The mayor of a small Bulgarian mountain village offers an original reward: a two-bedroom apartment to the lady, who marries a doctor and convinces him to come and work for the 970 locals. This joke reveals the serious deficits of the healthcare system in Bulgaria.

“If there is an award for the most discussed, dramatized and bewailed migration, it should go to the mobility in white. Thus we can comprehend all the controversies of Bulgarian migration and to feel them much more intensively”. Migration in White – this will be the subject of the plenary report, prepared by Associate Prof. Anna Krasteva from New Bulgarian University that she will present at the scientific conference, starting today, organized by the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum– BAS and named Bulgarians Abroad, Foreigners in Bulgaria: Institutions, Organizations, Community Life.

“If doctors’ migration focuses the public’s full attention, it is due to the unanimous recognition of its extraordinary size rooted in its 4-dimensional social capital,” says in an interview for Radio Bulgaria Associate Prof. Anna Krasteva.

“The first dimension is the professional one,” she goes on to say. “Doctors are part of the high-qualified migration, of mobile brains. The second is the economic dimension. The share of the healthcare sector within developed economies is huge and will continue to grow. The third dimension is the humanitarian one. Few occupations have the honor of something like the Hippocratic Oath, which underlines the exceptional character of medical science in service of the community. The 4^th dimension – that is the democratic one. Doctors Without Borders is a big, really prestigious international organization, which spreads its humanitarian activities across the whole planet. Doctors in Bulgaria also have their distinct stance as they have been the most active persons of the change ever since the beginning of the democratic transition process. This all makes this so-called migration in white such a key aspect of migration, which can explain the specifics of this phenomenon in Bulgaria.”

Political elites describe doctors’ migration as a loss of qualified young Bulgarians, loss of investments poured in education and the turning of this country into a donor for other EU member-states’ systems of healthcare, and not only. Of course, migrating doctors say something else. They talk about recognition, dignified incomes, much better career opportunities etc. According to Associate Prof. Krasteva there are two points of view:

“The first stand is that of the state, the other one – of responsible citizens, who have taken their life in their own hands. The disability of Bulgaria’s elites to perceive through this large migration the criticism for their politics, only shows their nearsightedness. Best graduate at this year’s graduation ceremony at the Medicine Academy in Sofia commented: “80 percent of young doctors want to work abroad”. This is bright criticism for the negligence towards the system of healthcare, shown by Bulgarian elites. Our politicians simply fail to understand that.”

At the same time doctors reveal various and innovative forms of mobility, Associate Prof. Krasteva further says.

“There is one example from Bulgaria: a doctor with a practice in one of the most prestigious Paris neighborhoods, along with his colleague from Germany has opened a private clinic in Bulgaria that has been operating for a few years now. The French doctor works one week in Bulgaria and three in Paris, the German medic divides working time in a similar way. Migration theories call that cross-border existence. There are other doctors, who turn mobile capital into financial capital. There are ones, who migrate for a while and then they return to invest their savings and experience here.  Such doctors want to be a part of the European professional space, but they have never wanted to become migrants for good…”

Anna Krasteva states that the first reason for doctors’ mobility is the lack of recognition, followed by money. “Mobility is the best medicine against migration – a wonderful lesson, mobile doctors have taught us,” the expert says in conclusion.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev