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The Baltic Demographic Disaster

forbes.com

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Re: The Baltic Demographic Disaster

#21

Post by sologoub »

The Baltic demographic situation is indeed very complex. The article does little justice to this.

Someone has already raised the question of ethnic Russians and other non-Baltic origin leaving these countries. This section of the population actually have a very strong incentive to leave - they are considered non-citizen and have none of the EU privileges[1].

According to the same Wikipedia article, Latvia alone started out with 715k non-citizen in 1991, and now has 290,660 as of March 2011 census. Some left, some died and some became citizen, but the drop is huge and the outflow is intentional with the aim of increasing the proportion of "native" ethnic groups.

At the same time, Russia has been taking in immigrants. The 1 million drop does not show the changes in underlying ethnic proportions. Russian politicians have not been as concerned with maintaining the ethnic composition, which they may start to look at as the riots fueled by ethnic tensions have become much more common.

In any case, pure economic speculations don't do justice to that region. It's a very complex balancing act, with nationalists on both sides willing to chop of their nose to spite their face.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizens_(Latvia)

Re: The Baltic Demographic Disaster

#22

Post by dharma1 »

the same is happening in many other countries where salaries are a third of (relatively) nearby countries and people are free to move. I don't expect the population decline in the Baltics to continue at that pace though

Re: The Baltic Demographic Disaster

#23

Post by rimantas »

adamgravitis wrote: post #18
freehunter wrote: post #17

So what are the immigration policies of these Baltic states? How are they enticing new citizens? Have they relaxed their immigration criteria to try to get more citizens, or is it strict? If I wanted to immigrate to, say, Estonia next year, how difficult would it be?

They're all Eurozone now, so EU citizens can move between those countries without issue. Part of the population decline can be attributed to youth moving to central Europe for work. Additionally, other posters have been right about ethnic Russians leaving the Baltics, which is something governments have actually been trying to encourage anyhow. The Soviets had hugely increased the number of ethnic Russians in the Bal…

  > The Soviets had hugely increased the number of ethnic
  > Russians in the Baltics
It depends on country a lot. E.g. in Estonia 70% are Estonians and 25% are Russians, meanwhile in Lithuania 84% are Lithuanians and less than 6% are Russians—there are more Poles than Russians.

Re: The Baltic Demographic Disaster

#24

Post by kristaps »

sologoub wrote: post #21

The Baltic demographic situation is indeed very complex. The article does little justice to this. Someone has already raised the question of ethnic Russians and other non-Baltic origin leaving these countries. This section of the population actually have a very strong incentive to leave - they are considered non-citizen and have none of the EU privileges[1]. According to the same Wikipedia article, Latvia alone start…

> as the riots fueled by ethnic tensions have become much more common

You seem to imply that there are already "riots fueled by ethnic tensions", care to point to an example?

Re: The Baltic Demographic Disaster

#26

Post by myth_drannon »

kristaps wrote: post #24
sologoub wrote: post #21

The Baltic demographic situation is indeed very complex. The article does little justice to this. Someone has already raised the question of ethnic Russians and other non-Baltic origin leaving these countries. This section of the population actually have a very strong incentive to leave - they are considered non-citizen and have none of the EU privileges[1]. According to the same Wikipedia article, Latvia alone start…

> as the riots fueled by ethnic tensions have become much more common You seem to imply that there are already "riots fueled by ethnic tensions", care to point to an example?

Plenty... just a recent one is in Pugachyovo(Russians vs Chechens) The state media tries to suppress the news but Livejournal is full of blog posts with photos.

Re: The Baltic Demographic Disaster

#27

Post by slc »

sologoub wrote: post #21

The Baltic demographic situation is indeed very complex. The article does little justice to this. Someone has already raised the question of ethnic Russians and other non-Baltic origin leaving these countries. This section of the population actually have a very strong incentive to leave - they are considered non-citizen and have none of the EU privileges[1]. According to the same Wikipedia article, Latvia alone start…

Mixing in the non-citizens in a discussion about demographics seems wrong. Most of the non-citizens are people around retirement age - factory workers who were sent in the country from other soviet countries, military families and so on. The cause for reduction in numbers of non-citizens is simple - they died.

Also claiming that they have an incentive to leave the country seems wrong, because the requirements to acquire citizenship are so easy. You just have to prove that you understand the Latvian language at a very basic level. If you can do that, then you get citizenship. Much easier than moving to a different country.

Re: The Baltic Demographic Disaster

#28

Post by bergerjac »

jdangu wrote: post #25

Is it a good idea to build an offshore software development team in one of the baltic countries? Anyone has some perspective with that?

I can't say anything for the Baltic region; however, I'm currently in the Balkans. If you can connect American customers with offshore developers, there would be money to be had.

I'm currently working with some web devs and their previous work and the tools they use exemplifies their skills.

Re: The Baltic Demographic Disaster

#29

Post by slc »

jdangu wrote: post #25

Is it a good idea to build an offshore software development team in one of the baltic countries? Anyone has some perspective with that?

There are already local "franchises" of the large companies like Tietonator and Accenture. The computer science department of the Latvian University, which provides free government funded education in computer science is basically controlled by stock holders of such large offshoring companies. The problem is - the country is very small. About 2 million people. So even taking into account the free education, the absolute number of competent programmers will be quite small. It is already a challenge to find employees for basic web development positions.

Re: The Baltic Demographic Disaster

#30

Post by sologoub »

myth_drannon wrote: post #26
kristaps wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as the riots fueled by ethnic tensions have become much more common You seem to imply that there are already "riots fueled by ethnic tensions", care to point to an example?

Plenty... just a recent one is in Pugachyovo(Russians vs Chechens) The state media tries to suppress the news but Livejournal is full of blog posts with photos.

Exactly. There are also examples from across the country that seem to flare-up periodically. Western media doesn't cover most of them as they tend to be smaller-scale scuffles.
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