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Listen to this and more in the podcast of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps, www.sipra.org. Hello and welcome to the podcast, Re-Thinking Youth Migration in the Alps. It's Sipra podcast series exploring our movement of young people's shapes life in the Uptown region. My name is Laura and I'm Hannah and together we are hosting the Outfering of Podcasts.
Outfering of is a transnational project where we focus on the topic of in and out migration in the Alpine region and how regions can turn the challenges of youth migration into meaningful opportunities for the future. In this three-part series we dive into current migration trends in the Alps, learn from real life examples in three pilot regions and explore what Alpine regions can do to remain vibrant and attractive for young people. So Hannah, so nice to sit here with you and moderate this podcast. This is the first episode of the podcast Re-Thinking Youth Migration in the Alps.
And we are really excited to talk to some of our project experts today. But first, why do we even need a podcast on migration in the Uptown region? That's a very good question. The podcast I think aims to encompass or bring into one umbrella the challenge that we have been talking about in the Alps for quite some time.
This challenge that the Alps is facing is quite huge. Across many mountain communities we are seeing really a strong push causing young, highly educated, really smart, really creative people to pack up and leave to bigger cities. This is really creating a major problem known as brain drain, where the best and brightest minds move on and leave the countryside. And the result of this is a dangerous split-attentancy that has been very visible all across the Alps, cities and the receiving areas, so-called receiving areas get richer, they get more innovative with all these new ideas.
This is called the brain gain, while the smaller villages struggle with depopulation and the loss of local spirit. And this gap between the successful areas and the struggling ones is growing. So the question that experts have asked and what we try to tackle in this project and try to cover today as well is how do we stop this cycle, where one place is gain is another place's loss. How can we make sure that when a young person moves, everyone, including even their hometown, can still benefit?
Today we are joined by our colleagues from the autonomous province of Creter and the Frank Beremaki Foundation. They are studying how communities work and how we can invent better ways to manage this movement of people. As local authorities, they are also developing strategies and policies on social cohesion at the local level. Welcome, Lisa, and welcome, Viana.
Can we ask you to briefly introduce yourselves? Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Anna. And I'm very glad to be here with you and discuss this topic.
I'm Elisa, and I work as a researcher at the Frank Beremaki Foundation based in Trenton. I'm Viana from the Autonomous Paravison, Trenton, and I deal with material concerning territorial cohesion, depending from youth migration dynamics to sustainable integrated territorial development. Thank you again for inviting us. We are really glad to be here with you today to have the possibility to talk about these important topics, which led us to collaborate in the Interreg Alpinspace Project you mentioned, out for EAGO.
We are really happy to have you here, so thank you for joining us. Let's maybe start at the basics. When young, well qualified people leave their mountain towns, what is the biggest thing that those communities lose? Is it maybe just economic opportunities or are there additional factors like local spirit or togetherness?
What is your take on this, Elisa? Yes, you see, when young people, well qualified people, live their mountain towns, it's not just about more money or about economic opportunities. It's something much deeper. Of course, there is an economic impact.
Fewer people mean fewer businesses, fewer services, less innovation, but what these communities really lose is their heartbeat. These young people carry with the damage, creativity, and the vision for the future. In a small mountain ballet, every young person who leaves takes with them and not only their skills, but also their perspective, the way of imagine the future. They are the ones that could bring new ideas, start new projects, and connect the tradition with innovation.
So when they go, the valleys lose and not just workers, but the very fabric of the community life, the spirit that keeps this place alive. So, a mountain community is braver on connection and belonging. That's why the challenge isn't just to create a shop, it's to make these places vibrant again, to make sure that young people can see a future for themselves right where they live. All of these raises are of crucial point.
If you don't act now to involve young people in shaping the future of these areas, they will continue to do it away, physically, socially and emotionally. Thank you for this first clear picture. Let's step one step back and think about the broader trends here for a moment. How are these challenges that are faced in smaller mountains areas connected to broader trends in the European context?
Yes, I think it's good to take a moment to step back and understand the bigger picture. That is to say, the long-term trends shaping that are shaping the future of youth in Europe. Across our continent, youth population is consistently shrinking. Between 2013 and 2019 alone, the number of young people aged 15 to 24 dropped from over 36 million to under 19 million.
That's nearly half the size in just six years. And the 25 to 29 age group also saw a sharp decline. At the same time, we need to say that Europe is becoming more and more urban. Today, about 75% of Europeans live in cities, towns or suburbs.
And that number is expected to exceed 80% by 2050. This rapid urbanization brings its own challenges. Pollution, social inequality, housing shortage, but it also puts added pressure on rural and mountain areas. These regions are in fact facing a dual problem.
A population loss overall and an exodus of young people in particular. In many rural areas, what we are experiencing is that services are disappearing. Job opportunities are limited and of course infrastructure is falling behind. So it's not surprising at all that many young people, especially those who do well in school, live to study or work and do not return.
We also know that young women in rural areas tend to perform better academically and are even more likely to move away for good. We could also mention that mobility is becoming more international as of 2023, around 14 of young people aged 15 to 29 in the EU were born outside the country of residence, and nearly 12% live in a country different from their citizenship. So we are not only seeing internal migration, but also a growing trend of young people moving across borders. This is really interesting numbers, Viviana, that you presented this year.
75% of Europeans live in cities, towns and suburbs. This is even to be further increasing by 2050. I really wonder, is it a trend that we can accept? What can we do with it?
And it's also a question that has been in the minds of leaders as they observed these trends. I think there have been many initiatives where leaders try to fix this by offering some kind of incentives for people to stay, financial or other sort of incentives, trying to kind of win them back once they left. But these, let's say, old-fashioned approaches don't really seem to work, do they? Yes, traditional approaches often don't work because they focus on where people live and not how they live.
And when you speak about young people, the transformation of the recent years, it's so big. And it's just not looking, so young people are not just looking for money or benefits. They are looking for meaning for a sense of belonging and possibility. They want a place that values their ideas, that give them a space to grow, to create and to connect.
If those conditions aren't there, now incentive will be strong enough to keep them. But when you speak about convincing them to stay, it's about creating communities where young people want to stay, not out of necessity, but out of choice. Where they feel part of something, where they feel valued, where they can make a difference and see a real possibility ahead. In this way, we can try to revitalize our communities in the mountains and promote a real accomplishment of the potential of the younger generations.
Thank you, Lisa. As a young person who also moved within the Alpen area to a smaller, more rural place where I used to live before, I can really connect to that feeling that actually what people are searching is of course opportunity and jobs, but also just a sense of belonging and the place where they feel they are welcomed and they can stay for long term, even if it's not like this huge large urban areas, capital cities, where of course there's always lots of different people coming together, but maybe we can also find this diverse community in a smaller place. Instead of resisting this change that you have been describing, your research promotes two core ideas, circularity of skills and positive spillover effects. Can you maybe explain this concept very simple?
How does allowing a young person's skills to circulate still have the original home community, even if they live far away? Yes. When we think about what drives the development of our community, whether we are thinking about the economic aspect of that development or the social or the cultural one, one of the most important factors is for sure human capital, meaning the skills people bring with them. And when I say I'm referring to skills, I mean more than just knowledge or technical ability, I mean the pull package.
What people know, how they put into practice their attitude and how they interact with the others. Skills in fact have two sides, an explicit one but also a tested one. Explicit skills are the one you can teach, measure or train for, things like technical knowledge or specific procedures. Acid skills however are more subtle, they are learning formally through interaction, observation and also sharing experiences.
We could say that acid skills are cut rather than short. Yeah, and I think that these are tested side, it's often the most powerful. It's include values, attitudes and other more intangible qualities that affect motivation, build trust, strengthen relationship and make collaboration possible. These are exactly the thing that create long lasting impact in the community.
What we are doing with our project is actually this, it's creating networks and of relationships both online and in person, and neutering them with different type of content. So this network does its skill, experiences, values, again, attitudes and aptitudes can circulate. Even if a young person moves a far away, their skill can still flow back into their home communities to ongoing content and collaboration. And that's also possible because of the evolution of the mobility technology and the digital environment.
This is what we mean by circularity of skills and positive spillogled effects. By allowing skills to circulate, the knowledge and experience of young people don't just benefit them, they also enrich their communities of origin, strengthen local organizations and help maintain social and economic connection. In other words, skills in motion create a value for both individuals and the places they come from even across instances. Can you give us an example of what this circularity of skills could be in practice?
I, for instance, had immediately my mind that I was part of this God's group for quite long and then still even after I moved away, I went home for the summer camps and supported the group with my work there. Is this what you mean? Of course, this is a good example, I mean, for like a non-formal connection in the non-formal going of young people's group. But of course, you can also stay in touch with your old classmate that maybe is developing an idea of association linking youth in Europe, or maybe it's about coming back and promoting exchange among different territories because you like that your parents, your relatives and so on know where you stay and maybe you can explain how you live now.
And in the same time, keep the tradition that we have in your personal history. That is so fascinating for me to have this different perspective of the story, right? Like how we tell the story, it really shapes the reality that we don't look at migration as a negative thing, where regions where like people live ultimately lose everything and there is nothing to do and for those young people, those ties are cut, but there are so many opportunities how these people who go and explore the skills, the experiences they get can really benefit not just the regions, but as you say, the parents, right? Like the whole group around them can benefit from this one person, let's say, stepping out of the bubble.
And this is something that we often within the project talk about and we refer to it as a triple wind situation. So we call them like three winners in this scenario. The question would be how can we really focus on making sure that the young person who leaves benefits but also at the same time the place they left and also the place that they moved to all really feel like winners in this situation. We really believe that we can have three main winners, not just one, not two, but three main winners.
First, the young people themselves, second, the place is they leave behind, and third, the place is they move to. Young people, and I mean both, those who have moved away and those who have stayed, the relationships created through the process we are talking about are two ways. So everyone involved gains new experiences, skills and perspective. All the connections that develop at the, at any formal level help the transfer of knowledge and help keeping relationship alive.
And about the places they leave behind, even if young people move away, the knowledge, the attitude, the experience they share can't blow back to their home communities. This keeps the territories vibrant, supports local organizations that still work at local level and helps maintain social and economic connection that might otherwise be lost. And in relation to the places they move to, this is much easier to understand because new communities gain from the skills and perspective and fresh ideas that newcomers bring with them. Yes, the focus on the shared knowledge is what makes it possible by infatizing exchange and collaboration.
Rather than a one-way transfer, human capital becomes a systemic factor. It benefits individual, stress-time communities and creates values across both the region and destination territories at the same time. It's really fascinating to hear your experience and expertise and it's very clear that both the organizations are already since quite a while trying to figure out and think about this topic and also within out-faring-off. You are testing new practical solutions on the ground and you drive this project ahead.
Why is it in your opinion in this process vital to involve young people as well directly in creating these innovative solutions rather than, let's say, just having experts in the field or politicians and decision-makers decide everything? Thank you, Anna, for these questions because I work for youth empowerment and participation. So the easy answer is because young people live in these communities, so they are there and we have to value what they are thinking and because they know what's missing. They notice what the digital gaps are, the lack of meaning of opportunities to really engage in these nowadays societies.
At the same time, they see their communities for a different angle, one that's deeply running in the present and in which with a fresh perspective. This allows them to imagine and shape in our strategy and ideas for the future, not just for themselves but for their entire territories. And I have this memory of a young artist actually in a peer-to-peer situation in a non-formal context education and he said, it's not about new things you have to bring in your community, it's something that is innovative for your community. So you can learn a lot from also traditional strategy in other contexts, but it's something new that you can bring to your village towns and so on because it's not about innovation at like theoretical facts, but it's something that it's completely can affect the future of the communities.
And that's what is stating the European Youth Strategies because the point is that young people must be architects of their own lives, not just passive beneficiaries of the policies. These strategies go behind youth engagement, it goes for a real empowerment and this is even more crucial in the rural, alpine and the marginal areas where young people are often the first to live unless they are given a meaningful reason to stay or to return. When young people are trained, they develop a stronger sense of belonging, they stop being the ones who live and they start becoming an unbox of change. And let's not forget that the youth are you've cancelled, it's a concrete example of this.
Young people aren't just being consulted, they actually sit in the theatre making their bodies, they contribute to shaping policy and mobility and climate on jobs, all these things that define their lives in the absence. Yes true, so for our listeners, always helped the youth strategy for the up and region, they indeed have a youth concept established and that's a really good practice example, right? That the macro regional strategy for the Alps has a specific plan to involve young people directly in decision making regarding the kind of biggest, more pressing topics of the Alps. That's exactly what I also think and what I think we need to build on.
When young people are at the table, governance becomes more innovative and inclusive. Young people bring energy and digital skills, older generation, whereas bring memories, experience and tradition, when they collaborate together and we put them to collaborate together, we get continuity, identity and future readiness. And it also makes solution more democratic and sustainable. Policy is designed without the collaboration of youth are open, disconnected.
When youth go home the process, when they are at the table, they are more likely to implement it, adapt it and carry it forward. There is a line from Usalpe, I love to quote, which says, youth are not just the future of the Alps, they are essential actors of today's helping governance. And honestly, I think that's true for any community, not just in the Alps. Yes, Viana, what you said, we have to keep in mind an important point that usually we often talk about youth as a single group, but we must always remember that young people are not all the same.
They have experiences, perspective and aspiration that vary widely and intersect with the many factors, like gender, sexual orientation, migration background, social economic status and more. Being open to this diversity means being ready to embrace the pluralism that stress and democracy and keeps local communities, details, dynamic and resilient in the face of global challenges. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Viana, for sharing this perspective on how regions and the Alps can move from suffering, rain, rain to fostering a system of mutual benefit.
It's great to hear that local authorities are already actively working on engaging young people and improve the quality of lives for young people who move away or also decide to come back. Yeah, thank you both for such an enlightening conversation. I also feel that it's really nice to sit together like this and there's this motivation and passion in the room and in the project itself as well to change things. This is really valuable to be part of this, to be part of this change and to also involve young people in this because they then bring in a whole another level of energy.
Yes, thank you very much. It was a pleasure. Thank you for having a happy day with you. So this was the first episode of our podcast, We Think In Youth Migration in the Alps.
Stay tuned because there will be two more episodes. The podcast will be published on all Zebra channels and as well on all out for Ingov channels. The project, New Generation, Alpine Art, Migration, Engagement for Inclusive Governance, Short Art for Ingov, is a project funded by the Interreg App and Space Program. For more information, visit the project website, LinkedIn Shownouts.
A podcast by Zebra. In podcast, the L'Acee podcast. The L'Acee podcast. The L'Acee podcast.
Interviews, background talks and voices from all Alpine countries. Listen to this and more in the podcast of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps. www.cebra.org.