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It's hard to get up and move away from everyone you know just to chase wealth and financial stability. Your relationships with people are more important than mo

by reidjs 5y ago

It's hard to get up and move away from everyone you know just to chase wealth and financial stability. Your relationships with people are more important than money. It's not easy to learn a new language, gain citizenship, get a job, and successfully do the thousand other things required to migrate to a new country.

atemerev 5y ago
I have lived in 5 different countries, with residence permits and all (Russia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Denmark — and also a few months in the US). While it was certainly not easy, I gained a lot from this experience (new relationships and networking opportunities in particular).
bobthechef 5y ago
Exactly. This is one of the (many) problems with the vulgar "homo economicus" view of human beings. Culture and nationality are likewise factors. Moving to another country is difficult. You are moving to an alien culture with an alien language where you will be unfamiliar with a whole host of social realities, some of which may contradict what you believe. That's why immigrants usually create ethnic neighborhoods[0] and it is only their grandchildren onward who are fully assimilated into the adopted nation, usually facilitated through intermarriage which tends to water down ethnic ties. [0] Tangentially, it is an interesting question how long the ethnic European neighborhoods, nostalgically portrayed in movies like "The Godfather", that began to dissolve around WWII could have lasted. According to one view of what is commonly called "white flight", a major factor was the WASP ruling class' social engineering and ethnic cleansing of them out of existence by dispersing them across the suburbs which hastened their assimilation ("into what?" is itself a question worth pursuing; a WASP-constructed "identity"?). The reason this migration out of the cities coincided with the civil rights movement, according to this view, is that the Great Migration of black sharecroppers from the South was effectively an instrument of mass migration into ethnic neighborhoods. Mass migration always fragments the peoples into which the migration flows. So, given this interpretation, this was not some manifestation of racism, but of disintegrating neighborhoods (the "white guys" throwing rocks in Marquette Park were apparently Lithuanians who felt that their community was threatened by this migration). Many of these neighborhoods were also Catholic, and with falling birth rates among Protestants following the 1930 Lambeth Conference, the idea of Catholics outbreeding them was not something they cared to endure.
saiya-jin 5y ago
By moving to far better country you gain much more than just money. Its tons of things usually, that completely redefine overall level of quality of life. Health care, social care, low crime rate, better schools for children and generally much better environment for them to grow up and have better lives (again, not in monetary sense, this comes just as consequence of the rest). It can be very stimulating. Its a huge step, too big for way too many people, but definitely worth it for many others. It looks much worse from far than actually doing the steps though, you break them down into atomic parts just like any other problem solving. I've done it twice and when looking back to those 10/15 years, it was the right choice, probably the best in my life. But its best done before starting family.
notahacker 5y ago
To add to which, the people who are most likely to get visas to move to much richer countries tend to be the ones that start off in their own country's upper middle class (allowing them to tick all the right educational boxes to become software developers or nurses, or at least have savings to pay people smugglers). They can still be materially a lot richer and often enjoy many other lifestyle benefits from moving overseas even if they have to drop down the status ladder and forget about owning land and having servants, but it does make the decision a bit more of a tradeoff than a salary comparison might suggest. The option of moving isn't really there for the people who are so poor there's no upside to staying in their own country.
- golemiprague 5y ago
  That really depends on geography, if you border with a rich country also the poor people can migrate illegally just by crossing the border, that's what happening with Mexico and the US or Africa and Europe. But indeed those people don't always do so well in their new country, it just creates more problems. In general migration is not such a great solution because once too many people migrates from the same place it just creates a nation within a nation and you are setting the country for the next civil war, whether proper war or low key between all the different groups. The best way to solve the issue is within each country, China did much more to alleviate poverty for a huge number of people comparing to what migration achieved.

by reidjs 5y ago

atemerev 5y ago

I have lived in 5 different countries, with residence permits and all (Russia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Denmark — and also a few months in the US). While it was certainly not easy, I gained a lot from this experience (new relationships and networking opportunities in particular).

bobthechef 5y ago

Exactly. This is one of the (many) problems with the vulgar "homo economicus" view of human beings. Culture and nationality are likewise factors. Moving to another country is difficult. You are moving to an alien culture with an alien language where you will be unfamiliar with a whole host of social realities, some of which may contradict what you believe. That's why immigrants usually create ethnic neighborhoods[0] and it is only their grandchildren onward who are fully assimilated into the adopted nation, usually facilitated through intermarriage which tends to water down ethnic ties. [0] Tangentially, it is an interesting question how long the ethnic European neighborhoods, nostalgically portrayed in movies like "The Godfather", that began to dissolve around WWII could have lasted. According to one view of what is commonly called "white flight", a major factor was the WASP ruling class' social engineering and ethnic cleansing of them out of existence by dispersing them across the suburbs which hastened their assimilation ("into what?" is itself a question worth pursuing; a WASP-constructed "identity"?). The reason this migration out of the cities coincided with the civil rights movement, according to this view, is that the Great Migration of black sharecroppers from the South was effectively an instrument of mass migration into ethnic neighborhoods. Mass migration always fragments the peoples into which the migration flows. So, given this interpretation, this was not some manifestation of racism, but of disintegrating neighborhoods (the "white guys" throwing rocks in Marquette Park were apparently Lithuanians who felt that their community was threatened by this migration). Many of these neighborhoods were also Catholic, and with falling birth rates among Protestants following the 1930 Lambeth Conference, the idea of Catholics outbreeding them was not something they cared to endure.

saiya-jin 5y ago

By moving to far better country you gain much more than just money. Its tons of things usually, that completely redefine overall level of quality of life. Health care, social care, low crime rate, better schools for children and generally much better environment for them to grow up and have better lives (again, not in monetary sense, this comes just as consequence of the rest). It can be very stimulating. Its a huge step, too big for way too many people, but definitely worth it for many others. It looks much worse from far than actually doing the steps though, you break them down into atomic parts just like any other problem solving. I've done it twice and when looking back to those 10/15 years, it was the right choice, probably the best in my life. But its best done before starting family.

notahacker 5y ago

To add to which, the people who are most likely to get visas to move to much richer countries tend to be the ones that start off in their own country's upper middle class (allowing them to tick all the right educational boxes to become software developers or nurses, or at least have savings to pay people smugglers). They can still be materially a lot richer and often enjoy many other lifestyle benefits from moving overseas even if they have to drop down the status ladder and forget about owning land and having servants, but it does make the decision a bit more of a tradeoff than a salary comparison might suggest. The option of moving isn't really there for the people who are so poor there's no upside to staying in their own country.

golemiprague 5y ago
That really depends on geography, if you border with a rich country also the poor people can migrate illegally just by crossing the border, that's what happening with Mexico and the US or Africa and Europe. But indeed those people don't always do so well in their new country, it just creates more problems. In general migration is not such a great solution because once too many people migrates from the same place it just creates a nation within a nation and you are setting the country for the next civil war, whether proper war or low key between all the different groups. The best way to solve the issue is within each country, China did much more to alleviate poverty for a huge number of people comparing to what migration achieved.