[notNow]

Anyone have any idea why in the countries most hit by the recession (Spain, Italy and Greece to name a few) there's striking divergence between population growth specifically decreasing Greece on one hand while increasing in Italy and Spain in general despite the three of them share the same dynamics at play and especially Greece and Spain?

[zzleeper]

I'm not sure if that's true. Pick Spain:

Madrid and all surrounding cities (Toledo, etc.) are a big shade of red. Barcelona and in fact the entire densely populated Mediterranean coast (Valencia, etc.) is also lipstick-red. Sure, let's look at the Basque Country. Also red.

The only blue I see is in the mostly rural Extremadura, Leon, etc. (close to Portugal).

So even if pop. decreased, not everyone moved from e.g. Madrid to Germany. Many people moved to smaller cities or rural areas, so if you just see the map without pop densities it looks that way.

[notNow]

As I see it, most of the blue blobs are in Portugal and Galicia or the Northwest in general. Other population centers in Spain are growing despite the recession and stratospheric youth unemployment.

Also worth mentioning, Spanish people are still regarded to be religious to some extent and so are the Greek. So, I'm a bit surprised to see the divergence here where Greeks shun marriage and raising children while their Spanish counterparts still hold to these traditional values.

[WildUtah]

"So, I'm a bit surprised to see the divergence here where Greeks shun marriage and raising children while their Spanish counterparts still hold to these traditional values."

Huh?

https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

Looks like South Europe has abandoned having enough children to replace themselves simultaneously. One cannot blame them: those countries are horribly overpopulated, even more so than the USA.

And what few babies there are are significantly being born to Middle Eastern and African settlers attracted by gullible immigration policies that overcrowded countries can ill afford.

[locacorten]

Eastern Europeans are much more likely to migrate to Italy and Spain than to Greece. Romanians especially. One reason is that Romanian is closer to Italian and Spanish than to Greek.

[userulluipeste]

It's true that the language plays a role in deciding where one prefers to go, but there are also the somewhat more prosaic considerations like the economical ones. The state of Greek economy is nothing like that of Italy or Spain. I have a romanian relative that left Greece after seven years (time in which she learned Greek, accommodated herself and everything) and settled for Italy recently. The hardships exist and this move wasn't easy (from an economical point of view, compared to her previous pre-recession Greece settling experience), but with all that it seems that it still does worth it.

[visarga]

It's also a self fueling process, as the current migrant workers help others migrate and find jobs. The more Romanians there are in a country, the easier it is to migrate there.