More than 200,000 young, talented Greeks with university degrees and skills have left the country during the economic crisis of the past five years, according to a feature in The Guardian. The British newspaper calls them Generation G and talks about the “biggest brain drain in an advanced western economy in modern times.” Now, these migrants will have to watch the January 25 elections from abroad. “It is a huge loss of human capital whose effects will only begin to be felt in the next decade,” said Aliki Mouri, a sociologist at the National Center for Social Research. “People who have been educated at a great cost, both to their families and the public purse, are now working in wealthier countries which have not invested in them at all,” she added. Almost half of the 200,000 young Greeks who have left their homeland for a better future now work in Germany and the United Kingdom. “Greece is where I should be,” says Maritina Roppa, 28, a trainee doctor who left Greece three years ago for Germany. “It’s such a pity that people like me, in their 20s, have had to go.” She adds that several hospitals in Greece have been shut and job positions lost. Roppa is one of 35,000 Greek doctors – the biggest foreign group of its kind – who have emigrated to Germany, according to German statistics. Migration outflow has soared to 300 percent on pre-crisis levels, while youth unemployment exceeded 50 percent. “Greece doesn’t allow you to progress,” said Carmella Kontou, a 34-year-old aesthetician who is considering moving to the United States. “You can’t even begin to think of having a family or achieving things that elsewhere in Europe would be considered totally natural.” She added that she will cast a blank vote in Sunday’s elections, disgusted with the politicians who had brought Greece to this place. Lois Lambrinidis, a professor of economic geography at the University of Macedonia, said that Greeks are willing to move further afield, in Asia, Africa, Australia, or the Middle East. “People feel trapped. The climate, economically and politically, is so bad that even if conditions are only mildly better abroad they are opting to go,” he said. Research based on 2,000 telephone interviews conducted last summer, showed the exodus was becoming ever more dispersed, possibly because Europe was also tightening up visa processes. Yet, many young Greeks who now work and live abroad wish to return to their homeland once the economy recovers. Experts say with their new skills and mindsets the emigrants could become the “change agents” Greece needs. “A lot of us would like to go back,” said Roppa. “We will have a lot to offer in terms of different ethics and mentalities. No country could suffer a fate as bad as Greece. It has been totally humiliated by corrupt politicians and a system that was tolerated for far too long.”
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