Bulgaria social briefing: Nearly 2.5 Million Bulgarians Live Abroad

Weekly Briefing, Vol. 23, No. 3 (BG), November 2019

 

Nearly 2.5 Million Bulgarians Live Abroad

 

 

Currently the negative demographic trends in Bulgaria are deepening and growing up. In addition to births being less than deaths in recent decades, emigration has also made a significant contribution to reducing the population. According to the National Statistical Institute, in the last 7 years about 190,000 Bulgarians have left Bulgaria. At the same time, only 68,000 returned.

According to the national statistics, in 2018, 16 169 Bulgarians from abroad returned to Bulgaria. About 40% of them are in the active age group of 20-44 years. However, the number of emigrants is still almost twice as high: 31 263. Again, the age group of 20 to 44 is the largest. This process has a negative impact on the reproduction and the average age of the population in Bulgaria. Currently, the country is also the first with the lowest average life expectancy – 74.8 years.

Bulgarians abroad are also the great problem for the Bulgarian economy, for which the lack of people is already becoming a chronic issue. The huge emigration wave of Bulgarians, is definitely a loss of demographic, social, educational and democratic capital, but paradoxically also contributes to the country’s development through significant remittances. Bulgarian emigrant’s remittances exceed foreign direct investment.

For 2018, in absolute value, Bulgaria’s GDP amounts to 55.182 billion euros. According to a May 2019 analysis by the Institute for Economic Research at BAS, it will take 27 years to reach 50% of the EU average, 37 years to reach 75% and 44 years to equalize him. Many Bulgarians choose not to witness the catch-up. And they choose to live abroad.

Poverty is a topic stubbornly shunned by government. But it continues to chase people away from the country. Not only the highly skilled but also the low skilled people leave Bulgaria. The second group is even the majority of migrants. The tendency is people to leave for seasonal work initially – three months, a year. However, many of them later withdraw their families and decide to stay abroad for long.

Better incomes are the main reason why Bulgarians decide to leave or return home. This is evidenced by the results of a recent survey. To the question “Which of the following reasons made you leave Bulgaria”, 56% of the respondents indicated higher incomes, 48% – more security and peace of mind, 40% – better environment and others. And what needs to change in Bulgaria to get back? Here, 70% chose the answer “income to become European”, 66% – to reduce corruption, 61% – to make life in Bulgaria more peaceful and secure, to improve health care and to have more justice in society.

At the same time, there are about 6000 Bulgarian students in Germany, about as high as their number in the UK. These two countries are also the most preferred countries in Europe by Bulgarian emigrants. They are followed by Greece and Spain. Data from the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, provided by the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad, show that in 2012, Bulgarians in Germany were 118 759, and at the end of 2017 officially registered Bulgarian citizens were 310 415. Data shows that since 1989 the United States and Germany have been the two most preferred targets of Bulgarian emigrants.

However, how many Bulgarians are in Europe at the moment and what are their mobility trends? The short answer is – about 900,000. This is the number quoted by the Eurostat. According to the statistics In the last more than ten years, since Bulgarians have the right to move freely in the EU, the percentage of citizens who have benefited from living and working in another country has doubled. Hence, in 2018 about 13.3% of the working age population of our country (20-64 years) is mobile. By comparison, Romanian citizens are the most mobile in the EU and about one fifth of the country’s total population lives somewhere else in Europe.

The data also show that many more low-skilled Bulgarian citizens have benefited from the opportunity of migration. The number of mobile Bulgarians with primary education migrating to other countries increased by 10.4% over the 2008-2018 period.

The picture is also interesting by looking at different countries. Germany is the most favored country for migration, with about 416,000 Bulgarians living there by 2019. This number is growing by an impressive 30-40,000 people per year. If Bulgarians in Germany continue to increase at this rate, the entire population of a city like Varna (the third largest city in Bulgaria) will soon live there. And the average age of Bulgarians living in Germany is 32.4 years, according to the German NSI.

Belgium, on the other hand, is a top destination for work among Bulgarians at present, according to Eurostat, with a total number of 37,000 people in 2019. Most of them are employed in the construction, hotel and restaurant sector and cosmetic services.

A traditional country for Bulgarian guest workers, such as Spain, reports a serious outflow – since 2009 (the peak year for Bulgarians living in the country- about 151 thousand people). So far, the number of Bulgarians has decreased by almost 29 thousand people. This is the result of the long recession of the Spanish economy and the collapse of the construction sector, where a large proportion of Bulgarian citizens were employed. Some of them returned to Bulgaria and others went to other European countries.

According to migration experts, more and more Bulgarians are “settling into mobility”. Their migration projects are not final and are often transformed – for example, educational mobility can grow into family migration, temporary working abroad can lead to permanent establishment, or else successful realization abroad can be continued with successful realization in the homeland.

Eurostat data also shows that most Bulgarians who have left the country in the last 10 years are low-skilled.  Diplomas, languages, qualifications are social capital that facilitates the migration of the highly qualified persons and that is why it has happened earlier and faster, and continues to this day. The low-skilled persons enjoy a different kind of social capital – migrant networks: their relatives, neighbors, friends, acquaintances are already abroad, and help new migrants to choose a destination and allow for a faster access to housing and work. If you can get twice as much for the same job, why not leave it, if you can get more for less skilled work, why not change it (from a kindergarten teacher to a babysitter, from a master-builder to a construction worker).

Mobile Bulgarians enjoy the right of free movement and access to the labor market and to classic European migration destinations such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and even more to the new Mediterranean migration giants – Spain, Italy, and Greece.

As it was already mentioned about 416,000 Bulgarians live in Germany, in the last seven years their number has increased by about 340,000. Thus, Germany ranks first in the number of Bulgarian emigrants and outstrips Turkey, Greece and the USA.

The number of Bulgarian nationals leaving in the US and Turkey is 350,000 in each country. An increase in the number of Bulgarian citizens living in Western European countries has been registered. In addition to Germany, there are more Bulgarians in the UK (200,000 people) and France (between 60 and 80,000). Data show an increase in Bulgarian citizens in the US. Data for Italy, Greece and Spain are almost without a break, respectively 120,000, 300,000, 250,000 people. In Canada live about 70,000 Bulgarians, in Austria – 35,000, in Cyprus – 25,000, the Czech Republic also 25,000. According to official figures Bulgarians in South Africa are 20,000, in Switzerland – 12,000, in Australia – 10-15 thousand and New Zealand, where the number is between 3 and 5 thousand.

The data don’t include people of Bulgarian ethnic origin who do not have Bulgarian citizenship.

The simple mathematics shows that the total number of Bulgarians leaving abroad is around 2 million and 417 thousand people.

At the same time more than half a million Bulgarians of active age – nearly 510,000 – are being insured for pensions in Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. These are the three EU countries with the largest influx of Bulgarian emigrants, and this half a million is one sixth of all workers in Bulgaria whose insurances fail to cover the pensions of Bulgarian pensioners. That is why the budget regularly touches the system with several billion annually. For 2019, the deficit of the National Social Security Institute for pensions is BGN 3.7 billion.

According to data provided by the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, after the accession of Bulgaria to the EU in 2007, and especially after the removal of employment restrictions for Bulgarian workers in Germany in 2014, the number of Bulgarian citizens in Germany has increased many times.

Social experts believe that their increase is mainly due to new immigration from Bulgaria and to a much lesser extent re-immigration or newborns on the territory of Germany. In just a year, the number of Bulgarians in the country has increased by 26,600. Most newcomers are Bulgarians in the Frankfurt area – according to the data of the Bulgarian Consulate there, their number in 2018 increased by 11.8% compared to 2017. For the same period in Munich area reported an increase of 9.4%.

By number, Bulgarians (excluding German citizenship) are in sixth place among all EU citizens in Germany: after Poland, Romania, Italy, Croatia and Greece. And in ninth place in the overall ranking, which also includes nationals of countries around the world.

A sip of optimism for the emigration issues gives a currently conducted survey which results shows that the desire for emigration among young people in Bulgaria decreases. According to the announced data 61% of the young people in Bulgaria stated that they did not intend to emigrate. The structure of emigration itself is also changing. The emigration of low-skilled but not high skilled young people is increasing.

Sometimes at the core of the emigration decision are deeply personal reasons that have little to do with the financial situation: the wrong model of the value system at home, the feeling of isolation and loneliness in the homeland, the search for freedom and new horizons.

Still the higher payment and a higher standard of living, quality education, chances for better realization, justice and equality before the law are some of the main reasons why many young Bulgarians decide to leave Bulgaria. The economic causes of migration are confirmed by number of sociological studies.

All this leads to the conclusion that without any significant changes in Bulgaria, desired and expected by the Bulgarians the emigration trend will continue to grow – despite better macro-economic data.

 

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION BY AGE IN 2018
Age Immigrants in
the country
Emigrants from the country Migration increase
Total 29 559 33 225 -3 666
0 – 4 2 474 787 1 687
5 – 9 1 215 1 083 132
10 – 14 715 1 191 -476
15 – 19 1 201 2 204 -1 003
20 – 24 2 090 4 260 -2 170
25 – 29 2 636 4 375 -1 739
30 – 34 3 031 4 184 -1 153
35 – 39 2 727 3 606 -879
40 – 44 2 380 3 169 -789
45 – 49 1 947 2 357 -410
50 – 54 1 900 1 646 254
55 – 59 1 941 1 295 646
60 – 64 2 028 1 016 1 012
65 – 69 1 907 860 1 047
70 – 74 794 616 178
75 – 79 359 388 -29
80 + 214 188 26