Diaspora — the community that can both support and hold you back

What the data says

Approximately 17 of the 27 EU member states today have a share of foreign-born population of over 10 percent (Eurostat, 2024). The largest individual corridors among third-country nationals include:

• Indians in Germany — around 250,000 people
• Moroccans in Spain and France — over 1.0 million each
• Brazilians in Portugal — around 400,000
• Ukrainians in Poland — over 1.0 million, mainly after 2022

For most large countries of origin, a community of your size already exists somewhere in the EU. Statistically speaking, this is the norm, not the exception.

Why a diaspora can help

An existing community from your home country at your destination is more than just a comfort factor. It is often a practical bureaucracy buffer: Someone has already gone through the residence permit, rental contract, and bank account opening process and can tell you which line at the office is real and which is just for show. This saves weeks and sometimes months.

There is also the language buffer. In the first six months, Hindi may suffice in Frankfurt, Portuguese in Lissabon, Polish in Birmingham, and Arabic or Wolof in Madrid. This transition phase, during which you first build up the local language, is much more bearable with a diaspora.

The religious and cultural infrastructure is also important—mosques, gurdwaras, kosher shops, Pentecostal churches, halal markets. This is not meant romantically, but practically: Where such structures exist, there are spaces where you don’t constantly have to explain yourself.

Finally, informal networks often provide job and housing tips before they appear on public platforms. This is a serious relief in cities with tight housing markets—and in some industries (care, gastronomy, construction), it is a separate labor market.

Why a diaspora can hold you back

The same community that eases your entry can slow down your integration into the majority society. If you survive six months without the local language, you might only seriously start learning it after a year—friendships outside the diaspora become rarer, and job opportunities beyond established niches remain slim. Often, this is self-chosen, not forced. But it doesn’t make it any less real.

Within the community, there are exploitation risks that are particularly high in the first time: overpriced sublets, black-market work below minimum wage, dubious "consulting" offers for residence permits, and fake translators. The risk is highest in the first twelve months and decreases once you have your own benchmarks.

Imported conflicts often do not stay at home. Sectarian, regional, or political tensions travel with you. Which sub-community you join in your new city is a decision—not a given. An Indian diaspora is not one community, but many; the same applies to Russian- or Arabic-speaking groups.

There is a generational gap that often only becomes apparent years later. Your children can grow up bilingual, but this does not necessarily make them rooted—some later feel neither fully accepted as "local" nor as part of the diaspora. This experience is well documented in research literature and should be taken seriously in family planning.

And finally: A visible diaspora does not guarantee an open society. Several large diasporas in the EU live in cities where surveys show above-average prejudices against their group. Finding a mosque is one thing; not being stared at on the street is another.

What research finds

The OECD series Settling In (2018 and 2023 editions) finds that diaspora networks accelerate economic integration—faster first job, higher self-employment rate—but slow down linguistic integration. Both findings are robust across several survey waves.

A much-discussed contribution by Robert Putnam (2007) argued that high ethnic diversity in neighborhoods temporarily reduces social trust—even among members of one’s own group. The finding sparked an entire research landscape. Later meta-analyses (van der Meer & Tolsma 2014, Dinesen, Schaeffer & Sønderskov 2020) significantly qualify Putnam’s thesis: The loss of trust largely disappears once income, age, and length of stay are controlled. Diversity itself is not the problem; structural inequality between groups is.

For your decision, this means: A diaspora is neither per se an accelerator nor per se a brake. Which effect prevails depends on how you use it—and what the city around it looks like.

Questions for self-assessment

Before choosing a city with a large diaspora from your home country, it is useful to honestly answer three questions for yourself:

• What do you need from a diaspora—mostly emotional or mostly practical? Community, identity, and religious practice lead to different cities than job pipelines, housing leads, and language buffers. Both are legitimate, and both do not have to be in the same city.
• Have you spoken to people from your community who are not success stories? With people who have returned or feel stuck? Their reasons usually generalize better than the stories of those for whom it worked.
• Are you ready to be seen—and possibly judged—by your community abroad? Social norms of a diaspora often freeze at the point of emigration. What is now everyday at home may be considered a taboo in the diaspora. Sometimes the opposite is true.

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A diaspora is a tool, not a destiny. Using it means consciously leveraging its advantages and openly seeing its risks—not letting the mere size of a community persuade you to choose a city that otherwise doesn’t fit your life.