How Eastern European immigration is changing the Eurovision Song Contest

Results of Ireland televote:

• 1st place (12 points) - Latvia;
• 2nd place (10 points) - Poland.

Overall, Latvia did OK this year, getting points from 15 different countries, most of which had no obvious connection to us. But Ireland was the only 1st place vote that we got and I'm sure Latvian-Irish had a substantial role in that.

Latvians in Ireland and UK, the numbers, part 3

Earlier, I did two posts on the number of people who have left Latvia for Ireland and UK. To summarize them briefly, Latvia lacks reliable statistics on this topic. Latvian statistics office only records the people who report their move to the authorities, obtaining a number of about 5,000 emigrants per year which is a major underestimate. Newspapers occasionally claim 100,000 or even 200,000 emigrants from Latvia to UK and Ireland and, in neighbouring Lithuania, one source has claimed that 500,000 Lithuanians have left for a better life abroad.

To find some reliable numbers, I looked at the statistics from UK and Ireland. Both of them maintain detailed records of how many Eastern Europeans arrived to work there. There are 25,956 Latvians who have registered with Irish authorities from May 2004 (the date when Latvia joined EU) and July 2007 (the most recent month for which they have data). UK reports 34,460 Latvian workers arriving there up to end of June 2007. Those are substantial numbers of people, although they are less than the wildest claims by media.

Also, looking for a better life in Ireland or UK is far from being specific to Latvians. There are substantial numbers of Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians there, as well. Latvia, however, has the second highest emigration rate in EU8. (Lithuania is the only country with a higher emigration rate.) By breaking down the numbers by year, we can see that the emigration is rapidly decreasing and the number of people who left Latvia in 2007 only a half of what it was in 2005.

Irish and UK data have one thing missing in them. Both countries register people who arrive there. They don't record whether those people are still there or not. So, we know that there were 60,000 Latvians who worked in UK or Ireland at some point... but some of them may be back in Latvia now.

Now, there is a new set of data. In April 2006, Ireland had a census, recording everyone who was in the country on the census day. Here are the numbers:

55,076 Poles
19,912 Lithuanians
11,105 Latvians
7,377 Slovaks
4,371 Czechs
2,994 Hungarians

The number of Estonians and Slovaks was too small to make the press release. Comparing those numbers with the registration statistics, we see that 62% of Latvians who registered with Irish authorities were still there on the Census Day. For other countries, the similar percentage ranged from 38% (Slovakia) to 64% (Czech Republic).

Quite a few of those people who move to Ireland, stay there. But quite a few people also return to Latvia (or Poland and Estonia). Sometimes, the life in Ireland only looks better from a distance.

The data is from the last year. If the same trend is still true today, the number of Latvians who have moved to UK or Ireland and are still there, should be in the 30,000-40,000 range. Substantial but far from 100,000 numbers that get thrown around in the news.

Latvians in Ireland and UK: the numbers, part 2

One week ago, I wrote about the statistics how many Latvians have left for Ireland and UK. This is the continuation, on how these numbers have changed between 2004 and now. The first graph shows the number of Latvians who have moved Ireland for first time, according to Irish authorities:
To make the comparison between the years fair, I have divided the number of people who arrived in each year by the number of months for which we have data. (For 2004, that would be 8 months after Latvia joined EU in May 2004. For 2005 and 2006, 12 months. For 2007, 6 months because we don't have data for the rest of the year yet.)

The immigration from Latvia to Ireland is clearly decreasing. Slowly in 2006 and then more quickly in 2007. The numbers from UK show a similar trend.

The second graph compares the trends in various countries. To keep it simple, I compared two years, 2005 and 2007. Here are the immigration rates (the number of people arriving in Ireland, divided by the population):
The red lines show the rates for 2005, the blue for 2007. For all three Baltic states, the numbers have significantly decreased. It appears that the present economic boom is making people substantially less interested in leaving their country.

Accidentially, the Latvian business magazine LD had the cover story "Latvians start returning from Ireland" last week. (The link is to the picture of the magazine, the story itself is only in the print edition.)

Latvians in Ireland and UK: the numbers

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Latvians (and other Eastern Europeans) who have left Latvia to work in Ireland and UK. Here is what the numbers are. Both Ireland and UK maintain detailed statistics on the number of Eastern Europeans who have arrived there. In Ireland, the new residents have to obtain PPS numbers (Irish counterpart of Latvian personas kods or US Social Security Number) and the government tracks the number of those. Here are the data:

In UK, the Eastern Europeans who work there have to register through Worker Registration Scheme (WRS). Here are their numbers:
It's not quite 1.5 or 2 million of Poles in UK that some newspapers have reported. I mentioned that number in my previous post, but, when I look at it again, it turns out that 1.5-2 millions include Poles who have visited UK as tourists. The actual number of Polish workers in UK is 393,000 but that is still quite big.

And both in Ireland and UK, Poles outnumber the other Eastern Europeans. That is not surprising since Poland has much more people than any of the other countries. Here is what the numbers look as a percentage of population for the respective countries:
It's actually Lithuanians who have been the quickest to leave their country. 3.3% of Lithuania's population has ended up working in UK or Ireland. (Since UK only registers those foreigners who work there, the percentage of working-age Lithuanians who have left is probably 5-6%.) Latvia is second, with 2.5% of population gone. Slovakia is third and Poland is fourth. That surprised me a bit, because there are so many newspaper stories about Poles in UK and hardly any about Slovaks. Estonia is fifth. The emigration rates from Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovenia are much smaller.

Curiously, UK data say that more than half of arriving Eastern Europeans intend to work there for 3 months or less. So, some of people counted in those graphs may have actually gone back. I wonder if that actually happens or whether people are lying on their worker applications for some strange reason.

I will have another post with numbers from UK and Ireland in a few days, including a new trend that has not been noticed by the media yet...

Latvians in Ireland

Over the last years, tens of thousands of Latvians have left Latvia to search for a better life in Ireland. Over there, they would work long hours in jobs that "locals would not take", as farm workers, supermarket cashiers or cleaners. Their income would be below-average by Irish standards but much more than what they would have earned in Latvia.

The story of Latvians in Ireland is known far outside of Latvia. Once, I was approached by an American colleague who had just read about it in New York Times. And there have been stories in other major Western media outlets, like Washington Post and MSNBC.

People have been leaving for Ireland or UK from many countries in Eastern Europe. Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia... Out of those, Poland and Latvia are the two that get mentioned in Western media most frequently. Poland, because it's much larger than the other countries and sends the most people abroad. There are more than two million Poles in UK now.

Latvia... I would give most of the credit to one person. Laima Muktupavela. A Latvian writer who went to Ireland , came back and published a novel, Šampinjonu Derība (The Mushroom Testament), in which she describes her experiences working sixteen-hour days on a mushroom farm in Ireland. The book became known in both Latvia and outside and Muktupavela was interviewed by BBC and others. This brought the story of Latvians in Ireland into international spotlight.

It's quite amazing how much difference one writer can make. Without Muktupavela, we would still be having our debates on people leaving for Ireland, but nobody would know that outside of Latvia. In her most recent interview with MSNBC (which is worth reading in full), Muktupavela was asked about the empty farmhouses in eastern Latvia, abandoned by people who have left. She answered:

Five years from now these houses will be full, if people will see .... [a] change of the economic situation.

This is what I would like to think as well.