Last night I met my professor from University and we talked about colleague that emigrated to Ireland to work in a recycling plant. The colleague of ours is one if the best historians when it comes to Homeland War and War in Bosnia. After finishing University he could only find low paying jobs in retail, a job that made him miserable. Even though he applied to different positions in academia he could not get in and thus decided to find better job abroad. He is not the only one. More than 50 000 young people left for Ireland, Germany, Canada and other countries of the EU. This is largest and most severe emigration wave in recent Croatian history. It is not first though.

Croatia experienced two waves of people leaving the country in the 19th Century. Both of which were economic, and characterized by uneducated part of population, mostly people that worked of land, leave various parts of country. They often left for the United States, Argentina, Chile, Australia. And New Zealand. Most of them never returned as the trips were months long but they managed to find new opportunities in the New World.

Third and Fourth Waves happened in 20th Century and they were both economic and political. Third happened after the Great War and saw people flee to the New World as they feared they could not provide for their families and because they feared persecution of growingly repressive regime. Fourth was mostly the same but it was primarily political as people fled in fear of persecution from Socialist Yugoslavia. Only difference is that people chose West Germany, United States, Canada and France as their place of new life. But they returned. That is a key difference that made that wave legendary in the minds if the people that started romanticize emigrating to other country seeing that the people returned with wealth and money to their homes.

Those ideas and open borders of the EU is what helped speed the process of new Wave. Problem is that is not the only thing. Croatia is full of corruption in all spheres of society. It is evident in politics, construction and academia, a place that is the worst of it all as it pretends to be a moral beacon of society. Corruption together with crippling economy that is based mostly in tourism has provided the feeling of inability of social mobility. It is well known fact that without membership in one of the political parties upwards mobility is almost impossible. That is unless you work in tourism, possibly only branch without widespread corruption but with a lot of foul play and with a feeling that the country is turning into a big hotel, but I digress. Those facts is what made people move out. It is not a better paycheck that made them move out and find a better life. But inability to achieve something in life without need of immoral deeds. Ability for a highly educated citizen to find a job at the university or an institute is non existent. Reason why my best friend is moving to Barcelona to work at university there or his girlfriend to Switzerland for a doctorate in physics. They have better possibilities to succeed in life there, the honest way. And that is the gist of it all, that is why people leave, why whole families leave, why young, capable educated people leave, why my country is starting to feel old and empty.