The Out-Migration Crisis

Abstract

Chapter 8 discusses the significant negative social and economic impacts of the mass out-migration that many postsocialist countries have experienced since the lifting of the “Iron Curtain,” balanced with the positive impacts of remittances and circulation of talent and capital. It also explores the negative side of out-migration, suggesting that the mass exodus of young people has had significant deleterious impacts on a number of sending countries and that many migrants faced hostile, exploitative, and sometimes dangerous conditions in the West. The chapter points to the collapse of rural villages and brain drain as having catastrophic prospects for the postsocialist world. This chapter highlights the role of European Union accession in 2004 as a possible contributor to Central and East European countries experiencing the sharpest population declines in the world and the largest peacetime migration in modern history measured as a percentage of sending country population.