The chemists leaving their country over personal ethics
Family matters and political views are leading researchers to pursue careers abroad
‘It all started with Brexit. A year before that, we’d bought a house and I got my fellowship. Then, that morning, we saw it on the news. It changed my feelings about the UK, particularly with what came after.’ In 2014, Christof Jäger had moved from the Cluster of Excellence Engineering Advanced Materials in Erlangen, Germany to the University of Nottingham, UK, to start a new life with his family. Now, he’s leaving for Gothenburg, Sweden. ‘The prime minister [Theresa May] was saying that if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. It gave us a bad feeling.’
Jäger’s story is one familiar to thousands of chemists around the world. When it comes to jobs, we usually talk about changing location for career promotion, higher salaries or a better quality of life. Outside of that, leaving a country is often thought of through the lens of major incidents, such as the academics fleeing Ukraine since the Russian invasion. Yet for many chemists, particularly those with the privilege of coming from western countries and with the funds to move, their motivation to relocate is more personal: it comes down to ethics, politics and how their family is affected.