Emigration Potential among Young Adults in Ukraine

Alarmist stories about potential mass migration from the territories of the former Soviet Union have stimulated a number of special projects to study the likelihood, extent, and impact of such mass migration. This is a study of emigration intentions of young people in Ukraine, based on a set of surveys administered in the four regions of Kiev, Lvov, Khmelnitsky and Odessa in 1992. The survey respondents are men and women who were born in 1967 and 1968. The analysis differs from classic migration theory, which emphasizes pushes and pulls, in treating the decision to emigrate as a "normal" life choice. The authors examine differences between people who form goals to emigrate and those who do not, as well as differences between people who take steps to realize those goals and those who do not.

Results show that people from Khmelnitsky, which has had a low outmigration rate in the past, were the least likely to emigrate. Males were more likely than females, more highly educated people more likely than less educated, and non-Ukrainians, especially Jews and including Russians, more likely than Ukrainians. Those who were not in the labor force at all were more likely to leave than those who were employed or who had recently lost a job due to staff reduction. In general, the more successful people considered themselves to be, the more likely they were to plan to emigrate. These findings are inconsistent with the stereotypical idea that emigrants are among those who are the most downtrodden and discouraged in the current situation and are therefore desperate to go anywhere else. This has two important implications: (1) those individuals who have valuable skills needed for building a market economy are likely to be in the vanguard of emigration, should mass emigration occur; and (2) the receiving countries in North America and Western Europe need not fear that the bulk of the emigrants will consist of "losers" who are unable to survive in a market economy.