#emigrants

[thatpollguy]

Do you live in Finland?

Yes

No, but I used to

No, I've never lived there

Voting ended onNov 16, 2025

[fromtheheather]

Emigrants (1880) - James Jacques Joseph Tissot

[songs-of-the-east]

And Then There Was One: Three People Lived in This Village Until Two Were Murdered.

"Thirty years ago, 200 people lived in the Moldovan village of Dobrusa. But most have since left or died. After a twin killing in February, there’s only one survivor still standing.. Grisa Muntean, a short, mustachioed farmer often found in a flat-cap, a checked shirt and a ripped pair of blue trousers held up by a drawstring. For company, Mr. Muntean has his two cats, five dogs, nine turkeys, 15 geese, 42 chickens, about 50 pigeons, 120 ducks and several thousand bees. The other humans have either died, left for larger towns and cities in Moldova, or emigrated to Russia or other parts of Europe. “The loneliness kills you,” Mr. Muntean, 65, said on a recent afternoon. His former neighbors’ houses are vanishing almost as fast as their owners. With few animals to graze the roadsides, and with only Mr. Muntean to prune the orchards, the buildings are sinking below a canopy of walnut groves and apple trees. “When I work, I speak with the trees,” Mr. Muntean said. “With the birds, with the animals, with my tools. There is no one else to talk to.” Dobrusa was once a village of 50 houses that lined two parallel streets at the bottom of a shallow valley. Like many settlements across Moldova, it emptied out after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, an exodus mirrored across Eastern Europe, which has the world’s fastest shrinking population. Now only a few corrugated iron roofs can still be seen in Dobrusa, poking above the undergrowth. They are visible from the dirt track that connects the village to the nearest tarmac road. Even the village graveyard, set on the other side of the valley, is slowly receding into an undergrowth of nettles and brambles, grass flowers and cow parsley. Plants like these are the closest Mr. Muntean has to neighbors. Until February, Mr. Muntean relied on the company of Gena and Lida Lozynsky, a couple in their early 40s who lived at the other end of the village."

- Text by Patrick Kingsley. Photographs by Laetitia Vancon.

[20thcenturyartgallery]

Emigrants (Émigrés)

Artist: Wilhelm Wachtel (Polish, 1875-1952)

Date: 1916

Medium: Oil on canvas laid on board

Collection: Property of a Gentleman

[sibirsibir]

Migrants from Kalmykia in Yugoslavia, 1920s

[yami-no-zenchi]

По больницам ходить страшно. Особенно в другой стране, на другом языке. Это какое-то вечно напоминание немощности. В больнице еще всегда так много стариков. Через пару часов мне опять туда. Надеюсь с лицом, которое я сломал себе все обойдется.

[raindoor]

At my son's virtual class of the Language of <the Galaxy Far Away> (that I'm from), the teacher asks my son: what places do you like to go to when you visit <the Galaxy Far Away>?

My 14-year-old son: names a shopping mall.

Teacher: why <the shopping mall>?

My son: because of all the food.

Teacher: which one is your favorite restaurant?

My son: McDonald's.

Me: mentally facepalms.

Teacher: But McDonald's is everywhere.

My son: But it is better in <the Galaxy Far Away>.

Me: cringes in shame as a very bad emigrant mom who did not prevent her son from becoming a clicheed American.

[galleryofart]

The Emigrant's Last Sight of Home

Artist: Richard Redgrave (English, 1804–1888)

Date: 1858

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Collection: Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom

Description

During the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries many British businesses began to use new manufacturing processes. The shift towards mass production in factories resulted in huge job losses. In the 1840s and 1850s many families were forced to leave Britain to look for opportunities and employment elsewhere. Redgrave was one of several artists who documented this emigration. This family is shown leaving Abinger in Surrey, where Redgrave owned a cottage.