Emigrate to where exactly? These modern problems seem to be pretty universal so far….
Nordic countries, Denmark, Sweden, Norway
As someone who was born outside of Germany but now lives here (with no immediate plans for going anywhere else) I regularly ask myself this question. Obviously many Germans seek economic opportunity in Switzerland, but the Swiss seem to really have about enough of all these immigrants. Then there might be other destinations that some people also bring up like Denmark, Sweden or Norway, but these fail to even break the top 20 destinations statistically.
In 2024 most emigrations seem to be in the context of people returning to their other European home countries. Out of the statistical top 20 only Spain/Italy (climate, retirement) Switzerland (economic opportunity) and the United States (again, economic opportunity, but recently with more people moving from the United States to Germany than the other way around) sound like plausible targets for German emigration at scale.
In all likelihood this could just be part of the general “mopiness” that seems to be prevalent in German culture.
1 in 5 young Germans are pretty ignorant about how good they have it in Germany.
“hope to find” is not a great plan.
I tend to agree with you, but, having lived many years in other countries, I can tell you, you have to leave to appreciate it. Traveling gives you perspective.
While Germany seems nice in comparison to poor countries, our neighboring countries do many things a lot better than we do. Denmark has a functioning social security system, Netherlands have actual liveable cities, Norway is rich and laid back, Sweden is great, Spain is currently the progressive inspiration for Europe, etc.
Germany is fucking boring, full of Nazis, falling apart due to neglected maintenance of Infrastructure over the course of the past 30-40 years, suffers from garbage conservative politics, is smothered by shit tons of bureaucracy, etc. I fully understand why young people want to leave. There’s nothing here for them.
Young people primarily care about money and career prospects, which there are none in Germany.
I found his trend study here,( German pdf) His sample was around 2K youngster , and his findings have ca. 2% error margin iiuc. He’s been publishing regularly since corona epidemic according to his website. What called my attention was especially this worrisome quote, which might explain what’s going on:
" The proportion of young people who say they need psychological support has also reached a new peak of 29 percent. Women, at 34 percent, and students, at 32 percent, are particularly affected by this psychological strain. Among young Germans without a job, 42 percent likewise rely on psychological support services."
I’m not sure how this trend compares to other ( European) countries, but I remember reading similar trends in several countries for years since the Corona epidemic. These issues require much more serious attention, studies and rapid & adequate solutions imo.
Add; just posted a comparative study here
By emigrating you exchange problems from your own country you know, for problems of another country you don’t know.
If you have tried solving the problems and failed then an exchange is the smart decision.
But most of the time you are not changing the problems. They are just framed slightly different elsewhere but still the same.
With that Germany is about EU average. However there are also a lot of reasons to stay in Germany, like a still relatively strong job market and still relatively innovative regions(both compared on an EU level).
Still something German politicians would be wise to keep in mind. Those things can change and will, given that the German economy is stagnant right now and there are some massive head winds.
However there are also a lot of reasons to stay in Germany
With an easily overlooked one being that the actual problems in Germany are not Germany-specific at all.
Political shift to the right, stagnating wages, bad housing market, an aging population calling the shots and giving a fuck about the future? Pick one (or a few) and tell me where to go instead… Moving in the exact same direction but a few years behind is basically the best you can get. And that’s a bad reason to leave your life behind and lose a few years to start fresh.
They’re not going to find things to be any different anywhere else. They probably don’t realise how many young people want to imigrate to places like Germany; the country with the highest immigration figures of EU born people.
It should be no shock that times are the way they are now for young people. There’s been generational neglect for decades.
They probably don’t realise how many young people want to imigrate to places like Germany;
Of the 14 to 29 year olds, more than 20% should have a migration background. It could be that most of the 20% are immigrants who want to move on because Germany is not as good as they or their parents thought.
What the actual fuck.
The article is very negative, so I assume the study results are too.
It would be nice if we could see it as the European idea of free movement and exchange between countries. With most Germans emigrating to Switzerland, Austria, and Spain - that is the European idea of a union, free movement, and free personal exploration. People leaving Germany is a national view. They are European citizens.
The article is very negative, so I assume the study results are too.
Which will always -and completely independent of the topic- be wrong.
Articles are negative because it gets more clicks and that’s all that matters. If the underlying topic fits or needs to be totally misrepresented is irrelevant.
Click-, engagement- and rage-bait > facts
And as adequate auto-translation is widely available: here is the neutral 3-page summary of the study in German.
Thank you for linking the study document.
I don’t think the article is any more negative than the study summary you label neutral in terms of causes. Both list various issues, in a similar way.
I lived in France for two years and spent a good deal of time in Germany. There are areas of extreme poverty, even in the most advanced EU countries. But the linked article and study exaggerates the reality of it in comparison to the rest of the world.
