On the International Day of Migrants, December 18, the National Statistics Institute of Albania provided the media with a figure that is known to the Albanian collective psyche but which nevertheless, when uttered publicly sends shivers down the spine: about 1.7 million Albanians have left the country in these three decades of post-communism. In comparison only 2.8 million remain inside the country.
One should take these figures with a grain of salt if not more. In the last census of ten years ago the number of Albanians was again 2.8 million. Since then the number of births has continued to decrease and the number of people leaving (especially in 2015-2016) has continued to increase. So it is quite likely that less than 2.8 million live in Albania now. Additionally the government works, as it should with official numbers, however the numbers of illegal migrants therefore unregistered citizens that live abroad, are also very high.
The outward migration waves have had their crest and troughs with the 90s despair and poverty sending the first hundreds of thousands manly to Greece and Italy followed by later slightly smaller numbers to Germany, the UK, the United States and Canada. However what was expected to settle down into normalcy is nowhere near reaching any resting point.
Albanians are leaving in droves, young and middle aged, students and young families, professionals and cheap labor alike. Survey after survey they relentlessly profess their willingness and readiness to leave and start a life abroad. They fill up foreign language courses and embassy doors seeking a life elsewhere. The brain drain continues unabated. In times such as the pandemics the doctors and nurses are sorely missed.
Even though there is still poverty other reason have become more pertinent: corruption, lack of quality in public services, economic monopolies, nepotism, etc. One word captures them all, lack of hope an vision for the future.
Meanwhile the political, economic and media powerhouses concentrated into fewer and fewer people rub their hands in quiet satisfaction. More migration less opposition, less criticism, less controversy. The diaspora can be kept at arm’s length with futile promises of enabling their vote, always postponed into the future, and glamorous symbolic summits deprived of content and impact. Diaspora is easy. Domestic discontent is far more challenging.
Back to the less than 3 million Albanians at home, most of them are aging. The social security networks are getting thinner, the pensions scheme handing by a thread. The social potential for change and improvement diluted and the economic life monopolized into a few well-known last names to the disgust of the many.
The ongoing flight of Albanians abroad is not to be taken lightly as an unavoidable reality. It is a very loud alarm bell that rings first and foremost for the society here which needs to understand that it is being abandoned by the best and brightest and not for their fault. It is a loud alarm bell for policymakers to wake from their stupor and face the grim social and economic impact.
Soon there will be no other noise but that of the emptiness that rings hollow.
