Albania’s demographic bill comes due
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- The lowest birth rates on record and the long-term implications are part of the massive demographic bill Albanians are paying for having an exceptionally high per-capita emigration rate.
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The lowest birth rates on record and the long-term implications are part of the massive demographic bill Albanians are paying for having an exceptionally high per-capita emigration rate.
By ANDI BALLA
TIRANA, Nov. 19, 2022 – In the cobble stone streets of a village in Gjirokastra County, in Albania’s southern edge, the screaming headlines of the UK press about the “Albanian invasion” are a world away.
As the international press has placed the spotlight on thousands of Albanian migrants using boats for the dangerous crossing of the channel from France to the UK, the locals have other worries, even if they are part of the same story.
“Look around, see if you can find anybody under 45 to interview. You can’t. They are all gone,” an elderly resident tells a visiting reporter.
Gjirokastra County has the unhappy distinction of having the most grim numbers yet in the country’s demography, the lowest birth rate and the most aged population. In Albania as a whole births are down nearly 20 percent compared to last year, according to Instat, Albania’s official statistics body.
“But it’s not a surprise, since it is clearly related to people in their child-bearing years leaving,” says Migena Karo, an obstetrician in Gjirokastra.
A nation of emigrants
The low number of births and the long-term implications are part of the massive demographic bill Albanians are paying for having an exceptionally high per-capita emigration rate. Of the more than 4.5 million people holding Albania’s citizenship today, only 2.7 million are currently in Albania. With spikes in the turbulent 1990s as Albania emerged from the continent’s harshest communist regime, emigration remained high until the 2008 global financial crisis, seeing a small reversal as major host countries like Greece and Italy suffered immense economic pain.
However, emigration has been steadily increasing again in the past decade. Official numbers show one in seven Albanians left the country in that period, with other sources noting the number could be as high as one in five. The numbers are backed by opinion surveys that show Albania has among the world’s highest percentage of the labour force that is willing to emigrate for a better life.
Why are they leaving?
While the trifecta of a massive earthquake in November 2019, the pandemic and the recent increase in the cost of living plays a role, it doesn’t fully explain why emigration is spiking and why it grew from 2012 to 2019, says Ledion Kristafi, a senior researcher at the Albanian Institute for International Studies, which is conducting a lengthy research study on the subject.
“First and foremost, it is tied to the economic situation in Albania, where the average income is still 32 percent of the average income of the European Union, lower than any other country in the region except Kosovo,” Kristafi says.
For comparison, the former communist states of Central Europe such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland — which three decades ago were also poor in comparison the EU — today are at 70 to 80 percent of the EU average, according to Kristafi.
“I think this is related to a primitive state, let’s say, of the Albanian economy. It is an economy that finds it difficult to generate high salaries. Productivity is pretty low based on all the studies that have been done. Foreign investments go to sectors such as oil and mineral extraction, which do not directly lead to an increase in the quality of employment and wages,” Kristafi adds.
Lack of hope in Albania’s future
Beyond the economy, there is general lack of hope that the situation can change for the better any time soon.
Albania’s own EU membership bid has stalled due to increasing hesitancy in wealthier European countries about enlargement and lack of domestic progress and political infighting over the years. Many Albanians simply see the benefits of EU membership that were enjoyed by so much of former communist Europe out of reach for another generation.
Zef Preci, a political and economic expert, says the reasons Albanians want to leave boil down to lack of political vision to deliver a better country.
“Politics have a natural impact on the loss of hope,” he says, adding that public interest is often being bypassed to serve political and commercial interests.
Unhappy with the situation and faced with a “patronage” system they don’t feel they can change, many educated and ambitious Albanians are not sticking around but are looking for a better life elsewhere, Preci adds.
“The country is less livable than before,” Preci says. “As long as the political elite does not circulate, the administration is extremely corrupt and simply has patronage functions.”
Emigration and depopulation trends not unique to Albania
Albania’s government says the country has started from a low baseline, so despite progress, it can’t offer what Western Europe offers and points out that other countries in the region have the same problems, with migration and depopulation happening all over Eastern and Southeastern Europe.
In fact, data shows the 10 fastest shrinking countries in the world are in Eastern Europe – and all Western Balkan countries face the same problem. The reasons are the same too: out-migration to where wages are higher and public services are better combined with a rapid decline in birthrates.
The latest data from censuses held in 2021 showed that most countries of the wider region are seeing population decline, regardless of EU membership status.
Some of Albania’s neighbouring countries, like Croatia and Montenegro, are now attracting Albanian workers with higher wages, causing a further shortage of human resources in Albania’s vital tourist sector, which is now resorting to importing some workers from Asian countries to fill the gaps.
Legal emigration as largest share of the pie
Despite the headlines and the focus on illegal crossings and ties to criminal elements, tens of thousands of Albanians migrate legally every year, with the number of receiving permits to reside and work in EU countries going to a total of more than 829,000 in 2020, according to Eurostat data.
“The number of citizens of Albania receiving citizenship in the EU in 2020 was 146 percent higher than in 2010,” Eurostat noted in its report.
Many Albanians are also increasingly taking part in secondary migration, moving from places with lower wages, like Greece, to places with higher ones and more opportunities, like Germany.
For example, in August 2022, there were 291,868 Albanian citizens with a valid residence permit in Greece, down sharply from a year earlier, when the number was 422,954, according to Greek government data.
Representatives of the Albanian community in Greece note many legal Albanian workers are leaving for wealthier countries, and Greek employers are unhappy they can’t fill the vacancies Albanians left behind.
Germany is now the fastest growing destination for Albanian migrants – both primary and secondary – as Berlin streamlined the ability for people from the Western Balkans, including Albania, to get work permits.
The healthcare sector has been particularly impacted in Albania, where the government has gone as far as proposing that medical students be forced into national service for three years before they can receive their diplomas as many young doctors were taking German classes and planning to emigrate right after graduation.
Desperation to reach UK puzzles researchers
But with legal emigration now a possibility elsewhere, why is there such a desperation to reach the UK, including the highly-publicised use of boats to cross the channel from France?
One explanation relates to chain migration and the UK’s labour shortages. The UK hosts a large diaspora from Albania’s poorest region, Kukes County. That attracts relatives and acquaintances who have an easier time finding well-paid jobs in Albanian-owned construction businesses, according to Safet Gjici, mayor of Kukes.
“Some do hire workers without immigration papers, but it’s honest work,” Gjici says. “Of course, there are those who do work in illicit areas, but they are a minority, a small percentage.”
On timing, the focus has been on a recent advertisement campaign on social media by smuggling groups, which make the dangerous boat crossing seem easy and affordable.
But those who choose that route are in danger of falling victim to criminal activities such as having to work in cannabis greenhouses “willingly or unwillingly, in an attempt to pay off the debts they have taken to make it there,” said Kristafi, the AIIS researcher.
He touches on the darker side of Albanian migration — organised crime — which gets more press and more attention than the vast majority of honest hard working Albanians abroad because of the impact on the host countries’ criminal scene as well as the negative effects of violence and dirty money being imported back to Albania.
“It’s something that’s there, and shouldn’t be hidden but addressed,” says Fatjona Mejdini, a journalist who specialises in reporting on organised crime. She cites numbers issued by international law enforcement officials as clear evidence that Albanians do play a role in international organised crime.
For young Albanians in rural towns and poor suburbs, that darker side features in the allure of easy profits as they see peers returning back from abroad with big vehicles and cash to spare.
Calls for solutions
It’s a point that has not been lost on UK authorities, which recently launched a project to offer legal migration and better conditions at home in Albania’s northeastern Kukes County, Albania’s poorest and historically the largest source of emigration to the United Kingdom.
Alastair King-Smith, British ambassador to Tirana, said it was the UK’s most ambitious initiative in northern Albania and will provide skills and jobs across the region.
“My message to those who are considering whether to travel in an illegal manner to the United Kingdom is this: Wait. Don’t go now and ruin your lives,” the ambassador says in a message on LinkedIN. “What you are being shown on social media is not the reality. Either stay here or apply for visas through legal routes. Do not go illegally! We appeal to everyone who can contribute: please work with us to create hope and choices for young people here, so that they don’t feel forced to leave.”
Some argue that one of the reasons for the desperate crossings is that it is virtually impossible for many Albanians to get a visa to go to Britain to visit or join family already in the United Kingdom.
Lea Ypi, an Albanian-British professor at the London School of Economics and a best selling international author, bitterly recalled on Twitter, how neither her mother nor her brother had never been allowed to visit her in the UK, where she has lived for 14 years and is a citizen, after they were denied travel visas despite spendings hundreds of pounds in fees.
“My mother … had not ‘satisfied the consular office that her intentions are those of a genuine visitor’. Ask any Albanian you meet and they will have at least one story like this. It’s very likely they will have more,” Ypi wrote, adding: “if you’ve never seen a UK visa rejection letter — the cruelty, the contempt, the humiliation — here’s the one denying entrance to my mum because I’d said in my invitation letter that I was pregnant … [and] needed help. I’m a privileged academic. Imagine what it’s like for other Albanians.”
Little light at end of tunnel
Back in Albania, the non-stop emigration of the most productive part of society and its long-term implications are part of the massive demographic bill Albanians are paying to feed labour needs in wealthier countries as their homeland offers little in retention.
With the situation looking grim, some Albanians are turning to a higher power for help. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Albania issued a statement calling on the country’s leadership to come up with and implement solutions to the crisis.
The statement noted that the Catholic clergy is speaking out to help authorities find ways to put a stop to the migration trend by improving the lives of Albanians.
“Our believers dramatically tell us how whole families prefer to emigrate for fear that they cannot guarantee a safe future for their children and that many of them have lost hope to live in Albania,” Monsignor Angelo Massafra says in a statement to the media, that cites the need for solutions to stop “a total emptying of school structures in rural areas” and the depletion of what he called “the most valuable professions for the social and economic development of our country, such as in healthcare and education.”
With Albania’s decision-makers seemingly deaf to the situation, the hope remains that the prayers will be answered by a higher power.
