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Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

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Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#411

Post by gib444 »

NicuCalcea wrote: post #387
gib444 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you visited London recently? Particularly east. It's got the unfriendliness but also complete total breakdown of the social contract and social decency Music and video calls without headphones on all transport all the time. Shoes and socks off on train seats. Zombies barging into you constantly. Nobody letting people off the train. Throwing rubbish on the ground. Leaving it on trains and buses. Vaping on the tub…

I agree with the breakdown of the social contract in London, but not with the unfriendliness. I've lived in the UK for eight years and have travelled to many parts of England and Wales. I've never felt as unwelcome in London as I do almost every time I leave it. Constant suspicious looks, questions about who I am and what the purpose of me being there is, the occasional downright xenophobia. To give you a recent exam…

I have experience in what you describe, as I live far from London in a place I'm not from. Yes it can be very insular and can take many years to even begin being treated like a local (it's not until you have a kid, so I'm told).

I'm treated with suspicion too. A lot of it is 'not from here [the village/town/county]' (and not sounding like you're from here) rather than 'not white' or 'not from the UK' so I can't hard agree it's strictly xenophobia/racism etc.

And your anecdote about that guy: exactly what I'm saying. Everyone out for themselves. Selfish. Unrelated to racism or xenophobia etc

But are you saying in London everyone falls over themselves to hold open doors, let you skip queues, always waits for people to get off the train first, nobody barges past anyone, every single shop worker says "hello good morning" "thank you" "have a great day"...? What acts of making you feel welcome exist in London that doesn't elsewhere in the country?

edit: And you started "I agree...but not with the unfriendliness" then ended with "London can be unfriendly" so I'm a bit confused :D

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#413

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #270
ikut3hva wrote: post #165

Hi everyone I don’t usually comment on topics like this because there are so many biases and different perspectives involved. In the end, I believe only the person who has actually gone through the experience can truly understand it; otherwise, it often becomes just another judgment. We are an ASEAN family earning more than €200k gross annually (sorry for mentioning the TC, but there is a reason for it—please keep re…

As a german living in spain, i feel your pain. While I do speak spanish around B1/B2 level, it took a lot of time and effort - probably the biggest effort in learning something after uni. People are often "you should speak the language if you life there" - yes, agreed. BUT: Hell, if you are a professional entrepreneur, you are already not working 40h week but way more. If in your day job you speak english anyway beca…

None of this people opining “just learn the language” have learned a second language while working as adults, let alone learned German. You can get to A2 level pretty easy (in most indoeuropean languages at least), but jumping to B1 can seriously be a year or more of studying. You have to be able to handle basic daily situations in the given language and understand what is said in a TV or Radio show. With practice you can get there especially if you live in the country and force yourself to speak the language, but easy it is not.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#414

Post by aleph_minus_one »

SJetKaran wrote: post #400
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can only speculate, but usually when such phrases come up, it's about things like not being part of the in-group - people they know throwing parties and not inviting them, etc. Concerning "part of the in-group": It is very usual that in Germany, you don't become a "friend" fast (the German translation of "friend", [der] Freund, has a much deeper meaning than the US-American understanding of the English word). Fri…

Hypothesis - I wonder if this is about places with lot of movement vs places that don't. Internal movement within US, even within rural communities, might be more than in Germany? and so, society tends to be more accepting of new incoming people?

From my observations about Germany and what I read about the USA, there was historically much less internal movement in Germany than in the USA. But over the last decades, shifts occured: internal movement increased in Germany and decreased in the USA.

> and so, society tends to be more accepting of new incoming people?

I would say the topic is more multilayered:

Traditionally, Germany was not an immigration country (yes, there exist exceptions in history: migrations of big groups from other countries, but let's ignore them for the sake of the argument), so there barely exist any traditionally grown structures for immigrants from other countries or cultures; they are much more on their own.

I wouldn't say that this bare existence of immigration structures is a bad thing per se, or that such people are unwelcome etc. It's just that there exist no really structured way for immigrants from other countries or cultures to set foot in Germany's society.

On the other hand, the increased internal movement over the last decades in Germany has not lead to the situation that incoming (German) people have an easier way to get into the existing structures, but I would rather say that this lead to a more tolerance of new incoming people doing their own thing separately.

In other words: it lead to the situation that people living next to each other often having few common things in their ways of living.

So, the increased internal movement rather lead to a loss of "common grounding" of people living in some place, without anything new appearing that replaces this loss of common grounding.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#415

Post by backwardsponcho »

Barrin92 wrote: post #202
malshe wrote: post #130

Here is my anecdote. I was in Germany recently and met with a South American woman. We briefly talked about our immigrant experiences. She is now a German citizen married to a German man. However, she said she can't identify as a German because nobody made her feel like one. By contrast, when I became an American citizen, my American friends (white and hispanic) insisted that they attend the naturalization ceremony.

>because nobody made her feel like one I'm German. Very rarely is the issue that people will in principle treat her as foreign, there's sometimes still the stereotype that you "can never be German" but in most places in the country that's not my experience. However what is important is that you need to elbow your way in . There's a saying "nur sprechenden Menschen kann geholfen werden*. (only people who speak up can…

You hit the nail in the head.

Those who say stuff like "nobody makes me feel integrated" would also very much struggle to befriend people in their own country if they got dropped anywhere else other than their home cities away from friends and family.

Making new friends after school is hard, no matter where in the world.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#416

Post by xdennis »

zerr wrote: post #284
lispisok wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your complaint is you wanted permanent residence in Germany but did not want to learn to speak German?

Permanent residency is a business deal between two entities: an individual and a state. It has nothing to do with linguistics. There are many Germans permanently living in Vietnam, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, who never bothered to even learn how to say Hello, not to mention any certificate or exam...

A country is not a contract, it's a culture.

It's quite audacious to want to be part of a country, but also to be so quarantined from them as to not even want to learn their language.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#417

Post by cmrdporcupine »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #109
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #5

I lived there for around 6 months like 15 years ago so perhaps it's changed a lot since then. But even as an Englishman, it was very different to home. I remember the supermarket was shut all Sunday and was only open until 12 on the Saturday, and it shut early in the week too (at like 5pm or 6pm or something?) so by the time I'd got the train back home from work it was already closed. I had to get up early every Satu…

to quote a relative "Germany is a great country to live in, except for all of the Germans"

This is what my German father always said. Partially why he moved to Canada in the 60s. Partially a feeling of claustrophobia around rules and regulations. And lack of uncontrolled access to nature, lack of real wilderness, etc.

I kind of get it. I found my German grandparents baffling at some level. Simultaneously extremely warm and generous but at the same time intensely critical and harsh at times. My Oma was perhaps warmer on account of being Alsatian, but we had a language barrier.

Visiting Germany for the first time when I was 19 was a bit of a brain-melting experience. Like a bunch of things about my father finally made sense.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#418

Post by mongol »

talon8635 wrote: post #161
prolly97 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... yes discrimination doesn't feel nice... but it's not as if people who come to Germany where forced to do so by the germans. I'm not from Germany, but the vibes in some of the high-muslim density parts of Germany I've been to have likewise felt unwelcome, unsafe and hostile (towards me as a scandinavian). So it feel a bit more complicated than "germans are racist, BAD". Anecdotally I've heard that it's hard…

Not to mention the fact that all of those home countries are equally if not more openly racist and restrictive of immigrants from the other direction The question is, is any country “perfect” in this regard, showing zero degree of self-selecting and internal favoritism? I suspect not, because it’s not really possible to have a country without focusing on, well, itself, first and foremost. Of course integrated immigra…

No country is "perfect" in this regard, just as no human is perfect. It often strikes me as ironic how people label an entire country or a people as racist, immediately showing their own level of generalization and ability to apply prejudice.

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#419

Post by Tade0 »

izacus wrote: post #376
Tade0 wrote: post #58

As an outsider, but hailing from Germany's eastern neighbor and one of the largest sources of immigrants: Overall sentiment is that the juice ain't worth the squeeze any more. Back when my country became a full member of Schengen(2008) the ratio of GDP per capita between Germany and us was around 3.3x - salaries were roughly proportionally higher, so just about any job was worth moving there and potentially going thr…

Will this overall sentiment actually be confirmed with migration numbers if we check them?

Who is "we"?

Net migration of Polish citizens to Germany has been consistently negative for the past year:

https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Popula...

Re: Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

#420

Post by blks »

rurp wrote: post #263
dgs_sgd wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your perspective, but I was curious what B1 proficiency actually entails and this is what I found [1]: - understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar topics such as work, school, or leisure - manage most situations that occur while traveling in German-speaking areas - produce simple, connected text on familiar subjects - describe experiences, events, dreams, hopes, and ambitions, and b…

It seems weird to me that someone would even want to settle in a foreign country without a good understanding of the language and cultural basics. I've done some traveling in non-English speaking countries and it was a huge hurdle not being completely fluent in the local language. It just seems like common sense to me to dive in all the way if you are moving somewhere long term. I don't really see what a good salary…

Travelling somewhere is not the same as living. It’s pretty common among people without immigration experience to have a certain idealistic idea about it, that does not work in reality.

This person lives in a very international city where they speak English at work. For some people it’s not as easy to get to B1-B2 levels while working full time, having children and using English to communicate daily without issues.

In many EU countries requirement for a permanent resident status is just 4-6 years of residency, plus sometimes certain income/language level. And there is always EU permanent residence permit that just requires you to reside for 5 years.

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