“This is Europe in the making! Half of all those who are leaving the country are moving to other European countries. Should we still call this emigration? Shouldn’t we, in fact, be pleased about this development and view it as a manifestation of an emerging European citizenry?”
– Jean-Luc Biacabe, economist at the Chamber of Commerce of Paris, in the French daily Le Monde, 11 March 2014.
This article reports growing concerns in France about the rising numbers of young people leaving the country to work abroad — the number of French citizens formally registered in the UK, for example, having trebled over the past 20 years to 126,000 (the actual figure probably being somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000). Mr. Biacabe, who was in charge of a study on French professionals moving abroad, notes in the same article that the numbers of young Britons, Italians or Germans leaving their respective home countries to work abroad are much higher — […]

Author :
Print