Why don't you move abroad?

To people who are considering moving abroad you should do it.

Don't let nationalism stop you. You were randomly born in your country.

Choose your country. Don't let randomness and some emotional baggage control where you want to live.

You have a finite live. Make most of it.

I don't think nationalism is what's most people considering moving abroad are thinking about.

People who move abroad usually leave everything behind: family, friends, etc. Yes you can come visit regularly, but what was previously a daily or weekly thing now becomes yearly or bi-yearly in many cases.

Second it's the language barrier: moving to a country where you don't fully master the language (sometimes far from it) is really hard, too.

You were anything but “randomly born in your country”. You are most likely the latest branch in a sedentary tree rooted both geographically and culturally for centuries, and without that tree you certainly wouldn’t exist. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t travel, perhaps plant a new tree, but the idea that you were born randomly is obviously false.

Let me guess, you're from EU or USA ? Nationalism is not what's stopping most africans to move abroad. I'm lucky I was born in France so I don't have to bother with visa refusal like all my cousins in Algeria.

From your point of view you were born randomly in a universe in a random country to random parents. Yes. There is a story once you were born. But as far you are concerned you could have been born as anything in any Universe. There would always be a story backing it up.

I am from India.

India is orders of magnitude better than most African countries. At the very least it’s safe and you can make a living. Indians actually move back to India after living in the west which doesn’t happen with Africans all that often.

I think this is a very popular view, which inspires a lot of people to go abroad or try out something like digital nomadism. Ultimately most return home after the experiment. People are deeply rooted in culture, in communities, and don't even realize it until they have gotten over the novelty of a new context and are faced with the true depth of difference, and difficulty of becoming rooted once again. The only transplants I've seen really succeed are the ones who had a shit time in their own culture or family, and can genuinely leave it all behind and take in the new culture eagerly.

Do you really consider family connections and decades-long friendships to be "some emotional baggage"?

This essay was on someone who had the opportunity to live abroad (US, Japan, Sweden) and decided to live in India. The essay answers the question of why he, personally, has decided to not move abroad again.

The reason? "I think people should live where they are the happiest", which for him is family and friendship - or what you might describe as "emotional baggage."

Which is what we also call a "random forest".

Also, from watching a diverse group of colleagues and hearing migration process details, I have come to believe that, India has better diplomatic connections with most of the West compared to other APAC nations and the network of existing nationals are actually very helpful and large in most of the West, so they have much easier time moving, having initial support(very crucial when you just arrived and getting used to), information access and professional network.

Or to give a rather poor analogy for lack of better one, India has premium-business-class experience migrating to West, compared to other APAC, which are put through economy-saver class experience.

Nationalism is not the thing stopping most people.

It's your friends, family and the feeling of belonging. This is culture, not nationalism. I lived in Canada for 10 years before moving back home. I had a great life in Canada, fulfilled things I quite literally never dreamed possible, but I didn't belong.

I lived my life between vacations, just waiting for the time that I can go back home and spend time with family. I realized this is no way to live life.

The average GDP per capita in Africa as of 2024 is around $2400 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1300864/gdp-value-per-ca...), in India it's around $2700 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/263776/gross-domestic-pr... ). A difference but certainly not orders of magnitude. Africa has some really dirt-poor places but so does India. The homocide rate in Africa is higher, around 13/100k vs 3/100k in India, but that's still less than the homocide rate in most south American countries, such as Brazil with 22/100k.

But you are not a tabula rasa. You are made of a genetic code inherited from your parents, which strongly determines how you look and your body can do. You were clothed, fed, raised, cultured, taught by your family and others in their geographic area.

The self has a heritage even if the self refuses to accept it. You are your parents' child and not someone else, for the same reason you are also a human, a hominid, a mammal, not a fish or a tree.

The problem here is that you're defined by the history of environments you've been in, which provides a reason to stay in them (and a reason why the phenomenon of culture shock exists). I could not randomly have been, to take a random person, Carmen Miranda, because I am not her to any extent, so for me to "be" her, in some alternate reality, wouldn't mean anything.

If I am made of genetic code, why do they say I die and no longer exists even though the body remains?

Who are you?

>Don't let nationalism stop you. You were randomly born in your country.

No I was not.

IDK, a strange loop? But a specific one.

Oh wait, you changed what to who, didn't you?

Does the specificity comes from beliefs that you think about yourself?

Yeah, people who have only spent a year or two abroad so not understand the consequences of staying there permanently.

Estranged friends and family. Aging and dying parents. Feeling like a foreigner in your country of origin (reverse culture shock). Your own children, at the end of the day, belong to a foreign culture rather than your own. Etc.

Kinda, but like they say, if you open your mind too far, your brain falls out.

Is that also something that you believe or you know?

It's a maxim that reflects objective reality, according to me.

Do you know it or is that also a belief?

Since 2021 [1] it's easier to come to France as an Indian, that it is as an Algerian, or even worse, as a Nigerian or Palestinian.

[1] https://www.immigration.interieur.gouv.fr/Europe-et-Internat...

It's knowledge, and it may be false.

This. Big chance you'll lose all of your friends, and family ties will suffer greatly. One of my friends moved from Europe to Australia. I think I'm the only one that visited him.

I mean, you should kind of expect that if you move to the other end of the world?

Let's not forget here that Africa is 10 times bigger than India, 5 times bigger than Bresil and twice as big as Russia. It's a very disparate continent. Algeria and DRC, the two biggest countries in Africa, have very little in common.

I grew up near a border; a border which changed a lot throughout history. Not to mention that the country I was born into didn't exist as such even a few generations ago. So yeah, I'd go with “randomly born in your country”.

Loving the place and culture where you grew up because it's yours is no different than loving your own family because they're yours, or loving yourself because you're you. Far from being problematic, being connected to a sense of identity is as human as being connected to your family. Loving your country doesn't prevent you from loving other countries, nor does it even mean thinking your own country is the best.

That said, spending some time abroad (as OP has done) is a real benefit. I never realized how very American I was until I lived abroad. It gives you a different perspective on your own culture -- you can love your own culture more accurately, seeing both its strengths and its weaknesses in a different light.

Nothing wrong with moving back home afterwards though.

Well for what it's worth I am actually pretty fond of my ' emotional bagage', usually refer to them as Family though.

You could have said "two people decided to have sex, you were not born randomly", and it would have had the same relevancy. The fact is that you had 0 input on where you will be born, so from your perspective, it was random. Everything else is just trying to play up a belief, religion, or some kind of woo as a ground truth.

It is one of those things that sounds "obvious" when somebody points it out to you, but I can tell you from personal experience and from several other people that when you are in the midst of moving abroad you have lots of other things in your mind and, frankly, rose colored glasses on.

What you find online tends to be the many people who spent a year or two abroad talking about what a cool experience it was, not long-term immigrants publicly admitting the downsides of their past choices. It is a very common feeling that is rarely spoken about outside of immigrant communities.

If you pay attention to the comments, you will find that the people who only talk about the positives of moving abroad either haven't done it, or did it but they went back to their country of origin. Where are the long-term immigrants --typically with spouses and children-- talking only about the positives? And for the many who return... if living abroad was so great, why did you move back? Why don't you tell people about that as well?

> To people who are considering moving abroad you should do it.

Or not. What kind of general advice is this. It depends on so many factors - your age, marital status, how close you are to your family and culture. For many people, I think for the majority even, unless they live in a war torn area then staying put makes a lot of sense.

> Don't let randomness and some emotional baggage control where you want to live

Yes family and culture is an emotional baggage and we are emotional beings, we are not robots. Most people care to a certain degree about those things.

If staying makes sense then stay. If you want to move then move. My argument is don't let random beliefs and emotions stand in between.

> "if you open your mind too far, your brain falls out"

Boom, thanks, and ouch... I guess.

Yeah family and culture are not random beliefs and emotions for most people as many commenters here said. I think you have a very rare outlook on this that isn't right for most people.

Opportunities that require big risks is also another factor. My academic acquaintances abroad may be doing well financially and travel-wise, but they all have to live their foreign bosses' ambitions despite being very bright people. It's far easier to take crazier entrepreneurial risks with the safety nets in one's own home-country.

If easy is what your optimising for Entrepreneurship is probably not the path.

This is the path to atomization.

> People who move abroad usually leave everything behind: family, friends, etc.

In the US, most people I have met who immigrated came via chain migration, with family members sponsoring other family members’ visas. And things also supplemented by family members in those families immigrating via student/work/spousal visas.

Entrepreneurship sure may be difficult as a whole. However, some difficulties are not really necessary. For me, it's a matter of seeing the end goal and removing as much obstacles as possible to get there faster (optimizing for time). I see the need to have a proper job or chase funding as additional obstacles if you are abroad.

Africa is too big to describe at once. Though in the context of africa, you can paint trends.

e.g in Nigeria most professionals hardly earn $500. Now compare to zimbabwe - the same professional earns 2x-4x the nigerian wage. Yet Nigeria has higher gdp per capita.

so yeah gdp per capita or gdp per capita ppp - might really reflect the african dynamic.

You’ve got to look at PPP because India is dirt cheap to live in. For instance India has a PPP GDP per capita of around $12,000 whereas Nigeria is around $4500 or Uganda is at $2500.

Your genetic code shapes who you are and how you appear to others when you're alive.

If you're alluding to the existence of some transcendental self, can you at least accept it is inseparable from your corporeal self?

>Where are the long-term immigrants --typically with spouses and children-- talking only about the positives?

Here. I'm an immigrant to the UK. I've been here 20 years. I love it here, except for the weather, which I miss from my home country.

I do miss a lot of other things, but all in all I've made my life in the UK and settled here with children.

I think I'm one of many, many millions of people globally who have done this and speak positively. I'm not sure why that seems far fetched to you?

If CPUs are made of transistors, then why do we call them broken when they stop functioning even though the chip still remains?

Living abroad is great. Not seeing your old friends so often any more is hard. But you have the same issue whether you move half the world or two hours away from them.