Leave or stay: Serbian and Bulgarian university students’ attitudes determining the decision

Migrations of the highly educated population are common for the less developed countries of Southeast Europe. Bulgaria and Serbia are faced with the problem of intensive economic migrations of their young and educated citizens. The article starts with the general assumption that social and personal problems are a predictor of the youth’s migratory intentions and questions whether the perception of social and personal problems differs in the Serbian and Bulgarian samples and how this perception affects the students’ intention to leave their home country in search of opportunities for a better life. The article is based on the data on the university students’ attitudes towards the most relevant issues of their cities of residence and their personal lives, and on their plans regarding internal and external migration. The survey was conducted in October-December 2022 on a sample of 587 respondents (307 students from Serbia and 280 students from Bulgaria). In both countries, students define corruption as the biggest problem, then come difficulties with finding a job, but there are statistically significant differences between the two subsamples concerning what they consider their biggest problems. For Serbian students, the biggest personal problem is finding a job, while for Bulgarian students it is rather corruption. The assessment of personal and social difficulties in their countries (cities of residence), primarily the difficulty of finding a job in their profession, motivates and makes students change their city of residence and/or move to another country. 1 out of 9 students plans to leave the native country, but there is a significantly higher share of Serbian students who consider leaving their country to find a job permanently, while thoughts about temporary migrations are almost equally distributed in the two subsamples. 60 % of students think of internal migration, but Serbian students more often compared to Bulgarian students (70 % vs 49 %).