Bulgaria - The social impact of seasonal migration

52
Another impact of the increased seasonal migration is the attempt of local authorities to
participate more actively in mediating work abroad. The municipality of Vidin had
decided to establish a regular bus line between Vidin and Italy, to serve the needs of the
local migrants. In another example, the mayor of Kirkovo had organised meetings of
Greek employers and local candidate-workers which took place in the building of the
municipality. By constituting themselves as brokers of temporary work abroad,
representatives of the local authorities hoped to spare the would-be migrants the huge
taxes of private consulting firms (in the range of 800 USD per exit) as well as to regulate
migration flows. Their endeavours had remained so far unsuccessful, since even the
engagement of local power could not force foreign employers to offer legal work
contracts to their Bulgarian employees.
4.1.3. Negative impact of emigration – brain drain, depopulation, a negative image
As a result of out-migration, Bulgaria had lost large segments of highly qualified
specialists and workers as well. The intensive emigration of highly qualified personnel
has continued since 1990. Of the total emigrants in 1991, some 12% held university
degrees and 18% had graduated from college (Bobeva 1994, 230). In 1992, the Institute of
Demography conducted an investigation on the losses of scholars from the Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences as a consequence of the economic crisis and the lack of adequate
resources for scientific research in the transition period (Tsekova 1993). It demonstrated
that in 1990-2, 440 of the scholars working in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences had left
the country; this number constituted nearly 6% of all scholars in the Academy. The
worst to be hit by brain drain were the sciences with established traditions of
international co-operation, namely biology (144 people), mathematics (71), the
technical sciences (47) and physics. The most preferred destination country was
definitely the USA, having attracted around 1/3 of all emigrant scholars, followed by
Germany, France, Canada, and the UK.
Brain drain affected particularly negatively the community of the Bulgarian Turks,
which lost 9 000 university graduates during the early 1990s, according to Turkish
statistics (Bobeva 1994, 227). The deficit of economists, teachers and engineers in the
ethnically mixed regions of Bulgaria becomes an additional predicament to the
economic development of these stagnating regions. Recent emigrations from these
areas kept involving the most active and qualified part of the population, those who had
lost their privileged social status amidst political and economic transformations. Among
them are former mayors and representatives of municipal councils, former policemen,
technicians, students and doctors (interviews No. 25 and No. 26).
One of the negative impacts of emigration is the depopulation of some areas in Bulgaria,
especially in the ethnically mixed regions where emigration took massive proportions.
Some villages, towns, cities and municipalities have almost halved their population for
the last decade or so. The scale of this phenomenon is evident from the table below,
showing the population movement in Kirkovo municipality in South-eastern Bulgaria.
Although the difference between the two columns gives the number of those residing
elsewhere (both in and out of Bulgaria), it is used by local population statistics experts
and the administration as a figure showing the approximate size of external migration.