with the readmission agreement, in March 2011) offers to certain selected returnees who apply within a year of their return from a foreign country. He admits that this was a useful help, but ads that it only represents about one tenth of his outlay. The rest came from his savings and money borrowed from friends in Germany. He is wary of taking out a bank loan in Georgia; interest rates are high and repayment conditions are restrictive.

Merab’s story is a concrete example of the benefits of circular migration. The skills and money Merab earned in Germany are being put back into Georgia, where they will undoubtedly have positive knock-on effects. Yet, sadly, it is not the story of the other returned migrants I have spoken to since arriving in Georgia. Nino, who worked as a home help in Greece, and her husband who did manual work there, stand in their small shop on the ground floor of a high-rise block in a run-down district of Tbilisi and tell me that after being awarded the EU grant, they were obliged to take out a €4000 bank loan, at 20% interest, in order to be able to meet all the costs of opening. Even with this, they are still only renting the shop and their apartment in the flats above, where they live with their 4-month old son, so they have absolutely no security.

Nino, her husband and baby in the entrance to their shop

Nino’s story is much more typical than Merab’s. Most Georgian migrants have had underpaid, black-market jobs abroad, have been prevented from working by labour laws, or have spent time in detention centres. On their return to the country, whether it is ‘voluntary’ or forced, they have no savings and are morally and physically exhausted by difficult, poorly-paid work and by trying – and failing – to negotiate their right to stay on in Europe. At this point, the €2000 from the EU which some of them receive is little more than laughable.

Instead of giving post-deportation hand-outs, the EU would make life a lot easier for itself and those migrants seeking to participate in its wealth by stopping its excessive interference with their lives. It is the restrictions on migrants’ rights to work and the constant danger of detention and deportation which stop migrants from being able to earn a decent living and construct a normal life. If they had this choice, and the possibility of saving a little, then they might well, like Merab, return to their country for spells or permanently, and help to share the wealth which Europe – despite claims to the contrary – wishes to prevent the ‘South’ from having a part in. Merab’s story is an encouraging exception. An example of what could happen if people were given more freedom in a context which, for now, remains one of concerted discrimination against migrants by the EU.