Europe | Charlemagne

How the pandemic reversed old migration patterns in Europe

Many Eastern Europeans have left the west and gone home

AFTER A DECADE in Britain, it took Alexej Kirillov barely 24 hours to decide to leave. In March 2020, as Europe’s borders slammed shut, Mr Kirillov, a 31-year-old strategy consultant, had a choice: lockdown in a costly, lonely London flat or go home to the Czech Republic and be close to family. “I was not planning to leave for another five years, or longer, or never,” he says. But covid-19 changed his mind. Nearly a year on, he has set up shop in his homeland. A temporary return has become permanent. “Now I’m back, I think why didn’t I move back sooner?”

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He was not alone. In 2020 Europe saw a great reverse migration, as those who had sought work abroad returned home. Exact numbers are hard to come by. An estimated 1.3m Romanians went back to Romania—equivalent to three times the population of its second-biggest city. Perhaps 500,000 Bulgarians returned to Bulgaria—a huge number for a country of 7m. Lithuania has seen more citizens arriving than leaving for the first time in years. Other measures show the same. In Warsaw, dating apps brim with returning Poles looking for socially undistanced fun. Politicians in eastern Europe had long complained of a “brain drain” as their brightest left in search of higher wages in the west. Now the pandemic, a shifting economy and changing work patterns are bringing many of them back. A “brain gain” has begun.

Migration vexes European politicians. Freedom of movement—the ability to move to any country in the EU—is among the most popular benefits of belonging to the club. It is especially cherished by citizens of former communist countries, who have grim memories of being prevented from travelling by their own rulers. However, although most Europeans believe in freedom of movement for themselves, some are less sure about granting it to others. (Hence Brexit.) And governments of countries that lose lots of clever, enterprising young people tend to lament this fact. Graphics on Lithuanian government websites show the population dwindling from 3.7m in 1990 to 2.8m in 2019, thanks to emigration and low birth rates. About 2m Poles—or 5% of the country’s population—live elsewhere in Europe. Often, it is the most qualified. Doctors and nurses quitting Romania are a particular bugbear. Migration creates a clash of interests between individuals, who want to better their own lot, and governments, who would often prefer them to stick around and pay taxes. Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian writer, observes that “It is easier to go to Germany than to make Bulgaria function like Germany.” And so people do.

Yet even before the pandemic, this process had started to reverse in some places. Emigrants from the Baltic states have been heading back, having earned a nest-egg or picked up useful skills in western Europe. Homeward-bound Estonians have outstripped leaving Estonians since 2017. A goverment programme to help returning Lithuanians had 215 consultations in 2015; this ballooned to nearly 9,000 by 2019. Similar tales can be heard in bigger countries. In 2018 the number of Poles abroad started to fall for the first time in nearly a decade and has steadily declined ever since, according to the Polish Economic Institute, a think-tank. Dedicated schemes—ranging from glossy propaganda about life in the Baltics to free Polish lessons for children born abroad—are common.

Migration anywhere in the world is often temporary. In Europe several factors are pushing and pulling people homewards. Liam Patuzzi of the Migration Policy Institute Europe, a think-tank, notes that the economic gap between east and west is closing. Labour markets in eastern Europe are hot. Before the pandemic, the unemployment rate in the Czech Republic was about 2%, the lowest in the bloc, down from almost 9% when it joined in 2004. Wage gaps, though still large, are falling. In 2010 a Romanian who moved to Italy could expect to earn five times more; in 2019, only three times. For the highly skilled the gap is narrower still. Throw in perks such as Romanian software developers being exempt from income tax, and a job in Bucharest can trump one in Brussels.

Remote working alters the calculation, too. A new grey economy has sprung up across the EU, with white-collar staff living in one country but illicitly working in another (and paying tax in the wrong place, as a result). Often these people are expats in their own country, physically at home, but telecommuting across a border. Headhunters now dangle the prospect of working anywhere, says a Romanian private-equity executive. Once the taxman catches up, however, those grey workers will have to choose: stay or go.

Darling, you got to let me know

Blue-collar workers typically have fewer choices. Waiters and cleaners, many of whom are migrants, cannot work remotely. Some 700,000 foreign workers have left London during the pandemic, deciding that the occasional glimpse of the Thames did not make up for high rents and the sudden collapse of job opportunities. But for white-collar workers the link between opportunity and location could be drastically weakened, spelling another shift in migration patterns. Greece, which saw phalanxes of youngsters leave during its bail-out, is eager to attract them back. If the sun is not tempting enough, the tax breaks help. Workers who move to the country can have their tax bill halved for the first seven years.

The number of people flowing back to eastern Europe is still much smaller than the number who originally left. And those who went home because of the pandemic may head off again when the lockdowns ease. About two-thirds of the Bulgarians who returned plan to migrate again, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank. In the long run, even as wage gaps close, some people will always seek adventure in foreign lands. Open borders in Europe allow people to choose where to live, which inevitably means that less attractive places will lose population. But nothing remains the same. Countries can grow more appealing, and people can change their minds quite suddenly about where they want to live. Ask Mr Kirillov.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "Eastern Europe’s brain gain"

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