The mobility of human resources, which arises under the influence of various reasons, is characteristic of any stage of human development, which in modern conditions under the influence of globalization acquires special proportions. Among the traditional reasons for such spatial movements is not only the search for better living conditions and earnings, but also the desire for new experiences and knowledge. Thus, one of the main forms of mobility is tourism and migration. The growing role of education as one of the main goals of sustainable development ensures its development in the international space, which is associated with such phenomena as educational tourism and educational migration. Despite the existing developments in this topic, their economic essence and differentiation is not fully understood, which determines the relevance of this study and its main purpose. As a result, on the basis of semantic analysis, the essence of tourism and migration as basic categories was studied first, then moving on to educational migration and educational tourism. The theoretical analysis of the economic essence revealed that both terms imply the spatial movement of human resources in order to obtain educational services, which are forms of a broader concept of "academic mobility". In order to distinguish them, the following features are identified: conditional duration, planning, condition of return to the country of residence, condition of employment in the country of travel, obtaining a supporting document of training, voluntary nature, legal status and right to residence. The main difference is identified by the conditional duration, which is short-term for educational tourism and long-term for educational migration. In other respects, they are similar with minor modifications: for example, the condition of employment in the country of travel is fulfilled for educational migration only in the form of part-time study, or the condition of obtaining a certificate confirming training varies for tourism depending on the form of educational service (formal or informal). , which may or may not have a certain diploma, certificate); the legal status of a person is manifested as an emigrant and a tourist with different documentation and the right to reside. The obtained developments are important for further study of this issue and terminological and normative delimitation of educational tourism and educational migration for the proper organization of public policy in these areas.