Young, gifted and Greek: Generation G – the world’s biggest brain drain

Call them Generation G: young, talented, Greek – and part of the biggest brain 
drain in an advanced western economy in modern times. 
As the country lurches towards critical elections this weekend, 
more than 200,000 Greeks who have left since the crisis bit five years 
ago will watch from overseas.

Doctors in Germany, academics in the UK, shopkeepers in America – the decimation of Greece’s population has perhaps been the most pernicious byproduct of the economic collapse which has beggared the country since its brush with bankruptcy.

“Greece is where I should be,” says Maritina Roppa, 28, a trainee doctor who leftGreece three years ago for Minden, north-west Germany. “It’s such a pity that people like me, in their 20s, have had to go.”

Of the 2% of the population who have left, more than half have gone to Germany and the UK. Migration outflows have risen 300% on pre-crisis levels, as youth unemployment soars to more than 50%. Around 55% of those affected by record rates of unemployment are under 35, according to Endeavour, the international nonprofit group that supports entrepreneurship.

“It is a huge loss of human capital whose affects will only begin to be felt in the next decade,” said Aliki Mouri a sociologist at the National Centre for Social Research. “People who have been educated at great cost, both to their families and the public purse, are now working in wealthier countries which have not invested in them at all,” she added, acknowledging that even in good times Greece had difficulty absorbing the surplus of professionals its universities produced.

The north German town of Minden was not on Roppa’s radar when she elected to study medicine at Athens University in the late 1990s. She made the move when it became clear the alternative was years on a waiting list for a position as a specialist dermatologist. The omens did not bode well when the health service was among the sectors worst affected by budget cuts demanded in return for the EU-IMF sponsored bailouts that have kept the Greek economy afloat. “In Greece, hospitals were being shut and jobs axed,” she said. “In Germany, where there is a huge demand for doctors, you have the opportunity to thrive personally and professionally in a system that is very good, very structured, very modern.”

Some 35,000 Greek doctors – the biggest foreign group of its kind – have emigrated to Germany, according to German statistics cited in media reports. In sharp contrast togastarbeiter (guest workers) who flocked to the country’s factories in the 1950s, the emigres are highly qualified.

The fact that Berlin, the biggest provider of the €240bn (£184bn) in aid given to Athens, should also be the capital that has demanded excoriating austerity from Greeks is not lost on the economic migrants.

“At first it was hard,” said Roppa, describing her €3,000 (£2,300) monthly wage as the stuff of dreams in Greece. “There was a lot in the papers about ‘lazy Greeks’, a lot of prejudice, but the funny thing is there are around 2,000 Greek doctors, alone, just in this region of Germany.”

With one-third of the population at risk of poverty, many of her colleagues used their pay to help their families back home.

Despite the first signs of economic recovery – in November figures showed that Greece returned to growth for the first time in six years, its worst recession in postwar history – the exodus is not abating. Increasing numbers want to join the already record 50,000 Greeks estimated by the OECD to be studying abroad. Schools are being inundated with requests by students to be enrolled on courses for international exams that could prepare them for foreign fields.

“Greece doesn’t allow you to progress,” said Carmella Kontou, an aesthetician considering moving to the US. “You can’t even begin to think of having a family or achieving things that elsewhere in Europe would be considered totally natural.”

Like many of the younger generation, the 34-year-old said that she would be casting a blank ballot on Sunday because she was so disgusted with the politicians who had brought Greece to this place.

Lois Lambrinidis, a professor of economic geography at the University of Macedonia, said ever more Greeks were moving further afield. “People feel trapped. The climate, economically and politically, is so bad that even if conditions are only mildly better abroad they are opting to go,” he said. Research based on 2,000 telephone interviews conducted last summer, showed the exodus was becoming ever more dispersed, possibly because Europe was also tightening up visa processes.

“Greeks are going anywhere they can find work and that might be Asia, Africa, Australia, or the Middle East,” he averred. “And we are seeing a new phenomenon of non-degree holders who are also joining the flow.”

Not all is lost. Many of the newly mobile Greeks want to return home once the country recovers. Experts say with their new skills and mindsets the emigres could become the “change agents” Greece needs.

“A lot of us would like to go back,” said Roppa. “We will have a lot to offer in the way of different ethics and mentalities. “No country could suffer a fate as bad as Greece. It has been totally humiliated by corrupt politicians and a system that was tolerated for far too long.”

theguardian.com