I'm one of the Irish expatriates who left in 2011 and who wasn't jobless. Every single one of my friends has emigrated as well. We were all in our twenties and thirties. There certainly is a generation gap created as a result of this. My mother says the people she meets are either 40+ or kids and teenagers. I grew up in a small town with 12,000 or so people. One of the things I tend to do is keep up with news from home, local deaths, and so on. I know over 40 people that have died in our small town since I left in 2011. Two of them were friends of mine who never saw 40 years of age. One cancer, the other suicide. Plenty of neighbours, friends of friends, people I would see in the street. Old teachers, soccer coaches, et al.

The hardest part about living abroad is the death of a friend of family member and being unable to return home for it.

My wife and I long to return. Not a day goes by without mentioning it to me, which is surprising because my wife is American and she hates it here in the states. The rise of Trump would make you depressed as well. I'm on a very nice salary in the states so I have little to complain about. Millions left Ireland throughout the years and some of them had to build the cities I have the luxury of flying into today. Lots of them died in poverty or on the job. I remind myself of this constantly.

I would love to move back to Ireland some day. I appear to be the only one out of all of my friends who wishes to do so, and that might be because I'm the only one who can still making a living there. I'm a software developer, and the tech industry wasn't really hit by the recession at all. We'll see what the future holds.