15 July (BNS) – The number of ethnic Estonians living in the world now is 1 060 000, of whom 930 000 live in Estonia and about 130 000, or 12%, in other countries, it appears from a human resource report presented by the Estonian Co-operation Assembly on July 15.
The eastern diaspora of Estonians is constantly declining. In Russia, where the number of ethnic Estonians is the largest, the decline is happening as a result of a big share of elderly people in the ethnic Estonian population and assimilation of the younger generation.
The number of ethnic Estonians living in countries of the West has been stable for the past six decades due to the wave of new emigration that started in the 1990s. As a result, the number of ethnic Estonians has grown rapidly in the new countries of destination for the emigration of Estonians, particularly Finland.
In new emigration the survey identifies two definite types of emigration, the first being people temporarily studying or working in foreign countries and the second being people who have left their native country for good. The large size of the former group leaves an erroneous impression of the scale on which leaving of Estonia has taken place.
