Estonian Cooperation Assembly Comments on Emigration Trends

According to what declared by Estonian Cooperation Assembly head Peep Mühls and to Tartu University demography experts around 130.000 Estonians live outside Estonia.

In addition to them Mühls said that there are around 1.06 million people in the world who identify themselves as Estonians between people who expatriated long time ago and their offspring, even if they are citizens of other countries and they do not speak Estonian anymore.

Commenting the trend of leaving the country, the Cooperation Assembly said that the country has two main tendencies: the ageing of the population and the constant decrease of number people.

Presenting some recent researches, Mühls explained a change in the emigration trend as, since once men in the best working age were mainly leaving Estonia, now it is women who have graduated from university and are in the best working age, 25-35, who leave.

The wage difference of men and women in Estonia is one of the biggest in the EU which, as Mülhs said, could be one of the reasons why, right now, are mainly women who leave Estonia. Moreover, when women with higher education leave the country, they will probably create a family abroad and will not return.

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Matth says:
February 5, 2010 at 12:11 pm
This is why they send abroad some pretty estonians girls to trap some young and smart foreigners to make them come, live and work in Estonia !
Reply to this Comment
- knut albers says:
  March 10, 2010 at 5:17 pm
  Ehm, haven't seen it from that perspective yet. Now this whole thing makes perfectly sense: Sell the women to the West as promoters to make to come male foreigners to Estonia to rip them off.
  But seriously, I live now for three years in Estonia and have seen no other country (besides in many countries with a major muslim population) where women are that much treated as 2nd class people down to where women become even less than human beings.
  The more disturbing thing is that women in Estonia often even do not get this and even support the opinion of their "slaveholder", let themself to be exploited rather then to stand up against that or even raise questions.
  The longer I live here, the less I do understand how Estonia could have become part of European Union.
  Where the EU inspectors literally blind on both eyes when checking what "values" this society is made of here? Because most of the European values of the old member states simply does not apply here, especially, but not limited, what comes to women rights, which is morelike closely equivalent to many places in the middle-east or countries like Thailand.
  It's a sad fact I have to acknowledge.
  Reply to this Comment
  - Giovanni Angioni says:
    March 10, 2010 at 5:35 pm
    Finally.
    The comparison between Estonia and Thailand is something not new to me – still, Knut, you also can imagine which kind of criticism I got when I tried to explain my point in this sense.
    EU officials buy anything that sounds like a reliable nowadays but, honestly, the things that bugs me the most is exactly the attitude many local women have of defending the system ruling this country.
    Still, since the topic of this page is immigration and we are immigrants, I would not mind getting Your point on the way the Estonian society is actually reaching qualified immigrants nowadays…
    Are you happy with that?
    Reply to this Comment