“Gastarbeiter Millennials”

The demographic change in the EU will affect everybody and will lead to social and political tensions that can seriously threaten the foundations of liberal democracy if current politics continue. A combination of three main factors creates the so-called “Emigration factory” in South-Eastern Europe: 1) The policy of extracting the youth labour force from the EU periphery to the EU centres as the key measure to recovering Western Europe population and economy, 2) the corruption as the most important push factor for contemporary emigration from Croatia and the Western Balkans, and 3) the understanding of capitalism by employers in SEE as a one-way process of profit without adequate rewarding of workers. Does Gastarbeiter’s history repeat itself? Are the EU migrations an interest-neutral and accidental social phenomenon? Is the EU going to become a neoliberal battlefield of a struggle for the human resource? What are the concrete solutions at the national and EU level? Why is the corruption index in Croatia and the Western Balkans growing with increased emigration, and what are the other consequences of emigration? Can the innovative approach to digital demography revolutionize our knowledge about migrations?