**IMISCOE Research Series**

## Rita Kaša Inta Mieriņa *Editors*

# The Emigrant Communities of Latvia

National Identity, Transnational Belonging, and Diaspora Politics

**IMISCOE Research Series**

This series is the official book series of IMISCOE, the largest network of excellence on migration and diversity in the world. It comprises publications which present empirical and theoretical research on different aspects of international migration. The authors are all specialists, and the publications a rich source of information for researchers and others involved in international migration studies.

The series is published under the editorial supervision of the IMISCOE Editorial Committee which includes leading scholars from all over Europe. The series, which contains more than eighty titles already, is internationally peer reviewed which ensures that the book published in this series continue to present excellent academic standards and scholarly quality. Most of the books are available open access.

For information on how to submit a book proposal, please visit: http://www. imiscoe.org/publications/how-to-submit-a-book-proposal.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13502

Rita Kaša • Inta Mieriņa Editors

# The Emigrant Communities of Latvia

National Identity, Transnational Belonging, and Diaspora Politics

*Editors* Rita Kaša Stockholm School of Economics in Riga Riga, Latvia

Inta Mieriņa Institute of Philosophy and Sociology University of Latvia Riga, Latvia

ISSN 2364-4087 ISSN 2364-4095 (electronic) IMISCOE Research Series ISBN 978-3-030-12091-7 ISBN 978-3-030-12092-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12092-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019. This book is an open access publication **Open Access** This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

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### **Acknowledgements**

This research into Latvia's emigrant communities in the twenty-first century is the outcome of a large-scale interdisciplinary research initiative and a collaborative effort supported by a community. It was the support of the community that made this study a unique event with lasting value.

First and foremost, the editors of this book and the team of authors wish to thank all the participants in the research which has led to this publication. We thank our respondents who shared their views by completing a questionnaire of Latvian emigrants abroad, who entrusted their stories of personal experiences of migration to our interviews and who encouraged the involvement of friends and relatives in this study.

Data reflected in this volume were collected in the scope of the research project *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia: National Identity, Transnational Relations, and Diaspora Politics* Nr. 013/0055/1DP/<IP_ADDRESS>.0/13/APIA/VIAA/040 funded by the European Social Fund, carried out under the umbrella of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia, in cooperation with the Faculty of Economics and Management. Data collection efforts took place in various countries where there are Latvians who went abroad after 1991. The breadth of such a research effort would not have been possible without the ongoing support of the World Federation of Free Latvians, the European Latvian Association, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia, the Latvian Language Agency, the State Employment Agency of Latvia, the Latvian Association of Local and Regional Governments, Latvian diplomatic representations abroad and many other organisations which helped us engage with Latvians abroad. On a personal level, we would like to extend our special gratitude to Rolands Lappuķe and Pēteris Kārlis Elferts, the former Special Ambassadors for the Diaspora Affairs of the Republic of Latvia, for their support from the initial phases until the completion of the project.

Many thanks also go to the social media outlets which provided crucial information support for the survey of emigrants in this research, especially Juris Auzāns and Jānis Akmentiņš at Draugiem.lv; Kristaps Armanis at TvNET; Ingus Bērziņš and Anatolijs Golubovs at DELFI; Indulis Bērziņš at Inbox; Daina Gross at latviansonline.

com, the diaspora media outlet latviesi.com; Anglo-Baltic News; and many others who distributed information about the survey.

This research project would not have been possible without the excellent support of our colleagues Aleksandrs Aleksandrovs and Alda Ramāne in project administration. And finally, we express our sincere gratitude to Vincent Hunt for his thoughtful engagement with this project and for editing the English language throughout this manuscript.

## **Contents**

viii

## **Contributors**

**Ianis Bucholtz** is an assistant professor at Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences and a researcher at the Institute of Social, Economic and Humanities Research. He received his Ph.D. in Communication Science from the University of Latvia in 2013. His research interests concern contemporary developments in journalism, social aspects of computer-mediated communication and social media.

**Mihails Hazans** is a professor of Econometrics at the University of Latvia and research fellow at IZA Institute of Labor Economics and at the Global Labour Organization. He has served as an expert, consultant, advisor or principal investigator in numerous projects for the OECD, World Bank, USAID, European Commission, ILO and Global Development Network, as well as for various national institutions. His research considers labour market issues in the Baltic and other European countries, and his recent focus has been on migration, human capital, ethnic minorities, informality and ageing. He has contributed chapters to books published by Springer, Edward Elgar, Ashgate and the OECD and has also published articles in journals such as *Economica*, *Journal of Population Economics*, *Empirica* and *Labour: Review of Labour Economics and Industrial Relations*.

**Iveta Jurkane-Hobein** is an independent researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Uppsala University in Sweden. Her research interests include perceptions of time, family sociology, migration experiences and Russian-speaking Latvians. Her research has been published in the *Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies*, *Qualitative Sociology*, *Studies in Communication and Culture* and other peerreviewed journals.

**Daiga Kamerāde** is a senior lecturer in Quantitative Research Methods at the University of Salford in the UK. She holds a Ph.D. in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research interests focus on civic participation, work, employment and well-being. Her research has been published in various outlets, including *Human Relations*, *Work, Employment and Society*, the *European Sociological Review*, and *Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly*.

**Mārtiņš Kaprāns** is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia, and an associate expert at the US think-tank The Center for European Policy Analysis. He received his Ph.D. in Communication Science from the University of Latvia in 2012. His research interests involve Baltic labour migrants, Russophone communities in the post-Soviet area and strategic narratives. He has published scientific articles in many international volumes and journals, the most recent of which are *Memory Studies* and *Journal of Baltic Studies.*

**Rita Kaša** is a research fellow at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Education from the State University of New York in Buffalo, USA. Her research interests concern educational policy, equity in higher education access and the finance and governance of higher education. Her articles have appeared in the *Peabody Journal of Education*, the *Baltic Journal of Economics* and *European Education.*

**Evija Kļave** Dr.sc.soc., is a senior researcher at the Baltic Institute of Social Sciences, one of the leading research and policy analysis centres in Latvia, and a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Latvia. Since 1998, she has worked as sociologist and has participated in a wide range of national and international sociological studies and policy analysis projects. She specialises in the field of qualitative research, policy analysis and discourse analysis. Her research interests are ethnic studies, language use and knowledge, general education policy, social integration policy and migration issues.

**Ilze Koroļeva** Dr.sc.soc., is a deputy director and leading researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Latvia. Her scientific work is largely focused on youth, social exclusion and identity research. She was the lead researcher in the Latvian Science Council-funded project *Social Exclusion Risks of Youth* and *Youth in Risk Society: Transition to Adulthood*. She has also contributed to and led many international comparative studies including the international longitudinal survey *Path of a Generation*, *European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD)*, *Eurostudent*. She is the author of more than 60 scientific publications, appearing in *The Sociological Review*, *European Psychiatry*, *Religious-philosophical* and other peer-reviewed journals.

**Inta Mieriņa** Ph.D., is the director of the Centre for Diaspora and Migration Research at the University of Latvia and a senior researcher at the University of Latvia's Institute of Philosophy and Sociology. In 2014–2015, she was the director of the European Social Fund-supported research project *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia: National Identity, Transnational Relations, and Diaspora Politics*, for which she received the University of Latvia Annual Prize in Science in 2014. She is an alumna of Juris Padegs Research Fellowship at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, New Haven, USA. She has also received a Fulbright scholarship for research at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Her publications have appeared in *Social Science Research*, *The*  *Sociological Review*, *European Societies*, *Europe-Asia Studies* and other peerreviewed journals. Her main research interests concern migration, nationalism and far-right attitudes, inequality, participation, trust and community involvement.

**Andris Saulītis** is a Ph.D. candidate in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Currently, he is a Juris Padegs Research Fellow at Yale University's Baltic Studies Programme, New Haven, USA.

**Ieva Skubiņa** Ph.D., is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Latvia. Skubiņa has led and coordinated multiple national and international research projects. She also has worked in projects aimed at developing recommendations to policymakers for addressing social policy issues. Her main research interests are in the sociology of youth and education, the analysis of migration and asylum policies and research into social exclusion and poverty.

**Laura Sūna** Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, working on a project exploring *Transcultural Emotional Repertoires in and by Reality TV* at the Collaborative Research Centre *Affective Societies*. Before that, she was a part-time lecturer at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at Freie Universität Berlin and a scientific assistant at the University of Bremen, Germany, and the University of Latvia, Latvia. Her research interests include reality TV, youth culture, migration studies, cultural studies and qualitative research methods.

**Inese Šūpule** Dr.sc.soc., is a sociologist and researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Latvia. Her fields of expertise include migration, ethnic studies, ethnic politics, integration in society, education and language use and knowledge.

**Aivars Tabuns** is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Latvia. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Sociology from the Institute of Applied Sociology in Moscow. His research interests concern national identity, ethnic relations, language, culture and social integration in Latvia.

## **Chapter 1 Introduction**

**Rita Kaša and Inta Mieriņa**

This volume contributes to research on migration from Latvia, a country in Central Eastern Europe (CEE), following the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991. The experience of independent Latvia with borders opening up to the world and more specifically to the West has turned out to be both a rewarding and wounding experience for communities in the country. On the rewarding side, individuals have gained liberty – an ability to travel the world freely, to see and live in the countries which were beyond the closed doors of the Soviet Union just some decades ago. This freedom, however, has also brought the sense of cost to the society – people are going abroad as if dissolving into other worlds, away from their small homeland. The context of decreasing birth rates and ageing in the country seems to amplify a feeling of loss which is supported by hard evidence. Research shows a worrying 17% decline in Latvia's population between 2000 and 2013. One third of this is due to declining birth rates and two-thirds is caused by emigration (Hazans 2016). This situation has turned out to be hurtful experience for communities in Latvia causing a heightened sense of grief especially during the Great Recession which shook the country at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. By 2013 the feeling of crises even larger than the economic downturn came to a head in Latvian society, pushing the government for the first time in the history of independent Latvia to recognise the migration of the country's nationals and to acknowledge diaspora politics as an important item on the national policy agenda.

R. Kaša (\*)

I. Mieriņa Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Riga, Latvia e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
This has raised a number of important questions for research. What has become of the contemporary post-1991 Latvian migrant communities? Who are they? Where are they? How are they? What do they do? How do they live? And how is Latvia's government reaching them through its diaspora policy measures? Will they ever come back? And if they do, will they stay? The current volume presents answers to these questions.

The focus of this volume is driven not only by specific interest in contemporary migrant realities in a very specific historically national context, but also by the potential to address the gap in research on migrants originating from a small European nation. Thus, while the dominant share of migration studies in Europe focus on immigrants from non-European countries (CEED 2014), this volume provides evidence on migrants from a CEE country, particularly their socio-cultural uprooting, processes of integration, and – in the case of return migration – re-integration.

This volume extends the issues covered in research on East to West European migration, especially in the case of the Baltic countries. The literature hitherto has predominantly tackled issues of labour market (Black et al. 2010; Kahanec and Zimmermann 2009). In addition to aspects of employment, this volume addresses social and political trust among emigrants, networks and social inclusion, identity and their sense of belonging, language use and acquisition, participation and distance nationalism, cultural and media consumption, policies aimed at return migration, and employment and education abroad. All these issues in the case of CEE migrant communities have been under-researched although increasingly they are deemed relevant for scholarly investigation (Bijl and Verweij 2012; Bilgili et al. 2015; Ersanilli and Koopmans 2011; Huddleston et al. 2013).

This volume finds its place among studies examining emigration from the perspective of migrant sending countries and contributes to closing the gap in research on migration from Baltics since much of the existing research on migration from CEE focuses on such relatively large communities as Polish and Romanian migrants (e.g., Faist 2003; Galent et al. 2009; Gorny and Rusipi 2004; Kuvik et al. 2013; Simon et al. 2008; Uccellini 2013; Ziemer and Roberts 2012). At the same time, while Latvia is one of the smallest states in Europe it is home to one of the most mobile populations of CEE citizens and according to some estimates, has the highest expected migration potential among European Union (EU) member states (Hazans 2016). A particular feature in the case of Latvian migration is the large share of mostly Russian-speaking ethnic minority people among Latvian migrants, and the increasing share of children and young people leaving the country.

Empirical evidence in the volume broadens and deepens the knowledge about the reasons for and patterns of Latvian migration during the past 25 years. Most importantly, it provides a fascinating insight into the social and psychological aspects linked to migration in a comparative context. The data in the volume is rich in providing perspectives at the individual level of contemporary Latvian migrants globally addressing issues such as emigrants' economic, social and cultural embeddedness in the host country, ties with the home country and culture, interaction with public

authorities both in the host and home country, political views, and perspectives on the permanent settlement in migration or return. This research presents the perspectives of diverse groups of migrants including skilled and unskilled professionals, housewives, students, and entrepreneurs. Although the volume builds on data about Latvian emigrants, many of the issues discussed here are faced by any emigrant community – such as the assimilation of children, relationships between emigrants representing different emigration waves, the complex identities and attachments of minority emigrants, and the role of culture and media in identity formation and presentation.

While focused on one sending country, the volume takes on analysis of immigrants' socio-cultural integration at their destinations in a wide comparative perspective. It addresses socio-cultural integration of Latvian migrants in multiple host countries in Europe and elsewhere, diversifying the existing body of literature dominated by case studies of CEE migrant communities in several large receiving countries and especially in Great Britain (e.g., Kuvik et al. 2013; Ziemer and Roberts 2012).

Such contribution of this volume rests on a large dataset generated in the scope of the interdisciplinary research project *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia: National identity, transnational relations and diaspora politics* Nr. 013/0055/1DP/<IP_ADDRESS>.0/13/APIA/VIAA/040, financed by the European Social Fund. The project was carried out under the auspices of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia in cooperation with the Faculty of Economics and Management during 2014 and the first half of 2015. This research project brought together a team of 16 researchers representing the disciplines of sociology, economics, media studies, comparative education and political science engaged in a coordinated task to develop a multi-faceted view on contemporary migration from a single sending country – Latvia. In the scope of this work, the research team undertook data collection engaging Latvian emigrant communities in many nations in Europe and elsewhere. Under the umbrella of the overall research focus, each researcher in the project had their own set of research questions, inquiring deeply into specific aspects of contemporary migration realities.

Given the versatility of the researchers' academic backgrounds and research interests, the research process leading to the results presented in this volume involved a significant effort to develop a joint interdisciplinary methodology for the project. Thus, the methodological approach in data collection was jointly designed, while each researcher in the team had a distinct angle when examining contemporary migration from Latvia, described further in this chapter.

An integrated approach to surveying emigrants, which formed the core of the research project, distinguishes this volume from other studies not only on migration from Latvia, but other Eastern European countries as well. Evidence presented in the chapters of this volume comes from a large quantitative and qualitative data set. This quantitative data set, which we refer to as *'The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey,' includes 14,068 respondents who have emigrated from Latvia and represent 118 emigration destination countries. The qualitative data set extends

quantitative research data providing in-depth descriptions of migration realities. The qualitative data consists of almost 200 in-depth interviews with emigrants in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and other countries, return migrants in Latvia and national migration policy experts. Some authors in this volume used additional qualitative data generation techniques when examining their specific research topic, described in their respective chapters. A detailed discussion of the development and application of the integrated research design for studying contemporary emigrant communities of Latvia is presented in Chap. 2 by Inta Mieriņa in this volume.

One important part of developing a common research methodology for a group of researchers representing different academic disciplines and fields of study was reaching an agreement on the definition of the central terms of the study. The focus of this research on contemporary migrants from Latvia drew on the dichotomous notion of pre-1991 and post-1991 migration from Latvia, characterised by very different historical circumstances. Migration from Latvia in the twentieth century prior to 1991 was predominantly driven by events associated with World Wars I and II, described in Chap. 3 of this volume by Mihails Hazans. Forced emigration from Latvia was a common reason for the forming of the Latvian diaspora prior to 1991. The collapse of the Soviet Union, full restoration of Latvia's independence in 1991, and its subsequent integration with Western countries and the European Union opened new migration opportunities, also discussed by Hazans. Post-1991 emigration was not forced by acts of war and foreign occupation regimes, but influenced by changing economic, social and political conditions instead. The dichotomy of the pre and post-1991 circumstances formed a logical borderline in this research to define contemporary migration as 'cross-border movement after 1991'.

At the same time, drawing strict borders and frames when defining a social phenomenon can be rather arbitrary. Although the approach in this research defines a 'contemporary migrant' as someone who moved out of the country after 1991, there are cases when the logic of applying the year of Latvia's *de jure* independence as the strict and only measure can be challenged. Migration conditions for some years before and after 1991 were in many ways more comparable than those in 1992 and 2000. Therefore, even though guided by the notion of the *old* and *new* diaspora with 1991 as the cut-off line, when collecting data we maintained the possibility for our research participants to self-identify as the members of the *new* diaspora, i.e., a contemporary migrant. Thus, although data in the chapters of this volume primarily speaks about post-1991 migration, there are cases of earlier departures from Latvia as well. In *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey, 6.4% of all respondents said they had emigrated prior to 1991. The decisions of authors to include or exclude this group of participants in the analysis was guided by the focus of each chapter.

Specific research questions addressed in separate chapters of the volume set their own requirements for the characteristics of participants such as the year of migration. For example, in Chap. 11 on the communication of the identity of Latvian migrants on social networking sites, Ianis Bucholtz and Laura Sūna present perspectives of participants who emigrated after the emergence of the widespread use of contemporary social media platforms, i.e., after 2004. Similarly in Chap. 13 by Rita Kaša on the nexus between student loan forgiveness and return migration, the availability of student loans for studies abroad from 2001 set the focus on participants who left to study abroad after this year.

Another term as equally important as 'contemporary' in this research was the concept of diaspora. In order to capture the diversity of contemporary Latvian emigrant communities, this study applied an open definition of the term 'Latvian diaspora', welcoming any participant who self-identified with Latvia as a geographical place, nation or citizen. Fieldwork was organized in three languages – Latvian, Russian and English – so research collecting quantitative and qualitative data could be tailored depending on the participant's preference. To enable a diversity of migrant associations with Latvia and yet have one common reference point, the common baseline characteristic for research participants was their or their family's emigration from Latvia.

One of the aims of this research was to capture the perspectives of the ethnic minority representatives of the contemporary Latvian diaspora. To achieve it, this research sought to recruit Russian-speaking members of Latvian emigrant communities. In determining the belonging of research participants to an ethnic minority or a Russian-speaking group from Latvia during data collection, we relied on the selfidentification of participants. We do not apply terms such as 'ethnic Russian' in this research unless the participants themselves identity like this. We took a similar approach to the majority group in this research; that is, ethnic Latvians. Participant self-identification with this ethnicity determined their belonging to this group. In order to succeed in recruiting ethnically diverse participants, we had to approach participant recruitment based on some assumptions about their ethnic belonging. However, when collecting data, we asked the participants about their ethnic selfidentification and built our further engagement with participants on the basis of this perspective.

Ethnicity as a factor in defining the identity and belonging of migrants emerges as a theme in several chapters of this volume. A systematic focus on identity and belonging as it relates to ethnicity, however, is present in two chapters. In Chap. 6, Mārtiņš Kaprāns discusses the ethno-cultural, political and social contexts for long distance belonging, comparing perspectives of Latvian and Russian-speaking migrants in Great Britain. In Chap. 8, Iveta Jurkane-Hobein and Evija Kļave present a more nuanced view of identity formation among Russian-speaking Latvian migrants in Great Britain and Sweden.

Thus, in this research and the chapters of this volume, there is a common approach concerning a shared, if broad, definition of the terms 'contemporary migration', 'Latvian diaspora' and 'ethnic self-identification' of Latvian migrants. Another common feature is our jointly developed *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey and approach to qualitative interview data collection.

In other respects the chapters in this volume represent diverse contributions. The authors of the chapters in this volume draw on different sources of literature characteristic to their research focus and the field of studies they represent. We view this approach as a positive as it extends the links between the fields of migration studies and knowledge generated in other fields of social sciences. Thus, each chapter in this volume grounds its research focus in the literature suited to that particular research focus. Although this approach does not enable a joint theoretical framework for tackling various angles of contemporary migration, it does offer a multifaceted empirical contribution for understanding the emigrant communities of one sending country in Europe in terms of contemporary migrant identity, belonging and perspectives on return migration.

This volume consists of three parts. The first part of the volume includes chapters which consider the question of contemporary migration, its characteristics and approaches to measuring this phenomenon. Chapter 2 by Mieriņa, as mentioned earlier, describes the research design forming the overarching rules for generating the body of evidence presented in the chapters of this volume. This chapter discusses this methodology in the context of other migration studies and major surveys on migration. Mieriņa argues that innovative elements of the research approach in *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia: National identity, transnational relations and diaspora politics* research project, which is the framework for contributions in this volume, qualify this methodology for application in other contexts and studies of various migrant groups in Europe and beyond.

To set the context for the evidence presented in this volume, the chapter on an integrated approach to survey emigrants worldwide is followed by a description of a brief history of emigration from Latvia in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, together with analysis of its driving forces. In this chapter Hazans provides detailed statistics on the main population flows – migration, refugees and deportation – to and from Latvia in the twentieth century. This review is followed by a more detailed analysis of emigration during the first 15 years of the twenty-first century, describing the four waves of emigration between 2000 and 2016. This analysis draws on the discipline of economics and engages insights from the human capital theory, the new economic theory of migration, the network theory and migration systems theory, as well as emphasising the institutional factors framing migration. The chapter concludes that while economic reasons for emigration remain widespread, noneconomic ones are becoming increasingly important. It also concludes that the potential for emigration is higher than the potential for return.

The chapter following that, by Ilze Koroļeva, draws on the dataset of 14,051 respondents in *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey and develops profiles of Latvian emigrants based on their attitudes and self-identification, both with Latvia and their host country. Among Koroļeva's findings is that most respondents feel closer to Latvia than to their host country. However, the people who left Latvia during the Great Recession and its aftermath, as well as those who left for economic reasons, are the most alienated from their home country. These migrants formed the third wave of twenty-first century emigration from Latvia. Koroļeva concludes that

the level of subjective life satisfaction and having a family back at home are important for strengthening the sense of belonging to Latvia and can be a crucial factor in return migration.

Taking into account that most late twentieth and early twenty-first century migration from Latvia has been driven by economic factors, in Chap. 5, Aivars Tabuns looks at the role of formal and informal intermediaries in providing job placement abroad. This chapter addresses such issues as fraud, the mistreatment of jobseekers and discrimination from employers. Using the *Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey data, this chapter describes the vulnerabilities of migrant workers and the unfair treatment and discrimination they face. It also includes recommendations for further studies and policy development.

The second part of the volume *Case Studies on Transnational and National Belonging of Migrants* consists of six chapters, which are in-depth case studies looking at the socio-cultural integration of Latvian migrants in various host countries. This section opens at Chap. 6 with Mārtiņš Kaprāns considering the transnational aspects of identity and the long distance belonging of Latvian migrants in Great Britain. This chapter uses *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey data and semi-structured interviews with Latvian migrants in Great Britain. This chapter discusses the ethno-cultural, political and social contexts of long distance belonging for self-identified Latvian and Russian-speaking emigrants. This research finds differences in ethno-cultural and political contexts of long distance belonging among the ethnic majority and minority emigrants from Latvia. However, there are also points of convergence between the two groups of migrants. This chapter concludes that the social context of long distance belonging enables new forms of allegiance towards Latvia, which are manifested in philanthropic initiatives, participation in various interest groups and a regular interest in what is happening in Latvia.

Chapter 7 by Daiga Kamerāde and Ieva Skubiņa continues the exploration of the Latvian emigrant community in Great Britain. Their research angle, however, is a focus on the future of the Latvian emigrant community in this country. The chapter explores the formation of national and transnational identity among the 1.5 generation migrant children – the children born in Latvia but growing up in Great Britain – from the perspective of their parents. Based on evidence from semi-structured interviews, this chapter shows that the 1.5 generation Latvian migrants are on a path to become English-dominant bilinguals. There is a tendency towards an active integration and assimilation into the new host country either facilitated by their parents or occurring despite their parents' efforts to maintain ties with Latvia.

Chapter 8 by Jurkane-Hobein and Evija Kļave extends the focus on identity formation among migrants from ethnic minorities, an angle often overlooked in research. By analysing 30 life histories of self-identified Russian-speaking migrants from Latvia in Sweden and Great Britain, this chapter shows that in addition to the migration history of their families, the migrants' own migration patterns create interlinked and sometimes conflicting layers of transnational identity. The analysis in this chapter distinguishes three main processes in the formation of identity: aspiring to a Latvian identity, claiming an unrecognised Russian-speaking Latvian identity, and developing transnational 'non-belonging'. Thus, this chapter provides useful insights into how social integration patterns between majority and minority at home are repeated in the emigrant community in the new host country.

A different perspective on migrant identity formation through the lens of the impact of transnational media and culture is presented in Chap. 9 by Laura Sūna, examining how Latvian migrants in Germany feel and experience their belonging to Latvia and its culture. Using evidence generated via in-depth interviews, open media diaries and network maps of Latvian emigrants in Germany, Sūna argues that culture is shaping the transnational self-perception of Latvian migrants in Germany as it provides collective narratives of imagined common frames of references and confirms processes of 'belonging' and 'distinction'.

The question of the welcome the integrated emigrant community affords newcomers from the same country of origin is addressed by Andris Saulītis and Inta Mieriņa in Chap. 10. This studies the relationships and interaction among Latvian emigrants from different migration waves in the United States. It specifically examines reasons for the inability of the existing 'old' Latvian diaspora community, formed as a result of the events of World War II, to integrate late twentieth and early twenty-first century newcomers from Latvia into it. This chapter presents *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey and semi-structured interview data analysis. The chapter concludes that newcomers distance themselves from the alreadyformed emigrant community. They do not have an active engagement with Latvians back home. Instead, these migrants base their belonging on the notion of having roots in Europe in terms of cultural heritage and identity. For them, there is no return home, as they only look forward.

Bucholtz and Sūna conclude this section of the book with a focus on the role of social technologies in the life of contemporary migrants. This chapter analyses how ethnic transnational identities are manifested and negotiated on the social networking sites used by Latvian migrants. The empirical data in the chapter comes from 20 semi-structured interviews with Latvian migrants in different countries and *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey. The results presented in this chapter demonstrate that migrant interactions on social networking sites do not necessarily lead to the homogenisation of concepts of what 'being a Latvian' means to migrants. Results show that a migrant can identify with the host society yet still reject some of its characteristics – and choose Latvian alternatives instead.

The third and final part of the volume contains two chapters focused on return migration and related national policies from the perspective of contemporary migrants.

In Chap. 12 Evija Kļave and Inese Šūpule juxtapose normative return migration policy in Latvia and the experiences of return migrants. This chapter considers the extent to which return policy activities correspond to the needs and expectations of return migrants, and addresses the role of this policy in the process of making the decision to return. Evidence in this chapter consists of policy documents, *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey and in-depth interviews. This chapter finds that the national return migration policy has no impact on individual return decisions among Latvian migrants, as the main reasons for return are non-economic. Coming back is connected to homesickness and also eliminating the risk of assimilation for their children in the host country society.

The final chapter in the volume concludes with Rita Kaša exploring the effectiveness of government policy in prompting return migration. The focus of this chapter is on a specific policy measure – that of student debt forgiveness for international graduates who return and work in positions of social value. Based on qualitative semi-structured interviews, this chapter shows that offering debt forgiveness for former students abroad who return to take jobs at home in specific public sector roles does not prompt return migration among graduates at universities abroad. Evidence from *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey in this chapter suggests that regardless of the source of their higher education funding, the intention to stay abroad dominates among Latvian international students. Yet, curiously enough, the intentions to return are more common among international students who have paid for their studies either with money from their family or with a student loan from the Latvian government.

#### **References**

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

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## **Part I Contemporary Latvian Migration**

## **Chapter 2 An Integrated Approach to Surveying Emigrants Worldwide**

**Inta Mieriņa**

#### **2.1 Research on Migrants: Challenges and Solutions**

Research into emigrant communities – especially quantitative research – is one of the most complicated types of research. The collection of information is made more difficult by the fluid nature of migration as well as the wide distribution of the diaspora and the scarcity of information about the migrants in each community. So far the most common approach for studying migrants has been single-country studies that analyse immigrants from multiple countries of origin in one destination country. There are also a few longitudinal panel surveys1 that allow tracking the situation of migrants over time.2 Although informative, single-country studies offer only limited insight into the impact of policies or context (Bilgili et al. 2015).

The most common source of comparative cross-national data on migrants in many countries is the EU Labour Force Survey (LFS). It contains a large sample of households and extensive data on immigrants' education and their position in the labour market (Fassmann and Musil 2013; Huddleston et al. 2013).3 However, the

<sup>3</sup> In 2008 a special model on migrants and their descendants was added to the LFS. The same year the European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey (EU-MIDIS) survey was conducted. In

I. Mieriņa (\*)

<sup>1</sup>The German Socio-Economic Panel, the Dutch immigrant panel survey 2010–2014 (Martinovic et al. 2009), the National Immigrant Survey of Spain (Reher and Requena 2009); the Longitudinal Study of Migrant Workers in the East of England (Schneider and Holman 2011), the Longitudinal Survey on the Careers and Profiles of Newly Arrived or Regularized Migrants in France (Simon and Steichen 2014).

<sup>2</sup>Administrative registers are a useful source of information (Kraler and Reichel 2010). However, register data is not always timely or comparable due to differences in definitions and questions, and sometimes lacks data on the country of birth or citizenship. Importantly, it often lacks the necessary richness for an in-depth analysis of the causes or consequences of migration.

Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
R. Kaša, I. Mieriņa (eds.), *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia*, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12092-4\_2

LFS has significant methodological drawbacks and limitations linked to the fact that it is not aimed specifically at migrants (European Commission 2008; Marti and Rodenas 2007). For example, it does not include information on the aim of immigration, language skills or the migrants' situation before migrating. Another limitation is that the LFS is mainly focused on labour market outcomes and provides little insight into other aspects that have recently become a matter of increasing concern, mainly, those linked to socio-cultural integration (Bijl and Verweij 2012; Bilgili et al. 2015; Ersanilli and Koopmans 2011). Another large scale pan-European survey, the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) is also hampered by the problem of under-representation and a small number of immigrants (Eurostat 2011). As an alternative, some researchers (Aleksynska 2011; Connor and Koenig 2013; Dronkers and Vink 2012; Wright and Bloemraad 2012) pool data from the small sub-samples of migrants in several waves of the major cross-sectional surveys (usually, the European Social Survey). However, this approach is problematic due to differences in measurement time, definitions and questions, the lack of migration-relevant control variables and most importantly, problems with matching 'pooled-over-time' data (Bilgili et al. 2015; Ersanilli and Koopmans 2013).

A small but growing number of studies employ a double comparative design which looks at more than one immigrant group and more than one destination country (Aleksynska 2011; Fleischmann and Dronkers 2007; Vink et al. 2013; Voicu and Comsa 2014), considering that the situation of immigrants may be affected by the country from which they come (the 'origin effect'); the country to which they migrate (the 'destination effect') and the specific relations between origins and destinations (the 'community effect'). Among the most prominent of such studies are: LIMITS – *The Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities in European Cities: Life courses and Quality of Life in a World of Limitations* study (2004); SCIICS *– Six Country Immigrant Integration Comparative Survey* (2008) (Crul et al. 2012; Ersanilli and Koopmans 2013); TIES – *The Integration of the European Second Generation* survey (2007) (Reichel 2010; Westin 2015); MAFE – *The Migration between Africa and Europe project* (between 2008 and 2010) (Crul et al. 2012; Schoumaker and Beauchemin 2015); SCIP – *The Causes and Consequences of Early Socio-Cultural Integration Processes among New Immigrants in Europ*e panel study (2013) (Platt et al. 2015). Unfortunately, due to financial and methodological limitations, these and most other existing comparative surveys (e.g., Eurostat/NIDI 2000; Koopmans 2010; Phinney et al. 2006; YMOBILITY), including those conducted with migrants from ECE (Ambrosini et al. 2012; CRONEM 2006; Kogan 2003) cover just a handful of destinations, yet strictly speaking they cannot mathematically disentangle the effect of various contextual factors that vary across countries (Bloemraad and Wright 2014; Koopmans 2013). The only solution that would allow the direct measurement of the effect of various contextual features, while also controlling for other micro and macro-level confounders, is multilevel regression analysis that includes a

<sup>2014</sup> a special model on migration *The Labour Market Situation of Migrants and their Immediate Descendants* was again conducted as part of the LFS, yet the questions are retrospective and the scope of questions are very limited, related mainly to the labour market.

significant number of destination countries (Arzheimer 2009; Bilgili et al. 2015; van Tubergen et al. 2004).

In order to obtain reliable results on migrants, sample size and sample design are of crucial importance. Due to the lack of reliable sampling frames from which to sample migrants in the majority of EU countries, previous quantitative studies of emigrants in Europe have relied on methods such as simple snowball sampling, respondent-driven sampling (for example SCIP), Time-Location Sampling or quota sampling based on census data and recruiting respondents at places they usually attend. Due to the high costs of fieldwork involving face-to-face interviews with small minority groups, these methods are usually applied in a narrow geographic space (a selected number of cities or neighbourhoods) and as such are not suited for analysing the effect of, for example, policies or other macro-level factors measured at the national level. Overall, tracing the 'liquid' East-West migrants at a particular place of residence might not be the most appropriate strategy (Eade and Garapich 2009).

Some researchers have used telephone surveys and name sampling from published phone books, registers and/or directories. In a few countries (e.g., the Netherlands) researchers have been able to randomly select respondents from official databases. Unfortunately, such sampling frames are only available to researchers in a few countries and cannot ensure a broad representation of countries. A very promising approach was undertaken by the SEEMIG project LFS Pilot survey 'Migrations' in 2013 which tried to build the sample of emigrants from Hungary and Serbia based on referrals and contact information on relatives abroad provided by the LFS respondents. Unfortunately, this approach did not provide the expected results (Fassmann and Musil 2013). Instead, it demonstrated that it is not realistic to build a large representative sample of emigrants through a big, highly formalised national survey. One can conclude that none of these approaches is able to achieve a significant sample size in many countries without incurring huge costs that would render the study unfeasible.

The solution applied in *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* project includes several novel elements and tackles many of the problems of the previous studies. It draws on the fact that the Internet and social media have become an inseparable part of many migrants' lives. With the prevalence of Internet use, online surveys are becoming increasingly more popular and commonplace. The biggest advantage of web surveys is the possibility of achieving a large sample in a substantial number of countries. However, there are other advantages to using a web survey that are expected to facilitate the willingness of respondents to cooperate and answer the questions truthfully. These are:

The greatest risks associated with web surveys are the potential bias caused by selfselection and the difficulties of reaching certain socio-demographic groups via the Internet (Askitas and Zimmermann 2015; Bethlehem 2010). However, Eurostat data on Internet use are encouraging as they show that in the EU 78% of people 16 years of age or older have used the Internet during the last 3 months (Eurostat 2014). In the 16–24 age group, 94% are regular Internet users and 89% participate in social networking. Considering that most emigrants are young people (Fuller and Ward 2011) and the Internet is important for migrants as a cheap means of communication with their friends and families at home, the percentage of Internet users among migrants – especially young migrants – can be predicted to be very high. Nevertheless, certain discrepancies and imbalances with regard to the representation of various socio-demographic groups among survey respondents might remain.

#### **2.2 Collection of the Quantitative Data**

#### *2.2.1 Geographic Coverage and the Target Group*

The *Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey had the widest possible geographic coverage. It did not impose any limitations as to the geographic location of respondents, aiming at all countries in the world. Any Latvian or Latvian national abroad could participate in the survey, regardless of his or her current country of residence. The majority of our respondents – reflecting the Latvian diaspora in general – come from the UK, Ireland, the US, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, Canada, Finland, France and Austria, and in total 118 countries are represented in the dataset. For comparison, we also show, in Table 2.1, the distribution of Latvian nationals in different countries around the world according to the official statistics.

*The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* is the most inclusive migration study so far in terms of the target audience. All Latvians and Latvian nationals abroad were invited to participate in the survey, applying a broad and open definition of 'Latvian diaspora', based on identification with the Latvian nation and/or citizenship. Some respondents belonged to a minority ethnic group yet still felt 'Latvian' or 'Latvian nationals'. Others may have given up their Latvian citizenship, or never had it in the first place, yet it did not preclude them from feeling like part of the Latvian diaspora*.* Nine hundred three respondents (6.4% of the total) belong to the 'old diaspora',4 i.e., those who left Latvia before 1991, whereas the majority are members of the 'new diaspora' (Fig. 2.1).

In general surveys (e.g., the EU Labour Force Survey or EU SILC) people who are unable to communicate in the survey language are sometimes not interviewed, which excludes a significant proportion of migrants. This is not the case for our

<sup>4</sup>Most members of the 'old diaspora' emigrated at the end of 1940s to the beginning of the 1950s.

**Table 2.1** Numbers of Latvian nationals responding per country (%)

Source: The author, based on The Emigrant Communities of Latvia survey

Only countries with more than 50 respondents are presented in the table. The figures include only those aged 15 years or older. The information about Latvian nationals abroad and emigration since 2000 is based on the calculations of Maris Goldmanis (2015) using statistics from official sources such as OECD, Eurostat, national statistical offices, etc

**Fig. 2.1** The year of departure (survey question: when did you start living in [country]?). (Source: The author, based on *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey*.* Note: The figure does not include those respondents who emigrated before 1991)

survey. The questionnaire was produced in Latvian, Russian and English and there are very few Latvian emigrants not able to speak at least one of these languages. Careful procedures were applied in translating the Russian and English versions. Overall, 10% of respondents filled out the questionnaire in Russian and 1% in English. The rest completed it in Latvian.

In this survey we also consider the liquid nature and diverse patterns of migration. An increasing number of emigrants do not settle permanently in just one country, but alternate between countries or have a home in both. According to our survey, the proportion of such people among emigrants is 17% (Fig. 2.2). They were also included in the survey.

The lower age limit of the survey is set at 15 years old as for younger children parental consent would be required in Latvia. A few respondents who were under 15 were excluded from the dataset.

Sometimes a bias in the sample might occur due to people with plenty of free time being more likely to complete the survey than, for example, those who are very busy and/or at work. This survey applied an innovative approach, offering respondents an opportunity to fill in a shorter version of the questionnaire (20 min) or the full version of the questionnaire (30 min). Those who chose the shorter version were presented with one of two rotating modules, while the core questions of the questionnaire were maintained for all respondents. This methodological innovation allowed the inclusion of more questions in the survey and helped reduce the loss of respondents due to attrition. Of our respondents, 66% chose to fill in the full version. After the survey period the average length of the interview was calculated at 35 min, showing high levels of motivation among respondents to voice their opinion. Our survey design also made it possible to take a break from filling in the questionnaire and return to it later.

**Fig. 2.2** Place of residence. (Source: The author, based on *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey)

#### *2.2.2 Fieldwork and Recruitment of Respondents*

The survey was conducted as a Web-survey, using different methods of recruiting respondents:

Researchers prepared a list of dissemination channels where information about the survey could be sent. It included 187 different diaspora organisations, diaspora associations (choirs, dance collectives, etc.), Latvian cultural centres, parishes and other organisations popular among the Latvian diaspora. In most cases, they were contacted electronically but sometimes the information pamphlets and posters were delivered physically, to be distributed among members of these organisations. Information pamphlets and posters were also distributed with the help of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to almost all Latvian embassies in Europe, and placed there for visitors to see (Fig. 2.3). This was an efficient way of disseminating information, as parliamentary elections took place during the fieldwork. This meant that many of our target group visited the embassy to vote at the polling station.

In addition, online groups of Latvian diaspora members were researched, and information about the survey distributed to them too. Information about the survey was distributed to 37 representatives of diaspora newspapers. Many re-published the press releases and placed the information banners on their website, asking readers to participate in the survey. With the help of the state language agency, the information was sent out to the Latvian school network abroad, which includes more than 100 weekend schools.

**Fig. 2.3** Information materials used to recruit respondents

In order to inform more people about the project, distribute information about how to take part in the survey and raise motivation to participate, researchers engaged in regular interviews with various media, including releasing some initial results. Interviews were given both to Latvian and Russian media. Three press releases were prepared and distributed, informing potential respondents about the survey. Researchers also took part in several conferences presenting interim as well as final results. The link to the questionnaire together with an invitation to participate in the survey was placed on the project website *www.migracija.lv*, in Latvian, Russian and English. People filling in the questionnaires could also Tweet information about the project from the website, or share it on Facebook, Google+, etc. with their friends and acquaintances, which many did.

Many respondents were recruited via the social media site draugiem.lv which is one of the most popular social networking sites in Latvia. Considering that some emigrants might prefer other social networking sites, respondents were also recruited by placing information about the survey on facebook.com*,* vkontakte.com, odnoklasniki.ru, and latviesi.com.

**Table 2.2** Respondent recruitment channels

a draugiem.lv statistics for the first day of placing the information on the website are based on estimates

Another important, l0 channel for recruiting respondents was through news sites online. The three largest news portals in Latvia: Delfi, TvNet (and Apollo), and Inbox displayed information about the project on their websites in Latvian and Russian for almost the entire period of fieldwork.

Information banners were also placed on other websites frequented by Latvians abroad: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia, the State Employment Agency, the Latvian Association of Local and Regional Governments and several municipality websites.

In order to reach emigrants who are comparatively inactive, i.e., they do not read news portals, use social networking sites or attend any institutions or organisations, information about the survey was also distributed using Google AdWords. Invitations to take part in the survey were shown to people who used Google search engines from outside Latvia and searched (in Latvian or Russian) for keywords such as Latvian embassy, Latvia, news in Latvia, work in the UK, Latvians in Ireland, Latvijas Radio 2, etc.

The statistical overview in Table 2.2 shows that 23.6% of respondents whose path to the questionnaire could be identified clicked on the link on the project website *www.migracija.lv*. These are people who heard or read about the project in the media, saw the information posters in embassies or organisations or were told about the survey by their friends or relatives, etc. Another 14.7% used the direct link to the questionnaire. It is most likely they found the link in one of the media publications or were sent the link by their friends. Approximately 10% of those whose path to the questionnaire could be identified were informed about, and attracted to the survey, via the social networking site draugiem.lv. Another very important source of recruiting respondents was the TvNet news portal in Latvian (6.2%).

Among the Russian language recruiting channels, the most important were the news portal Delfi RUS, followed by Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte. These figures do not give a very precise account of how many respondents each of these portals/ sources attracted, as it is possible that the information was seen and interest created by one information source but the respondent clicked on the questionnaire from some other place (eg., the project website).

The fieldwork took place between 4th August and 31st October 2014. To increase response rates, the deadline for filling in the questionnaire was extended twice.

#### *2.2.3 Cleaning the Dataset and Final Sample Size*

The dataset was rigorously cleaned before analysis commenced. The initial dataset contained 15,760 entries.

The total number of interviews in the final dataset was 14,068. Of these, 9284 respondents (66% of the total number) filled in the questionnaire to the end and 4784 partially completed it.5 This substantial number of respondents makes it the largest survey of emigrants from one country to others ever conducted in Europe. Based on estimates of the size of the Latvian diaspora, more than 5% of Latvian diaspora members abroad participated in the survey.

#### *2.2.4 Correcting the Biases by Using Survey Weights*

The various groups in the diaspora population differ both in the intensity of their internet use and in their willingness to volunteer as survey participants. Selfselection associated with web surveys (Bethlehem 2010; Grandcolas et al. 2003) is

<sup>5</sup>Only questionnaires where more than eight questions were answered were considered. Most 'partial questionnaires' included answers to at least one-third of all the questions.

known to lead to under-representation among certain socio-demographic groups (McCollum and Apsite-Berina 2015). In *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey, men were under-represented relative to women (inclusion probability was 1.8 times lower for men than for women); older respondents were under-represented relative to younger respondents (inclusion probability of those 55 or older was 2.6 times lower than among those 15–24), and individuals with lower educational achievement were under-represented relative to those with higher educational achievement (inclusion probability was 4.5 times lower) (Goldmanis 2015). However, the largest discrepancies were observed with regard to the ethnic division: the inclusion probability of Russians was 6.6 times lower than that of Latvians (overall 21% of respondents spoke Russian at home before leaving the country). No imbalance was observed with regard to the type of settlement.6 In the presence of unequal respondent inclusion probabilities, the sample was likely to yield biased (and inconsistent) estimates of population parameters. To correct for this, we applied survey weights that were inversely proportional to the estimated inclusion probabilities of respondents, conditional on a series of socio-demographic variables, including sex, age, level of education and occupation. It is well known that if these control variables captured most of the variation in inclusion probabilities, then the weighted data would yield (approximately) unbiased and consistent estimators (Horvitz and Thompson 1952). The conditional inclusion probabilities were estimated on the basis of official statistics on the distribution of immigrants from each country of origin in each country of destination, as provided by several sources:

To approximate the joint distribution of various control variables, a raking (data balancing) algorithm was applied to produce a joint distribution that has marginal distributions corresponding to those given by the external data (as in Battaglia et al. 2004).7

If the socio-demographic variables used for the computation of weights fully determined the inclusion probabilities, the weighted data would be fully representative of the underlying population (i.e., they would yield fully unbiased and consistent estimates of all population parameters of interest). However, we have to concede that in practice these inclusion probabilities will also be affected by a series of additional factors that we were unable to correct for with survey weights, either because these factors were truly unobservable or latent (such as a respon-

<sup>6</sup>A more detailed methodological analysis of how well the Web survey has managed to reach different socio-demographic groups (i.e., people of different age, gender, education, occupation, employment status, type of settlement), is discussed in Mieriņa and Koroļeva's (2015) article.

<sup>7</sup>A more detailed description of the research methodology and the design of statistical weights is available in Mieriņa and Koroļeva (2015) and Goldmanis (2015).

dent's intrinsic propensity to volunteer to participate in surveys) or because we had no reliable data on the distribution of these factors in the population (as was the case with the distribution of Latvian immigrants by occupation in the aforementioned Latvian survey). Hence, some residual deviations from full representativeness will remain. However, these deviations are likely to be minor, of an order of magnitude similar to the deviations that non-response would cause in a simple random sample.

The latter point is worth reiterating. While an inherently self-selected sample such as occurs in a web survey might seem fundamentally different from a properly random sample (even with non-response), the stochastic processes determining the final sample in both cases are in fact almost identical, as long as there is a substantial non-response in the simple random sample and all individuals in the population have the positive probability of being included in the 'self-selected' web sample. Regardless of whether the respondents' choice is one of opting in (as in the web survey) or opting out (as in the simple random sample), this choice will nonetheless result in ultimate inclusion probabilities that depend on the characteristics of the individual respondents. Correcting for variation in these probabilities in the case of a web survey is exactly equivalent to using post-stratification weighting to correct for non-response in the case of a random sample. The differences between the two cases are only ones of degree, with variations in inclusion probabilities likely to be larger in the case of the self-selected sample. The bias can increase if the study relies on just one source of recruiting respondents. Hence, in order to improve the representativeness of the sample and to reach different respondents in terms of age, gender, occupation and other characteristics, it is important to employ a wide range of different recruitment channels to reach groups with differing characteristics and using a variety of communication platforms and to aim at achieving as large a sample as possible, as achieved by *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* study (Koroļeva and Mieriņa 2015).

#### *2.2.5 Data Storage and Protection*

*The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* project treats the confidentiality of data and protection of respondents' identities with the utmost care. The dataset is stored on a safe server at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, accessible only to a restricted group of researchers. In order to protect the identity of respondents the interviews were anonymised by deleting any information with the potential to identify the respondent (such as their e-mail address if the respondent wrote it in the questionnaire, IP address, token information, etc.) before being placed on the safe server.8

<sup>8</sup>The full non-anonymised dataset is available only to the Project Council and not available even to the project researchers.

In addition, all researchers signed a confidentiality declaration committing to non-disclosure of any information that could potentially identify respondents, and agreeing not to share the dataset outside the team of researchers for two years after the end of the project.

The personal data of respondents is not available and will not be made available to any other organisations or institutions [state or other] outside the University of Latvia and the team of project researchers. It is only analysed in an aggregated way, following the best scientific praxis.

#### **2.3 Collection of the Qualitative Data**

#### *2.3.1 Target Group and Recruitment of Respondents*

As part of the project, 159 partly-structured in-depth interviews were conducted in countries where the Latvian diaspora is largest: the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Germany, Sweden and Norway. In addition, in-depth interviews with return migrants (18) and diaspora policy experts (16) were conducted in Latvia. The target group of in-depth interviews were representatives of the 'new diaspora', i.e., those who left Latvia after 1991. In-depth interviews with representatives of the 'old diaspora' have been covered to a much larger extent in previous research by, for example, Baiba Bela, Ilze Garoza, Māra Zirnīte, Ieva Garda and others (Bela 2010; Zirnīte 2010; Zirnīte and Lielbārdis 2015).

Several researchers and experts were involved in the collection of data, and the methodology was strictly coordinated between them. Respondents were recruited using social networking sites (facebook.com, linkedin.com, maminklub.lv, draugiem.lv), organisations, institutions and in some cases snowballing and personal referrals. In cases where personal referrals were used, researchers avoided interviewing close friends and relatives. In instances where institutions, organisations and experts needed to be contacted, researchers agreed between themselves who the contact points would be in order to avoid inconsistencies in communication.

One of the priorities of the research team was to ensure the diversity of respondents in terms of:

This strategy ensured that the interviews provided insight into the motivation and attitudes of people with different life experiences and socio-economic backgrounds. Most researchers applied grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin 1990), aiming to

achieve 'theoretical sampling' and 'data saturation' as precisely as possible when recruiting respondents.

No monetary compensation was offered to respondents but where possible researchers left behind information booklets about the project, as well as business cards with their contact information in case respondents had any questions. In some cases, token symbols of gratitude were left in the form of chocolates or sweets. Respondents were also informed about the quantitative survey and invited to participate in that too.

#### *2.3.2 Interview Guidelines*

To ensure that information on certain themes and issues can be compared across a number of countries, some topics were included in all of the in-depth interviews with emigrants. Most of these topics also mirror the topics of the quantitative survey. This ensures the successful integration of quantitative and qualitative data. Hence, in-depth interviews have the potential to provide a deeper understanding of the quantitative data. With some variations, the topics included in all in-depth interviews with emigrants were as follows:

Interviews were conducted as partly structured in-depth interviews, following interview guidelines. The method also allowed for some flexibility with regard to getting more detailed information on some emerging topics important for a better understanding of the specific research question. The guidelines differed from one location and one researcher to the next, depending on the main topic of interest. Draft guidelines were developed on each of the aforementioned topics which the researchers built on in their interviews, in addition to the main prescribed topics of the interview. The full guidelines were checked and approved by the coordinators of the qualitative research group. The length of the interviews with adults ranged from 26 min to 2 h 16 min, with most interviews taking slightly more than 1 h. Interviews with children were shorter.

#### *2.3.3 Data Storage and Protection*

All in-depth interviews were transcribed and stored on a safe server at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, accessible only by the administrative assistant and a restricted group of researchers from the project. Researchers prepared a description of each interview (an interview protocol) including basic information on the interview and the respondent such as:

The interview protocols are important for the in-depth understanding and interpretation of answers in the light of the respondent's socio-demographic characteristics, as well as the specific circumstances that the respondent is or was in. These protocols also make it easier to find necessary information in the interview material, for example, if the researcher wants to analyse what people of certain characteristics say about the topic in different countries, or how respondents of different characteristics feel.

Before being placed on the safe server the interviews were anonymised, in order to protect the identity of respondents. In addition, all researchers signed confidentiality declarations, committing to non-disclosure of the personal information of their respondents.

Agreement was reached with the Latvian National Oral History Centre about the possibility of archiving and depositing the interviews in the Centre's Archive (www. dzivesstasts.lv). This would allow the interview material to have more impact on the scientific community, and be preserved for many years as a testimony of our time. A consent form was prepared and presented to the respondents.9 Respondents were asked if they would agree to their interview being deposited in the National Oral History Centre Archive (led by Dr. Māra Zirnīte), and if so in the specific form it could be accessed (including whether the respondent's name could be disclosed or not) and to whom (for instance, just the researcher, the project researchers, University of Latvia researchers or anyone). They were also asked to specify any other limitations on use of the interview. If the respondent did not agree that the interview could be included in the Archive, their wish was respected, and the interview was not deposited. This procedure also related to interviews where the consent forms were not offered and not collected. If the respondent allowed the interview to be deposited in the archive but did not permit disclosure of their name, the anonym-

<sup>9</sup>As this agreement was reached only at the end of summer 2014 these forms were not used in the initial interviews and this material was not considered for archiving.

ity of the respondent was ensured as the consent form is not publicly available, and the entry was saved with a pseudonym and entry code.

#### **2.4 Conclusions and Discussion**

*The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* project has made an important theoretical and methodological contribution to the field of migration studies, and has laid foundations for future research on emigrants, specifically from the perspective of sending countries.

The main contribution of the project concerns the quantitative data collection. Compared to previous studies, it has a number of important methodological advantages:

In surveys such as the LFS people who are unable to communicate in the official language or languages of the country are not interviewed, thus effectively excluding a significant proportion of migrants. This results in a bias against immigrants whose proficiency in the language of their country of residence is not good enough to answer survey questions (Chiswick et al. 2004; Dronkers and Vink 2012; Platt et al. 2015). This is not the case for this survey. The questionnaire was produced in three languages: in the official language of the country of origin, namely Latvian, as well as in English and Russian.

Immigrants with an unstable or irregular legal status in the country of residence might avoid participating in regular population surveys (Dronkers and Vink 2012). The anonymity provided by a web survey can encourage them to participate.

Harmonisation of translations, methods and weighting is often problematic in major cross-national surveys. In our case, the data collection and weighting was centrally coordinated, careful translation procedures were applied and the questionnaire was completed in the language the respondent understood best. The quality of questionnaires was further tested using cognitive interviews and web probing (Behr et al. 2012; Willis 2005).

While this study employed a sophisticated procedure to calculate statistical weights, reaching those who do not use the Internet is still a legitimate concern in these kinds of studies, especially those in marginal groups, such as the poor and uneducated, people on the street, Roma communities and those working in low-paid agricultural jobs deep in the countryside, and in countries where Internet penetration is lowest. The marginal groups likely to be under-represented or missing in a web survey (outlined above) might be especially important for certain kinds of analysis. To address this drawback of web surveys it would be best in the future to include a supplementary survey of non-Internet users, aiming at those who do not or practically do not use the Internet (e.g.; have not used it in the past 3 months).

Another challenge is that studies conducted at one point in time are unable to overcome the endogeneity problem and to rule out the possibility of reverse causality between integration policies and societal outcomes, as this relationship may be bi-directional or dynamic (Bilgili et al. 2015). Hence, it is important to have information on immigrants at various points in the settlement process (Platt et al. 2015). Monitoring the newcomers that arrived in the country at a certain point in time provides the best data for evaluating the integration process and allows the factors behind different life trajectories to be revealed (Bilgili et al. 2015; Kraler and Reichel 2010; Reichel 2010; Wingens et al. 2011). In contrast, a simple comparison of two moments in time, such as in cross-sectional studies, relates in part to different groups of individuals and does not make it possible to distinguish the time effect (an effect of the length of residence in the country) from the cohort effect (an effect of arriving in the country at a certain period of time). Despite the clear advantages of longitudinal data, in migration studies they are rare (Kraler and Reichel 2010). Sometimes researchers use a synthetic cohort design combining different surveys (Martinovic et al. 2009; Beauchemin et al. 2010) but it is not an ideal solution. Therefore, research should, whenever possible, aim at a longitudinal panel design. In *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey, respondents were asked if they would take part in future studies on migration, and if so, to leave an e-mail address where they could be sent an invitation to participate. Fifty-four percent of all respondents (7649 respondents in total) left their e-mail address to be used in future studies on migration, and even more people agreed to be contacted again in a recent study of Polish migrants in the UK (Platt et al. 2015). In contrast to previous studies (e.g., Schneider and Holman 2011), it would be best for the subsequent waves of the study to include those who have already returned home or re-emigrated (using an adjusted return-migrant questionnaire, similar to Krings et al. 2013), thus avoiding the potential bias caused by the fact that those who are not successful (e.g., the unemployed) or, by contrast, those who have achieved their emigration goals, are likely to return to their home countries (Kleinepier et al. 2015; Stark 1991). In order to ensure the comparability of the first and subsequent waves of the study and to enable a comparison of various newcomer cohorts, the next waves should focus not just on those who expressed interest in participating in the first wave of the study, but essentially on replicating the research design of the first wave of the study – a similar strategy as used in the POLPAN longitudinal panel survey.

The use of qualitative methods in this study has also led to important insights, in particular with regard to situations when information is collected in different national contexts by researchers focusing on connected yet different themes. Coordination of interview guidelines and methods and careful planning is required to allow overarching comparisons between contexts. Depositing qualitative interviews in a data archive has not so far become a gold standard among researchers yet it would be invaluable for making possible future use by other scholars of the material collected and, if the respondent agrees, the general public. Consent forms should always be used and should specify beforehand the various permissions and limitations with regard to use of any particular interview. Interview protocols containing the main information on respondents are useful for quickly navigating through the information collected.

Overall, this new methodology of surveying migrants has far-reaching potential to be applied to the study of various migrant groups in Europe and beyond. Importantly, the study described has tested and empirically proven the potential of Web surveys in collecting the opinions of large populations of migrants, and has provided insight into calculating survey weights for multiple countries based on external data.

The importance of evidence-based policy-making is being acknowledged by increasing numbers of experts, and in this context studies like *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* play a crucial role. The huge response from the partners of the project has been truly encouraging, proving that the Latvian diaspora has not lost touch with its homeland, and that there is great potential for future cooperation in the area of research and beyond.

#### **References**

www.ined.fr/fichier/s\_rubrique/19558/working\_paper\_2010\_168\_population.diversity.france. en.pdf. Accessed 12 Jan 2016.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Chapter 3 Emigration from Latvia: A Brief History and Driving Forces in the Twenty-First Century**

**Mihails Hazans**

#### **3.1 Introduction**

In recent years, Latvia has experienced waves of intense emigration, establishing it as one of the worst-affected among EU/EFTA member states. This is true with respect to both post-crisis emigration rates of working-age nationals (Fries-Tersch et al. 2017, Fig. 7–8) and the total (as of 2015) mobility rates of working-age nationals (Fries-Tersch et al. 2017, Fig. 9).1 Remarkably, this finding is robust with respect to data source: the emigration rates come from migration statistics, while mobility rates are based on EU Labour Force Survey (LFS) data.

Emigration from Latvia is an interesting subject not only because of its intensity. In many other high emigration countries, population is a redundant factor, but this is not the case in Latvia. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, loss of population due to emigration has been reinforced by negative natural change in all three Baltic countries, as well as in Bulgaria and Romania (Fig. 3.1). In 17 years (2000–2016), Latvia and Lithuania have lost the largest population shares (about 20%) among EU countries. Moreover, Latvia and Lithuania are among the top three countries (after Bulgaria) with the largest negative natural population changes during this period.

This contrasts with positive demographic developments in the main destination countries of Baltic migrants – the UK, Ireland, the Nordic countries, and Germany. Only Germany features negative natural change, but it is not as big as in Latvia and has been more than compensated by positive net migration (Fig. 3.1).

M. Hazans (\*)

© The Author(s) 2019 35

<sup>1</sup>Latvia ranks second in both cases – after Lithuania in the former and after Romania (before Portugal and Lithuania) in the latter.

Faculty of Business, Management and Economics, University of Latvia, Rīga, Latvia e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
R. Kaša, I. Mieriņa (eds.), *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia*, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12092-4\_3

#### Natural change Net migration

**Fig. 3.1** Natural change of population and net migration, 2000–2016. EU28+Norway. (Source: Calculation with Eurostat data. For the Baltic countries data and Poland, the migration statistics of destination countries have been used to correct national net migration data (see Hazans 2013, 2015a, 2016a, 2017a), thus increasing estimates of net migration outflows by 0.7–1.9 points for the Baltic countries and by 4.6 points for Poland)

Natural decrease of Latvia's population has been driven both by low total fertility rate (TFR)2 and high mortality (especially among men).

Latvia's population is ageing steadily. Between 2000 and 2015 the percentage share of children and teenagers shrank, while the shares of those aged 40–64 and especially 65+ grew. The working-age population in Latvia is shrinking faster than in any OECD country except Japan (OECD 2016). In that period 2000–2015, the old age dependency ratio (OADR, 65+/15–64) in Latvia was higher and growing faster than in the main destination countries of Latvian migrants (except for Germany). According to the Eurostat baseline projection, by 2050 this ratio is expected to reach 60%, compared to 51% in Germany, 46% in Ireland and 40% in the UK and Norway (Fig. 3.2; see Fries-Tersch et al. 2017, Fig. 15 for similar evidence regarding OADR 65+/20–64 in 2030).

While at the start of the twenty-first century (covering the period 2000–2016) Latvia has been a country of labour emigration, in the twentieth century Latvia saw periods of economically motivated immigration, times of humanitarian catastrophes

<sup>2</sup>Latvia's TFR was well below that found in most destination countries in 2000–2014 but is recovering since and is expected to stabilise at about 1.85.

**Fig. 3.2** Old age dependency ratio 2000–2015 and forecast for 2020–2050. Latvia and the main destination countries of Latvian emigrants. (Source: Eurostat data and main scenario projections. Note: The old age dependency ratio (OADR) is the ratio of population aged 65+ to those aged 15–64)

and associated outflows of refugees and displaced persons, as well as mass deportations during periods of occupation and episodes of ethnically and politically driven emigration. There was also mass immigration of labour and military personnel which was centrally planned by the Soviet regime and, in addition, immigration of their families.

This chapter starts with a brief history of the main population flows (migration, refugees and deportation) from and to Latvia in the twentieth century before describing the scale, main destinations and dynamics of emigration in the early twenty-first century, as well as its effect on the size and demographic potential of the population. It proceeds by analysing the four waves of recent emigration:

The economic and social contexts of these emigration waves will be considered and a conceptual framework and set of hypotheses about their nature will be offered, using the human capital theory, the new economic theory of migration and the network theory, and institutional factors will be emphasised. The chapter also analyses changes in ethnic composition and educational profile of the four waves of emigrants.

Issues such as labour market outcomes and the life satisfaction of emigrants and returnees will not be considered, nor will the economic impact of emigration (see Hazans 2013, 2015d, 2016a, c, 2017a, b, 2018).

#### **3.2 Latvian Migration in the Twentieth Century3**

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century Latvia was part of the Russian Empire. During the second part of the nineteenth century, after the end of indentured servitude and gradual lifting of other restrictions on human mobility, intensive ruralurban migration resulted in rapid urban growth. Riga's population almost quadrupled between 1863 and 1897. Growing cities attracted economic migrants from other parts of the Russian empire as well as from Germany and other European countries. At the same time, substantial numbers of Latvians moved outside Latvia's territory. By the end of the nineteenth century more than 10% of all ethnic Latvians were part of diaspora, including 112,000 in the Russian Empire (spread from provinces nearby Latvia to Siberia) and 35,000 living in the West.

'Migration systems' (see Bakewell 2014 and references therein) to and from Latvia kept working in the early part of the twentieth century. Russian, German and Jewish communities in Latvian cities and towns were strong and to some extent self-sufficient, and knowledge of Russian, German and other languages was widespread. These were important elements of inward migration systems which, in turn, strengthened these communities. By 1913, only one-third of Riga's residents were native born. Most of Riga's adult population spoke both Latvian and another language: 80% of men and two-thirds of women aged 20+, according to the 1925 census. Outside Riga this rate was lower, but it was still significant: above 50% among men and almost 30% among women.4

Apart from economic migrants, significant numbers of Jewish refugees from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland entered Latvia (and other Baltic provinces) in the 1880s and early twentieth century. This was to escape the growing anti-Semitism and violent pogroms. Economic reasons also played a role in Jewish migration to Latvia, but these are difficult to quantify. Many of these Jewish immigrants moved on, to the United States and Palestine.

Important elements of the migration systems outwards were the numerous wellorganised Latvian colonies, organisations and religious communities outside Latvia. There were also special preferential regime for new settlers in many Russian provinces, and by 1897, more than 70 colonies of Latvian farmers were established across the Russian Empire. Many Latvians settled in cities and found jobs as professionals, blue collar or service workers. Between 1897 and 1913, the number of Latvian schools outside the country more than trebled, increasing from 14 to 52, while the size of the Latvian diaspora increased to approximately 220,000, including 45,000 in the West (mostly in the United States). Following the 1905 Revolution about 5000 political refugees and 2652 deportees constituted a relatively small but important part of emigration from Latvia at the beginning of the twentieth century.

<sup>3</sup>This section combines information compiled from various sources by Zelče (2011) and the National History Museum of Latvia (2016) with our own elaboration on data from the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia (2016a, b, c, 2017a, b, c) and OECD (2008, 2017).

<sup>4</sup>Calculations by the author based on data from the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia (2016c).

Period net migration Annual average net migration (right scale)

**Fig. 3.3** Net migration and net migration rate by sub-period of the twentieth century (% of the initial population). (Source: Data cited in Zelče (2011) and the National History Museum of Latvia (2016), Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia (2016a, b, 2017a, b), OECD (2017), and author's own calculation)

Despite intensive migration both to and from Latvia, the migration balance during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was significantly positive. During the period 1900–1913, the increase in Latvia's population due to net migration was 13% (nearly 1% per annum) of the initial population, or 264,000 persons5 (see Fig. 3.3).

During World War I and the Russian civil war, around one million Latvia's residents moved to other territories (mostly in Russia) as refugees, displaced persons, evacuees or after being mobilised into armed forces. In 5 years Latvia lost 37% of its population (Fig. 3.3). Around half died outside Latvia, while others settled in Soviet Russia, Estonia, Lithuania and Germany. Less than one-third returned after the war. Many former Latvian soldiers, known as 'Red Riflemen' settled in Russia after the war, serving in the new Soviet government's security forces or as Bolshevik Party functionaries, while others resumed their lives as civilians in some of the Latvian colonies or in cities.

In 1918, the independent Latvian state was created. Over the next 10 years, around 300,000 people returned to Latvia, most of them in the period 1919–1921. Net migration during the 4.5 years between the 1920 and 1925 censuses was 200,000 people, or 13% of the country's population in 1920 (Fig. 3.3). Political refugees and deportees accounted for a small but not negligible part of these migration flows. More than 10,000 people moved to Soviet Russia or were expelled from Latvia for engaging in 'anti-state activities', while around 15,000 moved to Latvia fleeing the Soviet regime.

The period between 1925 and 1938 was characterised by the low intensity of migration. The annual average net migration rate was 0.04% in 1925–1929 and

<sup>5</sup> Ironically, 100 years later (in 2000–2014), Latvia lost the same number of people to migration.

0.02% in 1930–1938 (Fig. 3.3). Land reform largely eliminated the motivation among farmers to emigrate. The economic situation was perceived as good by the majority of the population. Self-employment accounted for more than 60% of total employment, while the unemployment rate was below 1%. Nevertheless, about 5000 people moved from Latvia to the US between 1920 and 1939, while 2700 moved to Brazil and 4500 to Palestine.

The largest Latvian diasporas in the 1920s and 1930s were found in Soviet Russia (151,400 according to the 1926 census), the US (38,000), Lithuania (30,000), Estonia (12,300) and Brazil (7000).

From a migration perspective, the decade between 1939 and 1949 can be described as an 'era of displaced persons and refugees' for Latvia (Zelče 2011, p. 62). In 1939–1940, 51,000 ethnic Germans left for Germany in a 'repatriation' programme launched by Hitler's government. Another 10,500 Germans followed during the winter of 1941, after Latvia's incorporation into the USSR. Overall, these two waves reduced Latvia's population by 2.6%.

On 14 June 1941, 15,424 people (0.8% of Latvia's population) were deported as 'class enemies' by the Soviet regime. Some were arrested and sent to camps in Northern parts of Russia. Administrative deportees were settled in Siberia, the Kazakh Republic and elsewhere. About 40% of the 1941 deportees died in camps or in exile. In June 1941 Germany invaded the USSR and Latvia was occupied by the Nazis, prompting around 53,000 people to leave Latvia for other regions of the USSR; some were evacuated while others found their way as refugees. Overall, in the period 1939–1941 Latvia lost about 6.6% of its population as repatriates, deportees and refugees (Fig. 3.3).

According to conservative estimates, another 242,000 people (13.4% of the population) were lost due to different types of forced migration in the period 1942– 1945. This figure covers:

The total also accounts for return migration from other parts of the Soviet Union which started in 1945 (estimated inflow in that year is 15,000 persons).

Most refugees, as well as members of the Latvian Legion who had served as soldiers in the German army, ended up in Displaced Persons camps, but in 1947 a programme began to close these camps, and refugees began to move to countries which were ready to receive them. This was the starting point of the post-war wave of the Latvian diaspora. About 45,000 went to the US; Australia and Canada received about 20,000 each; 17,000 ended up in the UK; 15,000 settled in Germany, 4000 in Sweden, 5000 in South America and 5000 elsewhere. One of the key elements facilitating the respective migration systems was the International Refugee Organisation

(IRO 1947–1951), succeeded by the UNHCR, as well as Latvian organisations existing previously in the host countries.

Latvia, re-occupied by the Soviet Union since 1945, experienced a mass return of refugees and military personnel between 1946 and 1948, as well as the inflow (partly centrally managed) of migrants from other parts of the Soviet Union. These factors increased Latvia's population by more than 323,000, or 21%, in just 3 years (Fig. 3.3).

Return migration and immigration continued in 1949–1950, but the migration balance in this period was negative (equalling a loss of almost 16,000 persons, or 0.8% of the population) due to the forced deportation of 42,125 people (2.2% of population) to Siberia or the Far East of the USSR on March 25, 1949. Later (mostly in 1956–1957, after the denunciation of Stalinist repression at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party), around 80% of those exiled in 1949 returned to Latvia (Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia 2017b).

Between 1951 and 1990, immigration into Latvia from other parts of the Soviet Union continued at high (although decreasing) rates: from 9.5% in 1951–1960 to 6.6% in 1961–1970; 5.1% in 1971–1980 and 3.8% in 1981–1989 (Fig. 3.3). As the result, the share of ethnic Latvians in Latvia's population fell from 77% in 1935 to 52% in 1989.

Key elements which kept this migration system going included:

Emigration from Latvia under the Soviet regime was almost impossible. The exception (which became possible under international pressure) was the emigration of Jews: about 13,000 emigrated to Israel, Germany, the US and Canada between 1968 and 1980, and another 16,000 left in the subsequent 9 years up to 1989. Some Poles and Germans were also able to emigrate thanks to family reunification agreements.

In the last decade of the twentieth century, after the restoration of Latvia's independence in 1990, the country lost 6.7% of its population to migration in two parallel processes (Figs. 3.3 and 3.4).

First, especially in the first half of the decade, there was a vast outflow of the Russian-speaking population to Russia and, to a smaller extent, other CIS countries.6 For some of these emigrants this was, in fact, forced family migration: significant numbers of Soviet Army staff had to leave Latvia, and their family members joined them. For many others, emigration was triggered by dramatic changes in a number of fundamental life domains – changes which affected their social and

<sup>6</sup>The CIS included the republics of the former Soviet Union except for the Baltics.

**Fig. 3.4** Latvia's net migration 1990–1999, by destination. (Source: Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia (2017c, d) and statistical offices of EFTA countries)

economic status, self-perception, relationships with others and perspectives on life. The political regime changed from being a global superpower, a multi-national Communist empire with the Russian language being both the *lingua franca* and the main official means of communication, to a neo-liberal national state previously occupied by that very superpower, where the official communication between all state and municipal institutions and the civil and business population was only in the Latvian language. The change of language substantially weakened the labour market position of those without good Latvian language skills (Hazans 2010, 2011a). In addition, many of the large manufacturing enterprises and research institutes closed down in the early 1990s. Some of them had previously been part of the Soviet military-industrial complex which had employed large numbers of the post-war immigrants and their descendants. Finally, citizenship of the new independent state was granted only to those who were citizens of the Latvian Republic between 1918 and 1940 and their descendants, while others were offered a choice between a Latvian 'non-citizen' passport or applying for Russian citizenship (see Muižnieks 2006). These 'push' factors, together with strong family, social and professional networks the post-war immigrants to Latvia had in Russia and other CIS countries, as well as their relatively easy access to Russian citizenship, contributed to the rise of the Latvia-CIS migration system in the 1990s. Transformation of all 15 Soviet republics into independent nation states also worked as a 'pull' factor, as ethnic Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, etc. living in Latvia in Soviet times considered moving back to their respective countries.

**Fig. 3.5** Post-Soviet emigrants from Latvia in OECD countries by the end of the twentieth century. (Source: OECD (2008, 2017) and author's own calculation. Note: UK data refer to 2001. Data for Germany refer to all nationals of Latvia residing in Germany by the end of 1999 and therefore might also include some Soviet-era emigrants)

Secondly, the fall of the Iron Curtain allowed for pioneer emigration (Bakewell et al. 2011) to the West. This was mostly economically motivated, but also included student migration, international family formation and so on. Both ethnic Latvians and Russian-speakers were found among these pioneers. Some of them relied on help and information support from the rich social infrastructure created in the Western countries by the post-war Latvian refugees (see Zelče 2011, pp. 64–66 and references therein) or from less formal social networks among Russian-speaking emigrants from the Soviet Union in Germany, the United States, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. Other pioneers were able to find their own way themselves or by using professional or business contacts in the West acquired while working in Latvia. In the early 1990s, the majority of emigrants to the West went to destinations outside Europe, but it was the other way around in the late 1990s (Fig. 3.4). By the end of the twentieth century, the post-Soviet Latvian diaspora in OECD countries accounted for about 21,000 people (see Fig. 3.5 for details).

Finally, there was some return migration in the 1990s of ethnic Latvians (both from the West and from the CIS countries) to Latvia after independence was restored.

During 1989–1999, the net migration of ethnic Latvians was positive at 1.8%, while the net migration of the minority population was negative at −16.8% (Table 3.1). The population share of ethnic Latvians increased from 52% in 1989 to 57.7% in 2000.

**Table 3.1** Net migration of Latvia's population by main ethnic groups, 1989–2016

Source: Calculation based on the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia (2017e, f) It is likely that data for 1989–1999 over-estimate the absolute net migration of Latvians and minorities because, during this period, Soviet passports were changed to Latvian ones, and many of those

born in ethnically mixed families changed their ethnicity from Russian to Latvian, Polish, etc. Data for 2000–2016 rely on the 2011 Census data and therefore should be considered with a degree of care (see Hazans 2013, p. 68, p. 72, pp. 109–110). The data refer to the total migration rather than the migration of nationals

#### **3.3 Emigration of Latvia's Nationals in the Early Twenty-First Century: The Context, Scale and Main Destinations**

Emigration from Latvia in the early twenty-first century was to a large extent shaped by two milestones. First, EU accession in 2004 gave Latvian citizens immediate access to the labour markets of the UK, Ireland and Sweden (as well as of all the new member states), while the other EU-15 countries gradually opened their labour markets during 2006–2011. This new possibility attracted thousands of Latvians. However, the economic crisis in Latvia of 2008–2009 and its economic and social consequences sent even more Latvians abroad, including those who had never considered such a move before.

The driving forces of emigration in the early twenty-first century and the changing profile of emigrants are discussed in greater detail in Sects. 3.5 and 3.6. Here we focus on developments regarding the scale and main destinations of that emigration.

Figure 3.6 presents the outflows of Latvia's nationals (i.e. holders of Latvian passports: both citizens and non-citizens) to the main OECD destinations and compares the data from receiving countries with the official Latvian emigration statistics. Due to problems in the 2011 Census (see Hazans 2013, p. 68, p. 72, pp. 109–110 for details) the official data have been obtained by an indirect method and it appears that they strongly *over-estimate* outflows in 2000–2003 and 2008 but *under-estimate* emigration during the post-accession period 2005–2007, as well as during the postcrisis years 2010–2016.

Before Latvia's accession to the EU, emigration from Latvia occurred at rather low rates (about 0.25% of population per annum), but immediately after accession in 2004, the UK, Ireland and Sweden opened their labour markets for nationals of the new member states, and outflow from Latvia almost tripled. It increased further

**Fig. 3.6** Gross outflows of Latvian nationals to main OECD destinations, 2000–2016 (destination countries' data vs. official Latvian statistics). (Source: Eurostat and OECD (in some cases also national statistics) data on immigration of foreigners by nationality; Ireland and the UK data on allocation of social security numbers. Note: Due to data limitations, Latvian official data for 2000– 2010 refer to total outflows (including foreigners))

in 2005, most likely due to the network effect, and after that never fell below 1% of the population per annum. The outflows reacted to economic developments in Latvia in a predictable way: the flow declined during growth periods (2005–2007 and 2011–2016) but increased explosively during the crisis, reaching 2.5% of the population in 2010.

There were also dramatic changes in the shares of different destinations in the total outflow (see Fig. 3.6) reflecting both institutional and economic developments. In 2004, Ireland was the destination of 40% of emigrants, followed by the UK with 26%; both countries sharply increased their shares compared to the pre-accession period due to the opening of their labour markets. In 2005 the UK almost doubled its share, while Ireland's share fell to 30% and further to about 20% in 2007–2008; meanwhile, the share of non-English speaking countries (many of which opened their labour markets in 2006–2007) increased. With the onset of the economic crisis which strongly hit Ireland's labour market, Ireland's share continued its decline and after 2011 never went above 5%.

Since 2005, the UK has kept the largest share of Latvian emigrants – almost half of them in 2005–2008 and more than 60% in 2009–2010. However, with the opening of the German labour market in 2011, the share going to the UK started to decline; it was just above 40% in 2014–2015 and dropped below that level in the Brexit referendum year, 2016. Uncertainty surrounding the post-Brexit status of labour migrants from Latvia and other new member states during the period after the Brexit referendum (see e.g. Lulle 2018, Lulle et al. 2018) has made the UK a less popular choice among emigrants from Latvia.

Outflow from Latvia to Germany was rather stable in absolute terms in 2000– 2008, but its share went down from 30% in the pre-accession period to 8% in 2005– 2007 and 10% in 2008. With the beginning of the crisis and especially since 2011, the outflow to Germany started to increase. Recently its share is about 30%. The shares of the other main destinations in the post-crisis period are also relatively stable: about 10% of emigrants go to the Nordic countries; slightly more go to other EU/EFTA countries, and less than 5% go to non-European OECD countries.

Further evidence on the dynamics of emigration during 2000–2016, this time in terms of net emigration, is presented in Table 3.2, which compares four periods covering 4 or 5 years each based mostly on the statistics of the receiving countries.

We find that the effective annual rate of net migration has doubled in the postaccession period compared to the pre-accession one, and more than doubled again during the crisis and first two post-crisis years (2009–2012) compared to the postaccession wave. During the latest post-crisis years (2013–2016) the rate was slightly higher than in the post-accession period.

**Table 3.2** Net emigration of Latvia's nationals, 2000–2016

Source: Eurostat, OECD, national statistical offices and author's own calculation Net emigration is the difference between emigration and immigration (i.e., the opposite of net migration). The effective annual rate of net emigration is a constant emigration rate which, if

applied every year, would result in the given net outflow during the period

#### **3.4 Emigration and Demographic Potential**

This section discusses the impact of emigration on Latvia's population structure and demographic potential. Like elsewhere in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (see IMF 2016, p. 12), those who left have been younger than those who stayed. However, due to unusually high emigration rates, the shrinking of the young and middle aged cohorts in Latvia has been particularly pronounced (Table 3.3), thus accelerating population ageing and distorting the age structure.

In the 10 years between 2004 and 2014, the cohorts aged 15–19, 20–24 and 25–29 years in 2004 lost 21.7%, 17.9% and 14.4% respectively of their members to migration, while the overall loss of population due to migration during this period was just 9.4%.

Even when comparing adult working-age individuals only, the emigrant population appears to be much younger than the stayers (Fig. 3.7).

In addition to the falling size of the reproductive age cohorts, Latvia's demographic potential is undermined by the fact that – at least in the post-crisis period – families with children or planning to have a child are more likely to emigrate, as shown in Fig. 3.8. This figure is based on a representative household survey conducted in Riga in 2012.

In a more general setting, Hazans (2018, Table A5) using four waves (2013– 2016) of representative surveys of Latvia's population, shows that among people aged 18–34, those having a child under 18 in the family (with other things being equal) are significantly more likely to move to work abroad in the near future. Among men, the same effect was also found at the end of the crisis period; namely late 2010 to early 2011(see Hazans 2013, Table 4.8).

Figure 3.9 compares the proportion of emigrants living abroad with children aged below 18 – or having children this age in Latvia with the proportion of stayers living with children under 18 in Latvia. In both cases, the children of the emigrant or stayer and their partner's children are accounted for.

It appears that emigrants of both genders aged 18–24 are much more likely to have children than their counterparts in Latvia, while the reverse is true among those

**Table 3.3** Net migration of Latvian nationals by selected age cohorts, 2004–2014

Net emigration by cohort has been calculated from the Latvian LFS microdata as the decrease in the annual average size of selected cohorts over two five year periods (2004–2009 and 2009– 2014), less age-specific mortality over relevant periods. Total net migration is that over five-year periods 2004–2008 (see Table 3.2) and 2009–2013 (estimated by Table 3.2 method)

18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64

**Fig. 3.7** Age distribution of adult working-age emigrants from Latvia and stayers therein, 2014. (Source: Calculation with microdata of *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey and the Latvian Labour Force Survey 2014)

**Fig. 3.8** Share of households with one or more potential emigrants, by presence of children and plans to have children in the next 3 years. (Source: Hazans (2014, p. 10), based on a representative survey of households in 2007)

**Fig. 3.9** Incidence of having children aged below 18 among emigrants from Latvia and stayers therein, 2014, by age and gender. (Source: Calculation using microdata of *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey and the Latvian Labour Force Survey 2014. Note: For emigrants: the children were living in the same household abroad or were left behind in Latvia. For stayers: the children were living in the same household in Latvia. Emigrants'/stayers' own and their partner's children are included)

aged 25–44. In the age group 45–64, there is only small difference between emigrants and stayers. Overall, in 2014 about 30% of male emigrants aged 18–64 and about 40% of their female counterparts had adolescent children. Among stayers these proportions were slightly lower, mainly due to smaller shares of reproductive age cohorts (Fig. 3.9).

#### **3.5 Four Waves of Emigration in the Early Twenty-First Century**

The history of emigration from Latvia during 2000–2016 can be divided into four episodes:7

<sup>7</sup>This section builds on the author's previous work (Hazans 2011b, 2012, 2013, 2016a).

<sup>8</sup>The crisis hit Latvia at the end of 2008, but its effect on emigration first appeared only in 2009.

During this relatively brief time, the main reasons for emigration, the rates of emigration and the most popular destinations for emigration – as well as the profile of the emigrants and their plans – have changed substantially several times.

#### *3.5.1 The Conceptual Framework*

Economic and sociological literature provides the conceptual framework for understanding migration patterns and the way these patterns change over time in response to economic, political and social developments in the source and destination countries. According to the (neoclassical) human capital model of migration (Borjas 1987, 1999; Sjaastad 1962), an individual decides to move if the expected utility in the destination country, net of the monetary, effort and psychological costs of migration, exceeds utility in the home country.

Apart from the earnings expected at home and abroad, this calculation should account for other factors affecting utility – job finding and job losing probabilities, the emigrant's legal status, career prospects, working and living conditions, the generosity of the social security system, social and cultural norms, perceived life prospects for children, etc.

The New Economics of Migration (Stark and Bloom 1985) emphasises that migration decisions are often taken by families, households or even larger groups, rather than individuals, and stresses the role of risk, both at home and abroad. Uncertainty has to be considered as the location-specific factor reducing utility; it also has to be taken into account from the perspective of the diversification of the family portfolio of human capital.

Furthermore, the New Economics of Migration points to the role of relative income in migration decisions as opposed to absolute income, and shows that falling income differentials may not discourage migration.

Migration systems theory (Bakewell 2014; de Haas 2010; Mabogunje 1970) and social network theory (Carrington et al. 1996) emphasise transnational links between people, families and communities which, along with other circumstances, support and sustain clustered migration flows.

#### *3.5.2 The Pre-accession Wave: Personal Characteristics*

Before joining the EU, unemployment in Latvia was at a two-digit level, while GDP per capita (at PPP) was well below 50% of the EU-15 average. The earnings of an unskilled worker in the UK, Nordic countries or Germany looked very attractive in comparison with average earnings in Latvia. These strong push and pull factors resulted in a sizeable emigration potential, which was larger among the Russianspeaking minority population (Hazans 2012, Fig. 6.2).

However, actual emigration rates in the early 2000s were low, due to the need for work and residence permits, but also because of high transportation and communication costs, the limited availability of good quality internet connections and the absence of convenient, extensive information sources regarding job opportunities and living and working conditions abroad. During the 4-year period before accession (2000–2003), the net outflow of Latvia's nationals was 1.4% of the initial population (Table 3.2).

To understand who were the likely movers in the pre-accession period, one should notice that migration costs were lower for people with professional or at least private contacts in potential destinations, with good foreign language and ICT skills, and the opportunity to use the internet for private purposes at a workplace. Clearly, all these attributes are found more often among university graduates. On the other hand, the absence of a favourable legal framework, restricted access to reliable information and difficulties in searching for jobs 'from overseas', coupled with a high risk of fraud by domestic firms recruiting workers for jobs abroad in the early 2000s, suggested that emigration required high degrees of initiative and the willingness to accept risk. However, a less risky, less initiative-led option was to access migration networks from previous waves of migration to the US, Canada, Australia, Sweden and Germany, as well as from and to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Most emigrants – driven by their own initiative rather than their networks – were oriented towards relatively new directions, mainly the United Kingdom and Ireland, where the language barrier for them was lower than in the rest of the EU, while migration costs were lower than to other English-speaking countries. The preaccession wave of emigration thus featured substantial positive selectivity regarding human capital and other personal characteristics, an over-representation of Russian speakers and a high degree of geographical diversification.

#### *3.5.3 The Post-accession Wave: Institutional and Market Factors*

During Latvia's first 5 years in the EU, i.e., before the effect on migration patterns became apparent of what is now called the 'Great Recession', migration flows were shaped mainly by institutional and market factors.

The gradual implementation of the free movement of labour within the EU (see Kahanec et al. 2016, Table 1) substantially lowered both the monetary and nonmonetary costs of searching for a job abroad and the process of migration, as well as the human capital threshold (in terms of skills, initiative and risk-taking) for labour migration. Together with a high – and growing – demand for migrant labour in the EU15, this triggered a sharp and, to a large extent, persistent increase in emigration rates (see Table 3.2 and Fig. 3.6). This in turn lowered migration costs further via migrant networks and the rich social and media infrastructure existing within the rapidly growing Latvian diasporas in Ireland, the UK, Sweden, Germany and elsewhere in the 'old' member states (see Hazans and Philips 2010; OECD 2012). Another significant factor was the drop in the price of international telecommunications and air travel due to growing markets and technological change.

In addition, strong pull factors were at work, such as higher incomes and better working conditions abroad, as well as factors relating to family and/or friends. Together, these factors covered about 80–90% of the potential emigrants from Latvia (Hazans 2012, Table 6.3).

On the other hand, due to strong economic growth in Latvia, the unemployment rate was falling while real income was rising (Hazans 2016a, Fig. 1), gradually reducing the expected gains from emigration. Thus, during the second part of the post-accession period, the motivation to move abroad driven by push factors was falling, and the motivation to return among recent emigrants was on the rise.

Overall, in the 5 years post-accession Latvia lost 3.2% of its population to emigration (Table 3.2).

In the migration-friendly post-accession environment, emigrants' self-selection in terms of human capital was driven mainly by their expected gains in terms of income and working conditions rather than the individual's comparative advantage in lowering migration costs. These gains were, on average, greater for people with secondary education or lower (see Hazans 2016a, p. 310 for details). Hence, one should expect that the post-accession emigrants from Latvia were less well educated as a group than pre-accession ones, either in an absolute (composition) or relative (selection) sense, or both.

The effect of ethnicity and citizenship on the propensity to emigrate has also changed. Due to strong economic growth and the labour shortage caused by emigration (Hazans and Philips 2010, Sect. 7 and Fig. 12), as well as a gradual improvement in state language skills among young and middle-age minorities (Hazans 2010, Fig. 3, 2011a, Tables 8.8–8.9), the labour market position of ethnic minorities in 2004–2007 was steadily improving (see Hazans 2016a, Fig. 6), thus weakening important push factors for this group. On the other hand, a substantial part of the minority population – those without Latvian citizenship – was not covered by the legal provisions for the free movement of labour within the EU. This worsened their mobility opportunities in comparison to citizens.

The above considerations suggest that, compared with the pre-accession period, post-accession emigrants from Latvia feature a significantly lower proportion of ethnic minorities, especially non-citizens.

Another important feature of this emigration wave is its mixed nature. While migration was to a large extent short-term and/or cyclical (see e.g. Hazans and Philips 2010, Sect. 6, Figs. 9 and 10), the Latvian diasporas abroad were steadily growing (Hazans 2015a, p. 11), suggesting that many emigrants have chosen to settle in destination countries.

#### *3.5.4 Crisis-Driven Emigration: Lost Jobs, Lost Perspectives, 'the New Movers', and the Shift Towards Permanent Emigration*

During the years of the Great Recession (2009–2010), significant economic push factors were at work; mainly joblessness and wage cuts, but also the implied inability to pay back credit.

The psychological shock was no less painful: a large proportion of people of working age, including those who managed to keep their jobs, lost confidence in the future (Hazans 2011b, 2013). Consumer confidence, satisfaction with the government and trust in the parliament dropped dramatically (Hazans 2015a, pp. 3–4; 2016a, Fig. 2).

Finding a Job in Western Europe was not as easy as before the crisis. The role of diasporas and informal networks increased as a consequence. Yet it was much easier than in Latvia. The rate of unemployment was very low in Norway, the Netherlands and Austria, and modest in the UK, Germany, Sweden and Denmark. The lifting of restrictions on the free movement of workers from EU8 countries by Belgium, Denmark and especially Norway from May 2009 further facilitated labour migration to these destinations.

Moreover, nominal earnings continued to rise across the old member states, while real earnings did not decline (European Commission 2011, graphs I.1.8, III. A3.5). Thus, the expected gains from emigration in terms of employment and earnings increased in comparison to the pre-crisis period.

In addition, as long-term joblessness was becoming more widespread in Latvia, the issue of social protection, which previously had been neglected by the middle class, gained importance as a factor driving migration decisions. A feature of Latvian social security was a very low income replacement rate for the long-term unemployed through unemployment benefit, even when social assistance and housing benefits are accounted for (European Commission 2011, graphs II.2.3- II.2.4).

Moreover, child benefits in Latvia were extremely low in comparison with those paid in the main destination countries of Latvian emigrants.

High and persistent unemployment, a weak social security system, lost perspectives – these were the factors that converged to make emigration a real option in the minds of many Latvians, even those who had not considered such a possibility before (Hazans 2011b, 2012, 2013; McCollum et al. 2017). There were two kinds of these '*new movers*': (i) individuals who were inherently not very mobile for whom this was the only way out of financial difficulties; and (ii) people who were not satisfied with developments in Latvia and with their own prospects there, even if they were not experiencing economic hardship at that moment. In this way, the post-accession migration system was substantially transformed and expanded.

Unlike the pre-accession emigrants, most of those who left during and after the crisis were not risk-takers. On the contrary, they perceived staying as too risky, and the destination countries were seen as a safe haven. This implied *a strong shift from the temporary emigration of 'breadwinners' towards the long-term or permanent emigration of entire families*. The post-crisis emigrants, as opposed to the pre-crisis group, are much more oriented towards long-term or permanent emigration, are interested in legal employment and social security and are more likely to move as entire families (Hazans 2013, Table 4.6). According to *The Emigrant Communities of Latvia* survey, by 2014 about 70% of emigrants had lived in their host countries for three or more years (Hazans 2018, Fig. 4).