Auswanderung war einmal eine Entscheidung fürs Leben. Heute ist sie oft eine Frage des vorübergehenden Lifestyles:

I had a doctor’s appointment last week. Usually that would not be worth mentioning in this column were it not for what I learnt about my doctor’s family history.

As it turned out, my doctor came from a Greek family, was born in Zimbabwe and grew up in South Africa before moving to Australia. He had to give up his South African passport when he became an Australian citizen so that he could cling on to his Greek citizenship. Apparently, South Africa only allows dual, but not triple citizenships. For his children, he told me, it would be far more advantageous to have a European passport that opened the doors to live, study and work in all 27 EU member states. His parents, meanwhile, had just retired in South Africa but were about to move to Greece “because it’s safer there”.

My doctor’s migration experience may sound complicated but it is certainly not at all exceptional ...