Original article (in Slovenian) was published on 03/08/2021
According to the Slovenian Statistical Office, less than half of those that emigrated from Slovenia last year were the country’s citizens.
Žana Ernožnik, Razkrinkavanje.si
“In 2019 alone, an average of 314 Slovenians emigrated every week. These are six bus-loads, mostly young and educated,” said Mark Boris Andrijanič, then a candidate for minister for digital transformation, on July 16 in a presentation at the parliamentary committee for internal affairs, public administration and local self-government.
Andrijanič, who was elected to the position by the Parliament on the same day, also stated that such extensive emigration reveals a “brain drain of dramatic proportions”. In his opinion, every week that Slovenia delays digitalisation it loses young and educated people in which it has invested a lot.
When asked what data the minister relied on in his statement, his office replied that he referred to publicly available data by the national Statistical Office (SURS). However, they did not explain whether he only took into account data pertaining to citizens of Slovenia and what level of education the emigrants achieved.
SURS explained that there was no single definition of brain drain, but the term is commonly used to describe emigration of people with a tertiary level of education. In verifying the statement, we therefore took into account this Office’s data on emigrants who had tertiary and higher education.
In 2019, 15,106 people emigrated from Slovenia, an average of 290.5 people per week. Among all emigrants, 43.7 percent or 6,598 were Slovenian citizens, or (rounded up) 127 per week. Among them 28.9 percent or 1910 were people aged 15 to 29.
Surs collects data on education of emigrants only for those older than 14, of which more than a half had a secondary education degree. Less than a third had a college or university degree.
Digitization can encourage migration
In a statement for Razkrinkavanje.si, Marina Lukšič Hacin, a migration researcher and the head of the Institute for Slovene Emigration and Migration at ZRC SAZU, warned that problematizing only the brain drain or emigration of the highly educated can be a flagpost for social racism.
She emphasized that “all citizens of Slovenia who enjoy the same rights and should have the same dignity as citizens should be valued in a similar way, even if they are professionally and educationally diverse”. Brain drain is problematic regardless of the education level of emigrants while emigration is not very problematic as long as there is more immigration into the country.
According to SURS, this has been the case for the last six years with net migration increasing every year. In 2015, 507 more people immigrated to Slovenia than emigrated out of the country while net migration in 2019 was 16,213. Last year, the surplus was 18,365 people.
As Razkrinkavanje.si reported in May in a fact-check of a related statement on emigration of young professionals, emigrants have various reasons for moving. According to interim findings of an ongoing research by the Institute led by Lukšič Hacin and partners (???) on brain drain, show that aside from annual salary, opportunities for career and personal development and the relationship between society and politics are important to young qualified staff.
Blaž Lenarčič, a researcher of migrations in connection with digitalisation at Science and Research Centre Koper, explained that individuals motivated by higher earnings could stay in Slovenia due to the digitization process, if the country would have provided appropriate infrastructure and legislation for teleworking for foreign companies. However, if the motive were working conditions such as laboratory equipment and opportunities for good mentoring, digitization will not have a particular impact on one’s decision to emigrate.
Digitization enables individuals to have time and cost-effective access to information they can use to make a decision to move to another country, Lenarčič said. According to him, digitization could contribute to job creation thereby affecting the level of migration to and from Slovenia, but he also pointed out that there was no empirical data available on the impact of digitalization on migration.
Razkrinkavanje.si asked the digital transformation ministry to respond to its findings, but they replied that they would not offer further explanation of the minister’s statements.
Marko Boris Andrijanič’s claim that most of the people who emigrated in 2019 were young and educated is not true.