Disappearing Bulgarians

The Bulgarians are about to invade England. According to the papers, they are about to dump their tractors in the middle of the turnip field and join the masses of cheap labour in search of the gold that paves the streets of London. The people of Bulgaria will be leaving their country in droves.
But this is nothing new. In 1989 there were around 9 million people living in Bulgaria. According to the 2011 census, 22 years later, there were only 7,364,570 inhabitants of Bulgaria.
That is quite a drop in a less than a quarter of a century.
And with a fertility rate of  just one and a half children per woman the trend appears ever downwards.
Twenty-first century Bulgarians, like the people of China and Iran and Italy and many other places seem to wish for things other than family life.
One of the great phenomena of the twentieth century was the flight from the land to the city, a trend which, if anything is increasing nowadays.
And over and above this trend we see the flight from the periphery to the centre of capital.
Travel has never been easier and the young of all nations want a slice of the action.
It is a shame when some places are depopulated, leaving the old to fend for themselves, and others are overrun, causing the native population to flee.
In the meantime young people from many countries have no wish for home and family life. They want to live in London and Paris, Barcelona and Berlin. They want to enjoy the adventure of living in a great city in some foreign land.