A study conducted into Portugal’s ‘brain drain’ of young, educated workers to northern European countries reveals that about half will not be coming back.
The search for employment and better rates of pay was given as the reason by 80.7% of respondents.
Of the respondents, 52% consider it 'highly unlikely or definite' that they would not return home to Portugal.
The long-term study was started in 2013 by Rui Machado Gomes, a professor at the University of Coimbra whose report, "Brain Drain and Academic Mobility from Portugal to Europe" involved researcher teams from the Universities of Coimbra, Oporto and Lisbon using interviews and online questionnaires and a sample of 1,011 Portuguese emigrants.
All respondents had higher education qualifications and had left to live in another European country.
Professor Gomes said that "definitive emigration has a cost," not only in the loss of investment in training people who then emigrate, but also emigration affects the innovation and development within Portuguese companies and hastens Portugal’s rise to the top of the ‘old man of Europe’ league where in a generation's time an elderly population cannot expect state support above a bare minimum as there will be a insufficient number of taxpayers left to support them.
Migration has led to greater work stability, with 48.9% of those questioned having full time employment contracts (as opposed to 20.7% in Portugal), as well as greater net monthly income, with 62% earning between €1,000 and €3,000, while in Portugal many had no income (30%) or earned below €1,000 (42.5%).
The search for employment, better pay, the need for achievement and a career were the reasons most frequently mentioned by respondents as to why they had left.
According to Professor Gomes, the brain drain phenomenon "deepens the asymmetries between Europe’s south and north and will be the death the European project."
Comments
You seem to imply that such things aren't common in the (increasingly fascist) north. What sanctions are there on the EC and ECB when they contravene their own rules to deliberately destabilise Greece's banking system in order to bring the Syriza government into line? How many HSBC exectutives are prosecuted for money laundering?
North or south, laws are for the little people.
There are fundamental differences between us ! One basic measure is Power - Distance. The 'ratio' between the powerful who control all the goodies (the wealth, the land, the religion) and the distance the little people are from affecting the interests of this powerful person or institution.
Did any southerner clock what that Finn meant (speaking on behalf of all northerners and Brussels) when they said 'To us there are only rules and rule breakers'.
How is it that in the ex-Fascist south the law still flows round important lawbreakers ? And wasn't Fascism itself a response by the elite to the upstart notions of the plebs wanting to share the good things in life.
As now in Portugal. A closed market. What has frozen opportunities such as to start a business and engage in the economy has been the elite seeing it as a threat that they must stop. Continually and with impunity as all Brits will know. Or where they cannot nobble the licensing then insisting they are allowed to buy into the new business as a partner or favoured supplier.
Did the 'expert' mention any of this ?