Tracking one third of Albania’s population that lives abroad

TIRANA, Jan. 31 – Peoplemovin, which covers migration flows around the world, reports that 1,438,451 Albanian citizens live outside the country.
The figures from the Peoplemovin, which aggregates data from several sources, show Albania has some 4.2 million citizens, of which 2.9 million live in Albania.
Albanian authorities have no number on the Albanian immigrants abroad and often different figures are listed. Most figures come from neighboring Greece or nearby Italy, though this is the first time a global compilation has been assembled.
But it is also not clear whether all the number given from the Peoplemovin are Albanians who have migrated and still have the Albanian citizenship, or not. In some countries they are forced to leave the Albanian citizenship when they take on another, like the cases of Austria and Germany for example.
The figures also show how many Albanians are in separate countries. We know that officially there are some 676,000 Albanian immigrants in Greece though in practice the figure could be up to one million as many of them have yet to get Greek documents.
Peoplemovin also shows that 522,647 Albanians live in Italy, 91,128 in Macedonia, 83,018 in the United States, 15,964 in Germany, 11,985 in Canada, 3,712 in Turkey, 3,065 in Britain, 3,037 in France and 2,628 in Australia. There are Albanians in other countries as well.
Albanians are a small part of about 216 million migrants worldwide.