Go west, young Latvians

Up to 100,000 Latvians have gone west in search of work. What will become of their country without them, Derek Scally, in Latgale, asks their families

The snow-covered Latvian countryside is dotted with stork nests, perched atop telegraph poles. But the nests, huge and empty, just add to the sense of isolation on the drive past vast, frozen fields.

The towns and villages in Latgale, the farming region in eastern Latvia, are an architectural mix of squat, 19th-century farmhouses, pre-war redbrick buildings and socialist-era apartment blocks. Every so often there's a white plaster church that could be sitting in an Irish country village. Then the onion dome of an Orthodox cathedral appears from behind a tree: a reminder of the Russian border to the east, and of the ebb and flow of Latvian history.

Emigration to Ireland is the latest wave to hit Latgale villages such as Viesete, 120km from the Latvian capital, Riga. Locals estimate that up to 200 of the 3,000 villagers have emigrated to Ireland and elsewhere. But, just as nobody really knows how many people have gone, nobody knows how many will come back.

"Emigration is not just a fashion here, it's an economic necessity," says local woman Iveta Matacina. Two years ago, after watching friends and neighbours leave for Ireland, Iveta decided to join them. "I already had a ticket and I was in tears for two weeks because I felt uprooted already, leaving my husband and two children here," she remembers in a trembling voice. At the last minute, Iveta decided to stay and tough it out in a country that is changing around her.

Anything from 50,000 to 100,000 people have gone west in search of work since Latvia joined the EU in 2004. Around 30,000 people have arrived in Ireland, creating one of the largest new Latvian communities in Europe, with more people than the population of Dundalk.

In a country with a population of just 2.3 million, emigration to western Europe is a bittersweet experience just 15 years after Latvia declared independence after five decades behind the Iron Curtain under Soviet occupation. The country was scarred by waves of forced migration in the last century: 135,000 Latvians fled the approaching Red Army in 1944 and the Soviets deported more than 150,000 Latvians to Siberia during and after the second World War.

The emigration to Ireland began long before EU accession, in the mid- to late-1990s when the economic shock of the transition from a controlled to a market economy left the country's industry in tatters. The Russian economic crisis of 1998 exacerbated the economic hardship and wages, already low, were unable to keep up with the spiralling cost of living.

Today the Latvian economy is growing by more than 10 per cent annually, the highest in the EU, having started from a low base. It remains the poorest country in the union; unemployment is running at nine per cent while the average salary is just €355 a month. Salaries are rising, but not quickly enough to keep up with inflation of 7 per cent, the highest in the EU.

The difficult transition of the last 15 years has left Latvia a divided society, with a tiny upper class and more than half of Latvians living below the poverty line. There seems to be general agreement in Latvia that there is no typical emigrant. Ireland is attracting skilled and unskilled workers alike, from all economic groups and all regions, even from Riga, where unemployment is less than 2 per cent.

There seems little doubt that the primary reason for emigration is economic; a report on emigration commissioned by the Latvian president and published in January found that Latvians earning 50-450 Latvian lats (€72-€647) a month could earn anything between €900 and €3,000 a month in Ireland.

But the report, based on interviews with emigrants in Ireland, found other reasons for emigration such as poor treatment by Latvian employers, lack of job security and what emigrants saw as a better correlation between Irish incomes and the cost of living.

THE LATGALE REGION has been hit hardest by emigration. In the village of Viesete, around 10 per cent of the workforce has emigrated in the last five years, driving down the unemployment rate by three points to 12 per cent.

Those with jobs work on farms, in the local woodmills and in the civil service, often for salaries below the minimum wage of 90 lats (€129) a month.

Locals say the most noticeable effect of emigration is the breakdown of the social network between friends and neighbours and, even more visibly, between generations of families.

"A good friend of mine has been working for seven years in Ireland, sending money home to her son who lives with his grandmother," says Iveta Matacina. "The emotional attachment between the son and mother is in jeopardy. If she wanted to come back she would have done that already." There is a strong inter-generational family tradition in rural Latvia and grandparents have always been actively involved in raising their grandchildren.

But Ginta Medne, a local social worker, says the long-term absence of parents can result in bad habits and poor emotional development of children. "Emotional isolation is a danger for children whose parents are in Ireland. But there is also a danger of financial isolation if the family here is not getting any money sent back," she says. "Emigration may also lead to a breakdown in the unwritten rule here that the young take care of the elderly. In the West you have old people's homes but not here. What happens if younger people don't take care of their elderly?"

Pensioner Lilija Upíte's former daughter-in-law Ineta and grandson Kaspar emigrated to Ireland. Ineta has been divorced from Lilija's son for years but the two women are still close. Ineta began working as a dishwasher in a restaurant near Dublin but is now working as a chef, Lilja says proudly.

"I understand that things are working out well. Kaspar likes school in Ireland. He's slightly hearing impaired and is getting better treatment in school there. But will they come back?" A tired sigh. "It's very hard to say now that he is getting an education there."

Opinion in Latvia is divided on whether most emigrants will return. The report for the president found many people planning to return to Latvia from Ireland in three to five years. But many in Latvia think that when that time comes, the desire to return will have diminished and Latvia will seem a distant place. For many first-wave emigrants, their anchor in Latvia was the children they had left behind. But now, with the second stage of emigration, entire families are moving to Ireland and putting down roots.

A crucial factor in whether Latvian families stay in Ireland or return to Latvia will be the decision to send their children to Irish schools. Experts say the Latvian school system is ill-equipped to cope with children leaving and returning later and there are many stories of Latvian teachers preferring to let returning pupils stay back a year rather than helping them recover lost ground.

The most obvious short-term effect of emigration, thanks to the low-cost flights between Ireland and Latvia, is the €200-€300 million a year that emigrants save and bring back on their regular trips home. The money is a lifeline for many families and the effect on the Latvian economy can already be felt, driving demand and economic growth, but also fuelling inflation.

The long-term effects on Latvian society of continued emigration, however, is an emotional question bound up with the legacy of the Soviet occupation. After the second World War, around 11,000 Russian-speaking settlers were moved to Latvia every year as part of a "Russification" programme. By 1989, Latvians accounted for just 52 per cent of the population, and were in the minority in Riga and Latvia's five other largest cities.

"If Latvian independence didn't happen when it did in 1991, and Moscow continued its policy of resettling Russians here, it would have swung the ethnicbalance the other way in the following 10 years," says Arnis Kaktins, head of the polling agency SKDS.

After independence, Latvia granted automatic citizenship to those who had lived in the first independent Latvian state - between 1918 and 1940 - but not to Soviet-era settlers. Today, around a third of the Latvian population is made up of Russian-speaking "non-citizens" who do not have the right to vote or benefit from EU membership.

THE ATTRACTION OF being able to work legally in Ireland, Britain and Sweden has resulted in a rise in the number of these "non citizens" seeking citizenship since Latvia's accession. The question now is whether this, and the new wave of emigration, will once again alter Latvia's ethnic arithmetic. But the lack of hard data makes it impossible to be sure of anything and stirs up instead deep-seated emotions among Latvians that they will be reduced to a minority in their own country and that generations of emigrants will grow up without strong Latvian roots.

The effect of the exodus of workers can already be seen on the labour market. Construction companies complain of the difficulty of finding labourers, forcing political debate on whether to open the labour market to workers from Belarus and Ukraine.

"That's going to run up against a fairly strong protectionist line in Latvian politics," says Karlis Streips, an American-born Latvian television journalist. "This is an election year and parties are going to be tripping over themselves to be more nationalistic than the others. Some will express it through outright racism, others will be more moderate, but the message will be the same: not wanting to dissolve the ethnic Latvian body politic by admitting others." That feeling will soon come up against Latvian demographic realities, that include one of the lowest birth rates and the highest death rate in the EU.

The labour market is, at the moment, being boosted by those born in a 1980s baby boom linked to Latvian national awakening and social policies of the Soviet Union, including three years of paid maternity leave. This boom in young workers, coupled with emigration, is driving down unemployment at the moment. "But after seven to 10 years this boom in young workers will dry up. We will face the worst labour shortage in Europe and politicians are afraid to even touch that," says Ilmars Meazs of the International Organisation for Migration (IoM) in Riga.

The Latvian Employers' Federation says there are already serious labour shortages in technical sectors. Elina Egle, director general of the federation, blames the shortage on an education system with little emphasis on science and mathematics, as well as Latvia's EU accession deal.

"It was irresponsible of our politicians to allow the movement of workers without movement of services," she says. "Latvian businesses don't have enough available money to invest in research and development and new technology, so low labour costs are still our competitive advantage. But prices for energy and raw materials are converging, and salaries are lower to the east." The emigration squeeze on Latvian companies will have positive effects, Egle admits, improving employers' attitudes to their workers and improving how efficiently people work.

Government officials in Riga say emigration to Ireland is an inevitable consequence of opening EU labour markets. They have taken to heart the message of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, at a conference on immigration in Riga in January, that Latvia, like Ireland, will eventually benefit from emigration, when the emigrants return with skills and experience from abroad.

"We do not feel that we are about to lose a significant part of our population and we are not going to experience an outflow that will endanger the basic pillars of economy," says Atis Lots, spokesman at the Latvian ministry of foreign affairs. "But emigration should function as a warning signal for government to produce policies for underdeveloped regions."

Beyond the economic consequences of emigration, there is already anecdotal evidence of a moral tone creeping into the discussion among young people who have stayed to work in Riga. "It's a pity that people are going away because they're sacrificing the long-term work to build up the country in favour of short-term personal gain," says Janis Vanags, communications and marketing manager of a leading recruitment agency. The notion that patriotic Latvians stay at home could become part of political rhetoric ahead of October's general election.

VILLAGERS IN VIESETE say the whispering behind backs has already begun. "There is a stigma attached to those with relatives abroad, that they shouldn't complain about things here. Of course having relatives abroad doesn't always mean the family here gets any help at all," says social worker Ginta Medne. "A psychological wall is slowly being built up between people here."

Despite the challenges facing Latvia and the families divided by emigration, it's difficult to find a sense of gloom or self-pity. "Things are improving. This is a period to be lived through," says Lilija Upíte, who has lived through the most traumatic decades in Latvia's history.

Driving back through the Latvian countryside, the snow is starting to thaw in the strong sun. Ireland had its wild geese, but soon, around 10,000 wild storks will return to Latvia to rear their young in their telegraph-pole homes. "If you have strong family ties here in Latvia it's like a nest," says my translator, Ivo. "This is where you want to raise your children."

Latvia by numbers

Population: 2.3 million (UN, 2005)

Capital: Riga

Area: 64,589sq km (24,938sq miles)

Major languages: Latvian, Russian

Major religion: Christianity

Life expectancy: 66 years (men), 77 years (women) (UN)

Currency: 1 lat = 100 santims (1 = 0.70 santims)

Labour force: 1.11 million (2005 est.)

Labour force by sector: agriculture 15 per cent; industry 25 per cent; services 60 per cent

Unemployment: 8.8 per cent