Currently, those attraction points are universities and high tech development centers, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Cambridge University, Silicon Valley or Bangalore. Ghazaryan believes that it is a positive trend that those centers attract high level professionals from Armenia and this tendency needs to be encouraged. “In our interdependent world, there are great number of possibilities allowing those professionals to contribute their skills and capacities to their home country,” stressed Ghazaryan.

Economic Reasons vs. Potential for Development

In his study about the reasons inducing migration, Hrant Mikayelyan, a researcher at the Caucasus Institute claims that the biggest waves of emigration in Armenia have been observed during periods of economic crisis, such as the one in 2008 when Armenia’s economy contracted by 9.7 percent and GDP fell by 15.7 percent in the first five months of 2009. Ghazaryan noted that almost 80 percent of today’s emigration is because of economic concerns, while the remaining 20 percent is human development emigration. Labor is closely intertwined with economic reasons, because the size of the income according to Mikayelyan’s research is the primary triggering factor for emigration. But there are other, sometimes equally important reasons as well, such as better working conditions and environment, high level of social security and healthcare insurance.

Some of the direct consequences of migration are urbanization as a result of internal migration and an aging population, which if not mitigated can pose a substantial threat to Armenia’s security. The Statistical Service of Armenia estimates that about 36.3 percent (1,079,400) of Armenia’s population live in Yerevan. An overcrowded capital and highly centralized economy in almost every sector have been identified as major economic and social challenges for Armenia in recent years. But Ghazaryan noted that urbanization is a global trend, which intensified with the first Industrial Revolution and continues until now when the world is experiencing already the Fourth Industrial Revolution.