Introduction
In light of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, recent waves of Russian migration have been viewed critically by the receiving societies. After February 2022, and especially after the start of the partial military mobilization in September 2022, hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens moved mainly to countries that did not require entry visas, such as Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, and Central Asian states. Fearing border closures, military conscription, and, in some cases, political persecution in Russia, many Russian citizens took advantage of Georgia’s liberal migration regime and currently reside there, mostly in the cities of Tbilisi and Batumi. Within a short period, Russian migrants have become visible and important actors and consumers in the Georgian capital, with economic and social implications (Zanatta Reference Zanatta2023, Chumburidze and Gavrilova Reference Chumburidze and Gavrilova2023, Kuleshova et al. Reference Kuleshova, Chigaleichik, Podolsky and Baranova2023, Baranova Reference Baranova and Podolsky2024, Darchiashvili et al. Reference Darchiashvili, Ketevan, Nikita and Caress2024). The housing market is one of the areas where intensive Russian-Georgian encounters have been taking place since March 2022, leading to a radical increase in the cost of rental apartments.Footnote 1
This study discusses the emergence of informal sanctions in Georgia and the rise of everyday patriotism as a local response to the mass arrival of Russian citizens in Georgia after February 2022. While the Georgian government expected Russian migration to have positive economic effects, including an increase in financial flows from Russia to Georgia, the response of the Georgian urban population to Russian migrants has been rather ambivalent and critical (Mühlfried Reference Mühlfried2023; Darieva and Golova Reference Darieva and Golova2023; Seskuria Reference Seskuria2023; Darchiashvili et al. Reference Darchiashvili, Ketevan, Nikita and Caress2024). We argue that by imposing informal sanctions to restrict Russian tenants’ access to housing resources, Georgian homeowners appropriated part of the Tbilisi housing market as an effective tool to express their patriotic sentiments to Russian migrants, but also to their own government, albeit in a way that was invisible to government officials. These critical responses took different forms and, in many cases, can be interpreted as everyday practices of resistance developed independently of state rhetoric.Footnote 2 This response is part of other types of mistrust and protest actions against state power and its geo-political strategies in times of crisis.
Georgian homeowners, as opposed to the political elites, initiated individual actions in the name of the nation, advocating for its protection “from below” and offering an alternative view of the consequences of the Russian migration to Georgia. In this way, they expressed solidarity with the rhetoric of the opposition parties, albeit in a defensive and subtle manner. We argue that focusing on the spontaneous responses of ordinary people, from bottom-up, can reveal practices that enact patriotic sensibilities in a time of crisis, and allow us to deepen our understanding of how people participate in public order independently of their state-sponsored counterparts and visible public protests. Thus, this study examines how Georgian homeowners in Tbilisi’s short-term rental market have developed informal sanctions in response to Russian migration. Specifically, we address two research questions: (1) What forms do these informal sanctions take? (2) How do they function as mechanisms of informal governance and expressions of everyday nationalism?
In the following sections, we outline our understanding of the notion of everyday nationalism and patriotism from below in relation to informality. This approach can open up a new research on performing everyday nationalism through the lens of informality studies. We then identify a variety of sanctioning patterns and their motives as manifested in local social media homeowner groups engaged in heated online debates, and show the evolution and dynamics of informal sanctions by outlining four main forms: rejection, discomfort, avoidance, and exploitation. We propose to examine informal sanctions as everyday practices of collective resistance and as a tool to control insecure “national goods,” such as the apartment rental market.
Data and Methods
The study is based on a diverse qualitative dataset, but primarily relies on the results of an analysis of social media narratives data, collected in selected Facebook groups of Georgian Airbnb and Booking.com hosts, including online group discussions and public opinions expressed in 2022.Footnote 3 Analyzing social media narratives exhibited within the groups helped us gain a broad understanding of the general attitudes, trends, and perceptual patterns among the hosts.
In addition, five semi-structured interviews were conducted with Airbnb and Booking.com hosts in Tbilisi, as well as eight expert interviews with representatives of oppositional political parties. Interviews with representatives of oppositional parties helped to develop the theoretical framework for informal sanctions and to explain their broader political and social functions. The semi-structured interviews with hosts were designed to explore the emotional, economic, and political factors that influenced hosts’ behavior towards new Russian tenants. Specific questions aimed to understand their decisions to accept or reject booking requests and their perceptions of the Georgian government’s response to Russian migration. In addition, we designed the questions to understand the individual and collective feelings behind their decisions to balance economic needs with moral concerns when hosting Russian and other tenants.
In terms of the validity of the research data, the in-depth interviews provide nuanced insights into specific patterns of host-tenant relationships observed in the Facebook data. It should be emphasized that the scope of the semi-structured qualitative interviews with hosts was limited due to social and political sensitivities, and many hosts were reluctant to discuss their attitudes towards Russian migrants and declined to be interviewed. Although the number of interviews was small, the data collected was sufficient to complement the findings of the social media analysis and achieve our main goal: a more comprehensive understanding of the issue.
The interviews and the data collected from the social media groups were combined in the analysis and compared. The coding of the interviews and the Facebook group discussions was done simultaneously, and the development of the categories reflected the themes discussed in both. It is important to acknowledge that the data from the interviews and social media are different, since the Facebook group discussants are expressing themselves publicly in front of an audience, while the interviews occurred in face-to-face conversations. In the social media narrative analyses, we paid attention to the social context and the different performative strategies that actors might use to create the desired impression on each other, basically what Erving Goffman called “front stage” behavior (1959).
Therefore, posts in Facebook groups were often more patriotic, and hosts took pride in their commitment not to rent their apartments to Russian citizens. Their emotional posts may be driven by a desire to gain social recognition from other group members by demonstrating their “moral integrity,” which they earned by privileging patriotic convictions over financial interest. By contrast, the interviewees were more considered and acknowledged their economic needs and reliance on Russian tenants.
Patriotism from below: A conceptual framework
This study builds on innovative approaches to understanding the production and performance of everyday nationalism in modern nation states by emphasizing the role of informality in shaping patriotism from below. There is a growing literature on practices, agencies, and enactments of everyday nationalism (Knott Reference Knott2015; Goode Reference Paul Goode2016; Goode et al. Reference Paul Goode, Stroup and Elizaveta2023). This literature is mostly based on Michael Billig’s approach to “banal nationalism” (Reference Billig1995), which highlights taken-for-granted, ordinary signs of nationalism as re-enactments of a state-sponsored ideology and imaginaries in everyday life, as it were a bottom-up reproduction of state discourses and symbols. The recent concept of everyday nationalism (Goode Reference Paul Goode, Stroup and Elizaveta2023; Knott 2017; Fox and Miller-Idriss Reference Fox and Miller-Idriss2008) is close to the concept of banal nationalism, but it underlines that national sentiments are not only informed by state institutions and powerful elites who impose their ideas about the nation on the population from above. Rather, the term everyday nationalism posits that these ideas are not passively consumed by ordinary citizens but considers the role of human agency in constructing and reproducing nationalism from below (Nikunen Reference Nikunen2018).
Similarly, and more recently, the term patriotism from below draws on imaginations and practical experiences that can develop independently or alongside their state-sponsored counterparts (Daucè et al. Reference Daucé, Anne Le and Kathy2013). The term patriotism from below has come to describe a feeling of the individual directed to a group from a non-state perspective (Daucè et al. Reference Daucé, Anne Le and Kathy2013: 5), a more positively defined form of patriotism, which is also shaped by liberalism, the market, consumption, and individual aspirations.
While the concept of everyday nationalism (Fox and Miller-Idriss Reference Fox and Miller-Idriss2008; Knott Reference Knott2015) helps explain how national identity is enacted through daily interactions, this study argues that patriotism from below should be understood within a broader framework of informality and social regulation. This study proposes to examine Georgian patriotic responses to the mass immigration of Russian citizens through the lens of informality studies (Polese 2017, 2022). In this regard, it helps us to understand the nature of the spontaneous practices of homeowners that manifest their national belonging and a desire for action. Informality is not merely a feature of nationalistic expression but a structural response to governance gaps and economic uncertainties (Polese Reference Polese2023; Hilbrandt et al. Reference Hilbrandt, Alves and Tuvikene2017).
Informality as social regulation
To better understand the rise of informal sanctions in the housing market, it is essential to position them within the broader literature on informality that extends beyond the field of everyday nationalism. This section connects the discussion of everyday nationalism with the scholarship on informal practices, providing a more comprehensive conceptual foundation.
The term informal practices is widely used in studies of governance, political science, and sociology to describe non-institutionalized and spontaneous actions that influence social or economic behavior, in particular in post-Soviet societies (Polese 2017; Hilbrandt et al. Reference Hilbrandt, Alves and Tuvikene2017). Informality typically arises in response to gaps in formal governance, allowing non-state actors to establish alternative rules and mechanisms of control (Polese and Rekhviashvili Reference Polese and Rekhviashvili2017).
This study proposes to examine Georgian patriotic responses to the mass immigration of Russian citizens through the lens of informality studies (Polese and Rekhviashvili Reference Polese and Rekhviashvili2017, Polese Reference Polese2023). By politicizing everyday interactions with newcomers, Georgian Airbnb and Booking.com hosts engage in what Polese (Reference Polese2023) describes as non-institutionalized social regulation, where informal tactics may reshape market dynamics and reinforce national sentiments.
Informality commonly arises when existing state policies are considered inadequate or morally wrong (Polese Reference Polese2023; Curro Reference Curro2017). Furthermore, informality can gain ground when the state fails to regulate particular domains of public life (Polese Reference Polese2023: 324), as seen in the deregulation of the housing market in Tbilisi (Gentile et al. Reference Gentile, Salukvadze and Gogishvili2015) and Georgia’s liberal migration regime, which has been criticized by many citizens. In such situations, non-state actors engage in informal practices to negotiate or circumvent government policies, thus overcoming the gap between societal values and state norms (Hilbrandt et al. Reference Hilbrandt, Alves and Tuvikene2017: 957).
Thus, by the term informal sanctions, we refer to a set of spontaneous initiatives, small acts, and everyday practices based on a variety of unwritten rules that actors perform to influence and govern their resources (Falk et al. Reference Falk, Fehr and Fischbacher2000; Claridge Reference Claridge2020). Through informal practices, ordinary citizens can challenge state power and undermine state policies while restoring social norms that express their ethnic or national belonging.
More specifically, we draw attention to the informal actions of some individual private homeowners in response to the increased demand for rental accommodation among Russian migrants in Tbilisi in 2022. We observe how, in this case, informal practices are influenced by a specific socio-political context and incorporate a sense of conflict and crisis. As homeowners navigate the absence of state-imposed migration controls, their informal sanctions against Russian tenants function as an everyday practice of resistance against Russian dominance in the region.
Informal, everyday actions often involve a significant degree of creativity and political agency that goes beyond the economic rationale (Hilbrandt et al. Reference Hilbrandt, Alves and Tuvikene2017: 949; Polese and Rekhviashvili Reference Polese and Rekhviashvili2017; Polese Reference Polese2023: 330). In the case of Georgian Airbnb and Booking.com, informal sanctions encompass a wide range of creative tactics to convey a specific attitude and restrict access to national goods, making it difficult for Russian migrants to find accommodation.
The lack of a migration regime and state regulation of the housing market made the inhabitants of Tbilisi feel vulnerable to the socio-economic crisis. Ultimately, private homeowners felt the need to deploy their own informal regulation in order to resist the migration of Russians to Georgia and gain a sense of meaning by participating in a larger political movement in solidarity with Ukraine. Georgian homeowners increasingly assumed the role of non-state gatekeepers, leading to a rapid politicization of the formerly mundane sphere of host-tenant relations. In possession of a resource that newcomers needed, they had the power to apply their own informal regulation, at least in the short term.
Thus, by incorporating perspectives from informality studies, political sociology, and anthropology, this study expands the conceptual lens of everyday nationalism to include non-state mechanisms of control, resistance, and social regulation. The case of Georgia demonstrates how informal sanctions emerge as a response to instability, blending political expressions of nationalism with practical acts of self-governance in an unregulated housing market. We argue that the aforementioned logic of informal sanctions should be read as a practice of resistance transforming banal host-tenant relations into politicized encounters that incorporate patriotic discourses.
Georgia as a destination for Russian migrants
Until recently, Georgia was predominantly a country of out-migration (labor and brain drain migration), and its new role as a receiving society poses serious challenges.Footnote 4 The presence of Russian tourists and citizens is not new for Tbilisi, but it reached a new level in 2022. The mass arrival of hundreds of thousands of men and women with Russian passports in Georgia has provoked fears of a renewed confrontation with Russia and reinforcement of Russian imperial power in Georgia.
Russian migrants in Georgia predominantly identify themselves as relocanty Footnote 5 or “expats” — rather than as immigrants, since they are economically privileged groups in comparison to the average population of the host country.Footnote 6 New migrants in Georgia can mobilize resources and capital remotely to organize their lives in a new place, thereby affecting the dynamics of the local market. A quantitative study estimated that many Russian migrants in Georgia have an average monthly income of 2300 USD, compared to an average monthly income of 550 USD per household in Tbilisi (Kuleshova et al. Reference Kuleshova, Chigaleichik, Podolsky and Baranova2023; Staske & Giucci Reference Kuleshova, Chigaleichik, Podolsky and Baranova2023).Footnote 7 The figures clearly indicate the superior consumption and purchasing power of Russians compared to the local population. In this context, Georgian experts emphasized long-term risks to national security stemming from social and economic inequality between newcomers and the receiving society (Kakachia and Kandelaki Reference Kakachia and Kandelaki2022).Footnote 8
Moderate living costs and low levels of bureaucracy made Georgia an easier destination for Russians than many other European countries. However, according to surveys (OutRush 2022; Silagadze Reference Silagadze2023), Russian migrants tend to view Georgia as a temporary refuge and as a transit country that is not particularly safe for them (Darieva and Golova Reference Darieva and Golova2023). Consequently, in 2023-2024, the number of Russian migrants in Georgia decreased, with some migrants returning to Russia or leaving for a third country.Footnote 9 Georgian migration experts and representatives of local authorities do not expect new migrants from Russia to stay in the country, and as a result, state authorities have made little effort to regulate this migration or introduce an integration policy for newcomers.
Social insecurity in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine underscored the links between the present and past in popular narratives. The traumatic memories of the Russian-Georgian war of August 2008, when Georgia lost control over its sovereign territories (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), and many Georgian civilians were displaced, became more vivid in the receiving society, hindering open communication between newcomers and Georgians. The historical and geopolitical context of the (pre-)Soviet colonial past, the conflict over the de facto states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and critical views of Russia’s traditional perception of Georgia as a tourist destination (Maisuradze Reference Maisuradze2015) all shape ambivalent host-tenant relations.
In this particular social and political context, calls for stricter regulation of border crossings and immigration into Georgia have become louder. With the arrival of Russians after February 2022, private non-state actors began to introduce their own regulations and small-scale restrictions in urban places where migrants and hosts interact. Banks, bars, and cafes became political and ideological spaces as owners expressed support for Ukraine and criticized Russia on stickers and banners (SPnews 2022).
Fear, negative attitudes, and everyday resistance towards Russians in the city are expressed in numerous graffiti in English and Russian with messages such as “Russia kills” and “You are not welcome.” In fact, the streetscape of the capital city demonstrates Georgia’s explicit solidarity with Ukraine, whether in the form of murals and military symbols of regiments fighting in Ukraine, or the Ukrainian national colors and flag. In addition, several opposition parties (Girchi, DroaFootnote 10) called for limiting migration flows from Russia to Georgia and restricting the ability of Russians to buy real estate, register businesses, and obtain residency. In an open letter published by the Open Society Foundation in Georgia on August 16 of 2022, activists and civil society organizations called for the introduction of a visa regime for citizens of the Russian Federation.Footnote 11 The then-president, Salome Zurabishvili, endorsed the campaign.
The most prominent everyday practice of resistance against newcomers in consumer-oriented social spaces was introduced in April 2022 by the Deda Ena (in Georgian: native language) bar in central Tbilisi. Before being allowed to enter the bar, potential clients had to fill out a questionnaire and answer questions such as “Have you ever voted for Putin’s despotic regime?” They also had to confirm that they agreed with statements such as “I am against Russia’s annexation of Georgia,” “I like the famous phrase, ‘Russki Voenii Korabl …’”, and “Crimea is Ukraine.”Footnote 12 The online questionnaire was referred to as a “visa form,” and the implementation of the door policy was framed as an informal “visa policy” (Shukla Reference Shukla2022). While bar owners do not have the authority to ban Russians from entering Georgia, they have managed to discomfort guests on a small scale and have partially excluded them from certain venues for consumption and entertainment.
Tbilisi’s housing market
The influx of Russian migrants to Georgia in February 2022 has added a new dimension to the city’s growth and the sensitivity of its housing market. In 2023, Georgia registered a demographic growth of 1.3% compared to the previous year (Geostat 2023). Simultaneously, migration affected the local housing market and put pressure on Tbilisi’s housing resources. The price of rental apartments rose by 48% in 2022. In Tbilisi, many property owners doubled the rents they were demanding, putting less wealthy local citizens, such as students, refugees, and unemployed citizens at a distinct disadvantage (Kakachia and Kandelaki Reference Kakachia and Kandelaki2022; Zimmermann Reference Zimmermann2022). The unregulated migration of Russians to the Georgian capital city, combined with the absence of adequate legislation to protect tenants’ rights, posed a threat to the urban communities of Tbilisi.
It is important to consider that in the 1990s, the Soviet urban planning system was replaced by weak state institutions and poor governance of the housing sector, which encouraged unregulated privatization, unrestricted market-driven development, informal construction activities, and the growth of housing inequality and segregation (Salukvadze Reference Salukvadze, Gogishvili and Coppola2019: 27). The internal migration of a significant number of vulnerable groups, such as internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the conflict regions of Abkhazia and the so-called South Ossetia and young people from rural areas, posed a major challenge to the Tbilisi housing market by 2022 (Salukvadze et al. Reference Salukvadze, Sichinava and Gogishvili2014; Kabachnik et al. Reference Kabachnik, Mitchneck, Mayorova and Regulska2014). Georgian state authorities have not developed any specific policies to ensure the availability of affordable housing and protect economically marginalized groups from eviction. In the absence of a state housing policy, deregulation and a neoliberal approach to housing questions continue to prevail in contemporary Tbilisi.
In many instances, the superior purchasing power of Russians meant that local tenants were replaced by Russian newcomers, as local property owners sought to take advantage of the situation by doubling the monthly rents they charged (Seturidze Reference Seturidze2023; Avetisyan and Shoshiashvili Reference Avetisyan and Shoshiashvili2022). Students are among the most vulnerable groups, as their return from Covid-related distance learning to in-class teaching coincided with the arrival of Russian migrants. They were unable to find affordable housing and found it difficult to continue their studies offline by 2022 (Zimmermann Reference Zimmermann2022). Furthermore, the increasing popularity of short-term rentals contributed to closing the rental gap in particularly desirable neighborhoods such as Vake, Saburtalo, Vera, and Sololaki, reinforcing a trend of gentrification, as seen in many other capital cities worldwide (Wachsmuth and Weisler Reference Wachsmuth and Weisler2018). According to real estate experts, the rental prices did not decrease in 2023 and remained at historically high levels. The uncertainty surrounding the permanence of the new migrant population made it difficult to predict long-term trends. However, the market continued to see increased demand, particularly in central districts like Vake, Saburtalo, and others.Footnote 13
Performing informal sanctions in the housing market
The following section outlines four main forms of informal sanctions — rejecting, discomforting, avoiding, and exploiting — developed by Georgian Airbnb and Booking.com hosts to regulate Russian migrants’ access to rental housing. The boundaries between these four tactics are not clear-cut, and we use this typology to generalize our observations. These practices should be understood as informal governance mechanisms (Polese Reference Polese2023) that emerge when formal state regulations are absent or perceived to be inadequate. As Falk et al. (Reference Falk, Fehr and Fischbacher2000) argue, informal sanctions play a critical role in enforcing social norms at the micro level, often in ways that are not explicitly codified in law but carry significant social and economic consequences. In this case, Georgian hosts are engaging in spontaneous, decentralized regulatory actions to restrict perceived threats, demonstrating the intersection of everyday nationalism and informal regulation.
Despite the previous positive experiences and economic benefits of hosting Russian tourists prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after February 2022, a significant number of Georgian Airbnb and Booking.com hosts felt fear and mistrust towards the new migrants from Russia. During the initial crisis period, from February to April 2022, the prevailing view among Georgian Airbnb and Booking.com hosts was that all Russian citizens were accountable for the atrocities and injustices committed by the Russian regime.
Every citizen of Russia is responsible for the behavior of their government. If you want people to accept you anywhere, you should take care of your shitty government first. Each Russian is responsible for the innocent blood that is being spilled by their country not only in Ukraine but in Georgia as well.
Faced with an unexpected surge in demand for private rental apartments, local Airbnb and Booking.com homeowners created open and closed Facebook groups to “help short-term renters solve problems, share tips and experiences, and discuss news and everything related to this industry.”Footnote 14 These platforms facilitated the creation of a community of patriotism among homeowners that developed collective actions to counter “injustice” through various forms of informal practices and appeals to national pride. By renting out their apartments to Ukrainian refugees for free or at a significant discount, Georgian Airbnb hosts with “super host” status expressed their solidarity with the Ukrainian struggle. In addition, Airbnb’s withdrawal from the territory of Russia and Belarus in March 2022 gave Georgian hosts a sense of participating in broader political and social processes aimed at stopping the Russian invasion of Ukraine by applying sanctions. One important narrative was related to the politics of Putin, who “starts wars with the motive of protecting his own citizens”:
We should not rent apartments to people from Russia. […] Putin has declared that he will protect his citizens. He will protect them here as well!
Some of the hosts referred to the new Russian migrants as “deserters,” “spies,” and “saboteurs.”
The opposition parties’ narratives of fear were mostly consistent with the sentiments of many Georgians who view the arrival of young Russians as a “passive occupation” of their homeland. In line with Russia’s well-known historical practices of protecting “its” citizens abroad, Russian citizens are strongly associated with the politics of the Russian state, with little consideration given to their personal and political backgrounds. Even exiled Russians, who identify themselves as anti-war and anti-Kremlin activists, are perceived by Tbilisi residents as the embodiment of the Russian imperial state.Footnote 15 In the sense of “categorical identities” that emerged, any individual variations were obscured (Merry Reference Merry, George and Petra2010; Mitchell Reference Mitchell and Banton1966).
Some hosts presented their anti-Russian behavior as a protest against colonial power; renting their apartment to Russians would mean “establishing a regime of slavery” in Georgia and “betraying the country.” Fear of Russia’s military invasion of Georgia shaped individual emotional statements, such as the following two entries: “Russians are a danger for my family” and “No pets, no parties, no smoking, no occupiers.”
A sense of solidarity among Georgian Airbnb hosts resulted in the emergence of decentralized informal practices to sanction Russian clients “from below.” Between March and June 2022, a negative attitude prevailed, and Russians were consistently treated as “undesirable guests.”
Rejecting
Rejection was the initial strategy adopted by Georgian homeowners. The decision to deny Russians access to the Airbnb and Booking.com rental market was framed by strong national sensibilities that shaped host-tenant relations in times of war.
By rejecting Russian tenants, Georgian homeowners prioritize collective national resistance over individual financial interests. To outsiders, this behavior may seem contradictory for the market and consumption, but the logic of fear created a diffuse sense of insecurity among Tbilisi private homeowners that activated a “moralization of subjectivity,” when personalization easily turns into collective stereotyping (Nieswand Reference Nieswand2021). What was once a banal rental arrangement has thus become a politicized sphere dominated by national sentiments and identifications.
The emotional response below captures the general mood of Georgian Airbnb and Booking.com hosts in February and March 2022. Hosts shared news spreading fear, a lack of trust in the government, and calls for sanctional behavior.
Russians are panicking about booking hotels, houses, businesses, and accommodation in all regions of Georgia. It’s also possible that they were saboteurs. If things continue like this, the invasion is inevitable, and more Russians than us will appear in Georgia. Of course, we cannot rely on the government, so the private sector must actively reject their requests. Do not accept Russian tourists for a long time, and do not sell houses, lands, or businesses. I trust my ordinary people more than our government.
In many cases, Georgian host narratives equate Russian migrants entering Georgia with Russian military power. The term “passive occupation,” used to describe this migration flow and its penetration of the housing market, shows how human mobility and military threats from the Russian state converge in Georgian perceptions of Russian migrants. A Georgian Airbnb host explained his reluctance to rent to Russian individuals:
You do not reject a Russian tourist, you reject a citizen of Russia, a citizen of the country that occupies 20% of our country, the one which is now starting a war in Ukraine and killing civilians.
Suspicion and mistrust towards the guests were frequently expressed by Airbnb hosts:
So, with this post, I just want to say that such people are all over the place in Georgia now, there are a lot of such people, and you cannot trust any of them. Do not let them in! We should protect our part of Georgia in this way!
I live on Chavchavadze Street, and when I drove home at night, I had unpleasant feelings — I could not see any Georgian couples with infants in the streets — there were Russian couples with their children everywhere. […] Hipster types, you know … and some IT specialists who work from home. It makes me suspicious. […] So many IT specialists in the city, who can share any type of information from here.
Russian migrants were either seen as representatives of the Russian state acting on behalf of the Kremlin to undermine Georgian state security, or their presence in Tbilisi was seen as a failure of the ruling party to protect Georgian citizens from military intervention by the Russian government. A female Airbnb host explained:
I will never host Russians! If they run from Putin’s regime, they will not come here. On the contrary, they send agents here, people who are not fit for military service!
During the first wave of immigration between March and June 2022, Russians were commonly portrayed by apartment owners as dishonest and unreliable people who might not pay their rent, especially when sanctions against Russian banks led to the malfunctioning of their credit cards. In addition, Russians have often been accused of trying to deprive homeowners of the legal ownership of their apartments.
Georgian Airbnb hosts proudly expressed their commitment to rejecting Russian tenants and their disapproval of other hosts who continued to host them. The latter were cursed and called “traitors”; renting accommodation to Russians was considered an immoral act. This form of behavior is reminiscent of practices of “patriotic consumption” in uncertain times, discussed by Goode (Reference Paul Goode, Stroup and Elizaveta2023) and Bulakh (Reference Bulakh, Polese, Morris, Pawlusz and Seliverstova2018) in Ukraine, as banal products are associated with a hostile state.
Another affective statement by one of the hosts highlights the qualitative change in host-tenant relations: “The time of their genatsvale is over.” The Georgian term genatsvale expresses the idea of warm feelings for “others” and is popular among Russian-speaking tourists or those with Georgian friends. With this phrase, the host suggested that the traditional dynamics of loyalty to Russia no longer apply. In August 2023, the leader of the main opposition party denounced the majority of Russian migrants as “lifestyle migrants,” questioning their political attitudes towards the Russian regime and the legitimacy of their motives to migrate to Georgia:
[Y]ou know, there is no McDonald’s, no more shopping centers in Russia, so it’s much more comfortable for them to come and avail of those Western benefits that they cannot avail of in Russia now because of the sanctions. So, these are the people who basically support the war, or are neutral about the war, which for me means supporting the war.
In addition to revealing the tactics of Airbnb and Booking.com hosts to prevent Russian migrants from accessing the housing market, the statements also demonstrate negative attitudes towards the Georgian government. Hosts became suspicious of the government’s ideology and its passivity. The Georgian government was accused of not protecting the country and the properties of Georgian citizens. This criticism became even harsher in September 2022, following a discussion on the legal registration of Russian migrants in apartments owned by Georgians. Citing the potential risk of Russian tenants refusing to pay their rent or even depriving homeowners of their property rights, a Georgian Airbnb host expressed her frustration with the government:
Today, there is total insecurity in Georgia. The rights of Russians are protected by the current government. As for renting, no matter how many contracts you sign … you can’t be paid any more, and you cannot evict without a court [order] either.
The practice of informal sanctions on the Airbnb rental market contributed to a larger societal response that sought to boycott Russian migrants and thus persuade them to leave Georgia.
The logic of informal sanctions seeks to establish regulatory power “from below” in the absence of state regulation. At the same time, it has contributed to the stereotyping of Russians in Georgia as a threat. The sense of fear and threat did not have any normative implications for the private housing market, but it did engender a diffuse sense of insecurity towards “passive occupiers” that led to the informal mobilization of the hosts of Airbnb and Booking.com short rentals. As a result, individual affective practices of “protecting the territory” were developed, leading to the reinforcement of the collective stereotypes of Russian migrants in Georgia as an imperial embodiment (Gunko Reference Gunko2022).
The rejection of Russian tenants was not just an individual decision but part of a larger, collective enactment of everyday nationalism, reinforced by online discussions and social pressure. As Goode (Reference Paul Goode, Stroup and Elizaveta2023) highlights, everyday nationalism is often performative — people participate in national identity formation by demonstrating loyalty to collective narratives. Within social media groups, rejecting Russian tenants became a publicly endorsed practice, with hosts sharing their refusals as a way of signaling their patriotism to others. These public declarations created a moral economy of national loyalty, where those who refused to accept Russians were praised and those who accepted them were criticized. This aligns with the broader literature on everyday nationalism as a form of micro-level political action, where informal practices serve as mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion within the national community.
Discomforting
For many Georgian hosts, sanctions did not mean an outright rejection of Russian tenants. Instead, they expressed their political views and national sentiments towards their tenants in an ambivalent manner. As one Airbnb host explained prior to the arrival of a Russian tenant:
I am waiting for him, and if he comes, I will make him feel that he is not a “desirable guest” and no one is happy about them being here.
According to the logic of anti-Russian sentiment in the Georgian Airbnb host community, Russian migrants should feel uncomfortable in Georgia and, in this way, return to their homeland as soon as possible and confront Putin’s regime. In order to make Russian clients feel uncomfortable, Georgian Airbnb hosts invented various small everyday acts of protest to express their dissatisfaction with their penetration of the Tbilisi rental market. These small acts can be identified as discomforting tactics.
It started with hosts attaching a Ukrainian flag or sticker on the front doors of their apartments, placing the Ukrainian flag on their profile photos on Airbnb or Booking.com platforms, or posting phrases expressing anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian sentiments (“We Stand with Ukraine,” “Russki Voenii Korabl …”). In the most popular form of discomfort, some hosts uploaded a list of five rental criteria to the rental platform as a profile picture. These criteria, written in large font with the colors of the Ukrainian flag in the background, resembled the “visa regime” imposed in the Deda Ena bar. Prospective tenants were expected to recognize the inhumanity of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, acknowledge Russia’s 2008 occupation of Georgia, agree that Abkhazia and South Ossetia were part of Georgia, describe Putin as a tyrant, and call for an unconditional fight against Russian propaganda.
By applying tactics of discomforting, the private homeowners used the power asymmetry in the host-tenant relationship to impose their political views, at least on an individual level. Furthermore, Airbnb hosts began interacting with their clients exclusively through the Airbnb platform to avoid face-to-face encounters with guests. Some people admitted to harassing Russian guests to make them feel uncomfortable, while sacrificing positive reviews and income.
Additionally, many hosts refused to communicate with their guests in the Russian language. We should emphasize that the role of the Russian language in Georgia has diminished over the last decade, and Russian has been replaced by Georgian and English in many spheres of life. However, Russian is still present in the media and continues to be used as a lingua franca for ethnic and language minorities (Gabunia and Gochitashvili Reference Gabunia, Gochitashvili, Arto, Ekaterina and Maria2019), so the rejection of the Russian language as a means of communication with Russian clients is a noticeable expression of everyday nationalism.
These discomforting tactics can be understood as performative acts in the sense of Goffman’s (Reference Goffman1959) front-stage behavior, where individuals strategically present themselves to an audience to reinforce collective identity. By displaying Ukrainian flags or refusing to speak Russian, hosts were not only signaling their stance to tenants but also performing patriotism for a broader audience, including their peers in social networks. These acts transformed mundane rental interactions into symbolic arenas of national distinction, shaping how hosts and tenants navigated political belonging within the housing market.
Avoiding
Informal sanctions imposed by Georgian homeowners acquired a significant degree of regulatory power. However, another hegemonic actor started to contain them from above. Airbnb interpreted the informal sanctions as a violation of its non-discrimination policy and responded to any attempt to undermine its dominance through fines and punishment. By threatening Georgian hosts with profile bans, Airbnb was advocating for unhindered access to the Georgian rental market for Russian citizens. Hosts who repeatedly declined booking requests from Russians risked the suspension of their accounts, the loss of their “super host” status, or the payment of fines. For example, a Georgian host reported that Airbnb had asked her to comply with the non-discrimination policy and to remove the slogan “russkiy korabl idi na*” from her profile. By using the tactics of rejecting and discomforting, hosts risked, on the one hand, a confrontation with Airbnb with potentially severe consequences for their hosting career; on the other hand, Russian clients annoyed by the overt expression of anti-Russian sentiments might leave negative reviews for the host, decreasing the visibility and appeal of the apartment for non-Russian clients. The tactic of avoiding emerged as a direct consequence of the showdown with Airbnb. It is about continuing to prevent access to housing for Russians, but in more subtle ways that go unnoticed by Airbnb and thus escape the platform’s punitive system.
A Georgian host explained this alternative strategy of avoiding Russian tenants and Airbnb interference:
After the first three declines, Airbnb wrote to me that if I continue like this, my apartment will become suspicious and my registration will be cancelled. After that, I became even more polite to the Russians, saying that I hoped they would get a much better apartment, promising that if I got a cancellation, I would contact them without hesitation, and finally, asking them to cancel the reservation request themselves.
Another host explained that they lied to Russian clients about the poor Internet connection in their rental apartment in order to discourage them from booking it. In another avoidance tactic, hosts disabled the instant booking feature, which obliges the host to confirm or reject the booking request within 24 hours (in case of a complaint from a potential guest after a cancellation, the decision must be accompanied by a justification from the host). Additionally, hosts used the selective pricing system on Booking.com, which enabled them to apply discriminatory differences towards reservations from different locations. To discourage Russian citizens from booking their apartments, hosts simply raised the price to render their apartments unattractive to potential Russian clients. This contributes to further price hiking in Tbilisi’s housing market.
Do not cancel them! One thing that you can do is [set] the price [for] the whole calendar, and you can then allow discounts for all the countries that you like there. Take into consideration that you can’t reduce the price by more than 30 percent. The price should still be realistic. It takes a lot of time, but there is no other way.
In the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Georgians were no longer motivated to enact Georgian hospitality in the traditional way, and avoided any kind of social interaction and conviviality with guests from Russia (friendly chatting, drinking Georgian wine together, and meeting in common spaces). The trend was to avoid any communication with morally “undesirable guests” by utilizing key boxes. Thus, these tactics were aimed not only at avoiding booking requests from Russian clients but also at avoiding face-to-face encounters with Russians.
Airbnb’s interaction with Georgian homeowners can be seen as a continuous power struggle over housing governance, in which a global neoliberal actor seeks to maintain a free and unregulated housing market to ensure the unhindered flow of capital, while the local homeowner community tries to impose an emotional-patriotic agenda on the housing market. According to the neoliberal logic of Airbnb, access to housing should be determined by income and purchasing power, which gives Russian citizens the most privileged position in the Georgian rental market.
In the struggle to establish regulatory hegemony over the housing market, distrust of Airbnb grew. It was increasingly seen as a company that “does not protect the interests of Georgian hosts.” Mistrust of Airbnb was fueled by the fact that, despite a statement about restricting access to the platform for Russian citizens, it appeared that this mechanism only works on the basis of GPS. Russian citizens can easily make reservations from other countries. This ability to ‘hide’ their nationality was viewed very critically by hosts, who in some cases also accused Airbnb employees of having pro-Russian views.
While some hosts were successful in circumventing Airbnb’s regulatory power, in many cases, the informal sanctions they developed hurt their businesses, and after a few months, led to an identity crisis. Initially, hosts preferred to decline requests from Russians, but after about three months, they began accepting them again out of economic necessity. We can also see that these avoidance strategies reflect a form of informal regulatory control (Hilbrandt et al. Reference Hilbrandt, Alves and Tuvikene2017), where individuals compensate for the absence of formal restrictions by establishing unofficial, yet effective, exclusionary mechanisms. Rather than outright refusals, hosts leveraged platform-specific loopholes to exercise control over access to housing, demonstrating how informal governance can emerge in response to institutional gaps. These tactics illustrate how private actors regulate migration informally, shaping the rental market through discretionary, yet collectively enforced, restrictions.
Exploiting or money versus dignity
Like other global Airbnb hosts, Georgian hosts rent their apartments, primarily for financial gain. Thus, ordinary homeowners can earn additional money to cover individual and family expenses (Karlsson and Dolnicar Reference Karlsson and Dolnicar2016). A host emphasized in his interview in December 2022 the importance of passive rental income:
We started renting at the end of May 2022. Why did we decide to do this? – Well, first of all, it is a source of additional income for the family; you know, the economic situation is not good in Georgia in general, so people try to have as many jobs as possible.
It should be emphasized that the situation in the private rental market stabilized in October-November 2022, and local homeowners began to reconsider the informal sanctions and take a more rational approach to Russian bookings. In the hosts’ narratives, many faced a moral dilemma, which can be described as “money versus dignity.” On the one hand, private homeowners wanted to express their solidarity with Ukrainians, but on the other hand, hosting Russian citizens was important for their economic livelihood and business interests.
From June to November 2022, the host’s narratives reveal an attempt to overcome this contradiction between morality and financial necessity. Interestingly, the moral discourse did not change much: instead of not hosting Russians, the act of raising prices for Russian guests was now seen as “resistance.” During this time, emotional statements about migrants decreased, and the idea that “not all people are the same” became more influential. Hosts began to differentiate between different types of Russian migrants:
Not all Russians are at fault for what is happening in Ukraine, just like not all Georgians are at fault that the Georgian government has decided not to sanction Russia.
The best thing that came to my mind is to ask about the [guest’s] profile on Instagram or any social network. If there is still a negative attitude towards Russian aggression, accept their requests.
Everyday life shows me that it is not right to discriminate against someone based on their ethnicity. We need friends, including Russian citizens. We need ordinary people as ambassadors so that when they return, they will tell their friends: Georgians are good. This is my position, and whoever likes it should do the same.
Since the beginning of the war, there has been open criticism of new forms of “shadow economy” in the real estate market. One of the more balanced statements was “there is nothing wrong with making money by renting, but the main thing is not to sell them [Russians] anything.” Another popular statement was “it is the government’s responsibility to solve the migrant problem, not ours.”
Some hosts managed to reconcile their financial interests with their sense of morality and patriotic identity, seeing the act of overcharging Russian clients as a form of informal sanction: “It’s time for resistance; it’s time to raise the prices!” commented one Georgian Airbnb host. Another host went further by incorporating political discourse into his pricing scheme:
I thought a lot and decided that instead of the +20% occupation charge, I would give a -40% (20% for Abkhazia and 20% for Samachablo) discount to those Russian tourists who will confirm our territorial integrity.
This particular host displays creativity by incorporating the conflicts surrounding the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia into the Airbnb hosting practices. Instead of overcharging Russian clients, the host creates an incentive for Russian citizens to align their opinions on the conflict over these de facto states from a Georgian perspective. This is another example of how national pride and political sentiments are interwoven and translated into the everyday practice of renting out apartments, reflecting the politicization of the housing market.
When financial interests prevailed over the hosts’ initial moral concerns about renting apartments to Russian citizens, local tenants bore the brunt of the housing crisis. Despite patriotic rhetoric about protecting Georgia from the “Russian invasion” in the housing market, many homeowners seized the opportunity of increased demand to raise their rents. Less affluent tenants became victims of eviction, while gentrification surged in the prestigious neighborhoods of Sololaki, Vake, and Saburtalo, as well as in more peripheral working-class communities. Furthermore, increased demand for short-term rentals created an incentive to terminate contracts with long-term tenants and list apartments on the Airbnb platform, where monthly rental prices are far above the average are common.
This pricing strategy reflects a form of nationalist consumption (Bulakh Reference Bulakh, Polese, Morris, Pawlusz and Seliverstova2018), where economic transactions serve as expressions of moral and political beliefs rather than market-driven decisions. By charging Russians higher rents, hosts engaged in an informal sanctioning mechanism, turning financial interactions into a form of economic resistance. This demonstrates how consumption practices can reinforce national identity, making pricing a symbolic tool of exclusion and differentiation in the housing market.
The actions of Georgian Airbnb and Booking.com hosts illustrate a broader collective response to Russian migration, with social media playing a key role in amplifying and reinforcing these behaviors. Here, informal sanctions serve as a mechanism of social control, where homeowners enforce unwritten rules about access to housing based on political and nationalistic sentiments. By engaging in non-state regulatory actions, Georgian property owners actively shape the urban housing landscape, demonstrating how everyday practices can function as political interventions.
Conclusion
The emergence of informal sanctions to control the housing market from below demonstrates the far-reaching consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine and war-induced transnational mobility.
By analyzing the social media narratives of Georgian short-term rental hosts in Tbilisi from February to December 2022, we identified the emergence of informal sanctions as an expression of patriotism from below. Private homeowners in Tbilisi perceived Russian migrants predominantly as a social and political threat, which fueled feelings of insecurity and led to spontaneous resistance expressed in a variety of affective practices, informal sanctions.
We identified four main forms of informal sanctions — rejecting, discomforting, avoiding, and exploiting — that illustrate how seemingly mundane rental practices were politicized in response to Russian migrants. Our study shows that these tactics, while economically motivated in times of crisis, reinforced nationalist sentiment and collective stereotyping. In a context where the state authorities are perceived as inactive, Georgian Airbnb and Booking.com hosts appropriated the housing market as a space for their political expression. Albeit for a relatively short period of time, these spontaneous acts allowed homeowners to assert control over their properties listed on the Airbnb and Booking.com platforms, performing what we describe as patriotism from below. In this way, Georgian homeowners engaged in micro-level acts of resistance, reflecting broader fears of Russian influence and the state’s failure to protect national interests.
These findings illustrate how informal governance (Polese Reference Polese2023) emerges in moments of perceived state inaction, as individuals establish their own regulatory mechanisms to enforce national belonging. Through acts of rejection, discomfort, avoidance, and exploitation, property owners engaged in a bottom-up form of social regulation, reflecting the core tenets of everyday nationalism (Goode Reference Paul Goode, Stroup and Elizaveta2023). Rather than relying on formal institutions, these micro-level interactions became the means through which national identity was enacted and territorial boundaries symbolically reinforced. This highlights how informal sanctions function not just as economic strategies but as deeply embedded nationalist performances within the urban housing market.
The tactics deployed by homeowners are diffuse, ambivalent, and non-strategic. The enactment of informal sanctions did not change the state migration regime as such, but has given way to pragmatic hospitality. While Georgian homeowners were temporarily willing to sacrifice their financial gains in the context of post-colonial resistance and a perceived security threat, their informal sanctions failed to translate into a long-term commitment to protect local, less affluent citizens from price hikes.
While initially framed as patriotic acts, many hosts eventually prioritized economic gain over moral concerns, leading to increased gentrification and the displacement of local tenants. This shift highlights the ambivalence of everyday patriotism: what began as an expression of collective resistance quickly turned into actions driven by self-interest, particularly in a neoliberal housing market.
Although the acts of patriotism from below reflect strong agency of homeowners, they did little to address broader social inequalities or protect vulnerable Georgian citizens from the economic pressures exacerbated by Russian migration. Global platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com mediate the balance between local patriotic practices and economic realities, shaping the contours of informal regulation in Tbilisi’s housing market. The theoretical proposition here is that everyday nationalism is closely related to informality, which opens the possibility of examining grassroots responses to perceived threats and tactics of resistance, with implications for broader social dynamics in times of ongoing geopolitical conflict in Eastern Europe.
Financial support
ZOiS Berlin.
Disclosure
None.
Open access
