Comparing Emigration Against Staying Put Rather Than an Imagined Canada
“We’re not running from anything, we’re running to something” — you’ll hear a version of this line in almost every emigration Facebook group, usually right before someone posts a photo of a lake. It’s a nice sentence. It’s also usually the wrong comparison. The honest exercise is comparing emigration against staying put, and almost nobody runs it that way.
Q: What’s actually wrong with the comparison most people run?
Most families compare their real, specific, textured life in South Africa — the actual commute, the actual school, the actual Sunday lunch with actual people — against an imagined Canadian life built out of Instagram photos, immigration-agency brochures and other people’s highlight reels. That’s not a fair fight. One side has bad traffic and a difficult boss in it. The other side has none of the ordinary friction of a real life yet, because it hasn’t been lived.
Q: So what’s the fairer version?
It’s your actual life here versus a realistic life there — one with its own bad days, its own difficult boss, its own bad traffic in a different language, and its own version of missing something. Canada is a real place with real weather, real bureaucracy and real loneliness in year one. Building it into the comparison as real, rather than as a solution, is what makes the comparison honest.
Q: What does South Africa’s own data say about why people actually consider leaving?
The reasons families cite are worth naming plainly rather than skated over: roughly half point to safety and security as the main driver. It’s also a highly qualified group making this decision — around 90% hold at least one tertiary qualification, and about 60% hold a postgraduate qualification or diploma. On income, roughly 60% of those considering emigration report household income above US$100,000, and about 20% above US$200,000. This is mostly a comparison being run by people who are doing reasonably well by South African standards and weighing it against something else entirely — not a comparison forced by having no options at all.
Q: Does the comparison ever come out in favour of staying?
Yes, and often. Staying is not the version of this decision that needs defending, and nobody should feel they have to justify choosing the life they already have. A career at its peak, an ageing parent who needs you nearby, a business that only works because you’re physically present, a partner who isn’t ready — all of these are complete reasons, not consolation prizes for people who “couldn’t make it work” abroad.
Q: What should actually go in the comparison grid?
Both columns, filled in with the same honesty. What you’d genuinely be walking away from — not just the negatives, the things you’d miss. What you’d genuinely be walking into — including the parts nobody puts in a brochure: a lower-status first job, a long first winter, a support network you’ll spend years rebuilding. Put the stay option in the grid too, filled in as thoroughly as the leave option, or the exercise isn’t actually a comparison.
Q: What’s the honest bottom line?
Whichever way it comes out, it should come out because you compared two real lives.
For the practical side once you’ve made a decision, our guides walk through what the move actually costs and takes — useful reading either way this comparison lands.