The good news arrives preceded by a scent of roses at the Berlini travel agency, located in the embassy district of Tirana. “Have you ever seen an agency with so many bouquets?” Asks its owner, Diana, in a mixture of English and Italian, as she deposits one more on the table of one of her employees. The only possible answer is no, of course not. The place is full of orchids, poinsettias, sunflowers, roses... “This is how we know that our clients have obtained the visa to emigrate. They arrive every day, ”she says proudly.
Behind each branch there is a story in which all Albanians recognize themselves in one way or another, emigration. After being tightly closed for almost half a century that the communist dictatorship created by Hever Hoxha lasted, a regime as closed as North Korea today that punished those who tried to leave the country with the death penalty, Albania did not It has stopped losing inhabitants. The official population has gone from 3.2 million in 1991 to 2.8 million and is on the decline, explains Professor Illir Gedeshi, director of the Tirana Center for Social and Economic Studies. "Among those who emigrated and their children, there are about 1.7 million Albanians abroad."
The first wave of migration took place between 1991 and 1993. As soon as the borders were opened, hundreds of thousands of Albanians emigrated irregularly to Italy and Greece. They were mostly men. The next decade was the turn of women and children, this time legally thanks to family reunification policies. In 2008 some 120,000 had to return to Albania when the financial crisis hit Greece and many were left without work.
Since 2015, Albanian emigration has gone mainly to Germany and France through asylum claims. “Now what we see is a new migratory wave of young people, with higher education and with a profession in Albania who go legally, mainly to Germany, with work permits. The image of emigration has totally changed”. Every year, more doctors leave than Albanian universities produce.
Their motivations now also have to do with quality of life, according to various studies among the diaspora, explains Gedeshi, concerned about the problems that this situation can create in a country in full growth, as can be seen in the dynamic Tirana, full of cranes and new business. “There are migratory movements everywhere but in no country with such intensity or with people with such a high level of education”, he maintains.
Xhoana, one of the employees of the travel agency, knows the phenomenon well. "Almost all the tickets we sell are one-way." Its main destinations are Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom. They not only sell plane tickets, but also help manage applications for work permits. “In Albania there are many problems. The quality of life is not good here”, sums up Diana.
The conversation is interrupted by the arrival of a family with a bouquet of flowers. “Brava Diana, brava!” They exclaim as they show her the visa that the head of the family, in his 60s, has just received to go to work in the United Kingdom, where her two children live. "She had had six-month visas, then a year, then two... Now she has gotten a 10-year visa," celebrates her son-in-law Fabio. He himself emigrated to Italy in 1995 and lives there with his wife and children. “We are all out. There is no work here. Well, yes there are, but they pay very poorly”.
“Everyone wants to leave,” wrote an 11-year-old Albanian girl, Lea Ypi, now a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics, in her diary after her parents confessed to her that they had lived for almost half a century in “an open-air prison” and that many relatives had been in prison. The phrase – which appears in her book Free de ella, a reflection on the concept of freedom under a communist dictatorship and in capitalist democracy – is still heard today in the mouths of Albanians of all ages and educational levels.
The question to young people about where they see their future often gets the same answer. “In Germany,” says Adem, a 20-year-old boy, over coffee with his friends in Tirana's new bazaar. “United States”, says another. On his day, his parents emigrated and have returned to open small businesses in the Albanian capital, they say. “Emigrating seems like a good idea to me. You can earn a lot more,” he says.
The answer is not much different at the Polytechnic University of Tirana. "Do you want me to tell you the truth? I see my future outside of Albania. In some European country, in Spain for example”, answers Xhoi, a 21-year-old architecture student. The two friends of hers agree. The boy hopes to go to Canada, where his brother lives. The girl, Fiona, dreams of following her sister to Barcelona and opening an architecture studio there with Xhoi.
“In Albania there are not many opportunities for young people. The school is not bad but there are no good jobs and they pay very little,” explains Xhoi. All three work part-time as apprentices and all three do it in the black. Life is expensive in Tirana, they complain, and they have no right to unemployment. “It's not that we don't have faith in the country, but good jobs are for people with connections. I'm sorry because maybe you have come to Albania to write a report about how beautiful the country is (and of course it is, just not to live) but this is the truth”.
The connection of Albanian universities with Europe is an old concern of the government of Edi Rama, in power since 2013. The summit of the European Union and the Western Balkans held this week in Tirana resulted in an agreement to allow the region join the European higher education network and have access to both the Erasmus program and European university alliances, which combine face-to-face attendance with online classes in several countries.
“This is great news for the young people of this country,” said Rama, an unconventional politician who is trying to get the prestigious European College of Bruges, once set up to help ex-Soviet countries integrate into the Union, to now open an antenna in Tirana to advance the process in the Balkans. Until Albania joins the EU, such initiatives can improve the country's future prospects, says Professor Gedeshi. The lack of possibilities to build an academic career at home leads many PhD students not to try to return. “That is why having better universities would be useful because not all those who have left will be able to stay out. If they return, they will have more opportunities, they will help to raise the educational level of the country and the cost for families to send their children abroad will be reduced”.
Sindi, a textile engineering student, is also thinking of emigrating to further her studies, but she is one of those who thinks of returning. “I wouldn't leave my country forever for the world,” she says. But she wants to be a fashion designer and the technical resources at the University of Tirana are “very limited”, she says, which is why she dreams of going to study a master's degree in France. “I want to leave to train but I want to return. I think there are good opportunities in Albania if you work hard”, she says optimistically even though, she admits, it's not that everyone wants to leave but “almost everyone has already left”.
Arbër Hajdari, 29, has seen many friends and family leave, starting with his older brother, a soccer player, who emigrated to the US, and his little sister, who followed in his footsteps a few years ago. He is not only determined to stay but is helping others to do so through the humanitarian aid foundation, Fundjavë Ndryshe.
He learned online how to create a foundation, came into contact with the Albanian diaspora in the United States and, in seven years, his project has raised 64 million euros from private donations. “We have helped 27 families, built 525 houses and facilitated 156 surgical operations outside the country, almost all for children”, she recounts with a sparkle in her eyes. “Problems are not solved by saying everything that is going wrong and that the government is to blame for everything. Poverty has not come to Albania suddenly, we come from there”.
The foundation offers help to families in extreme poverty through what it calls "positive pressure." “We are like a father of a family who comes in and sees the needs they have. Sometimes we give them a house, for example, but not ownership. We give it to them for five years and if they show us that during that time they have gone to work every month and have taken the children to school, we will give it to them”. If they don't have a job, they look for one. Or they send them to school to acquire the skills that the job market demands.
“It is not true that there is no work here. The big companies and the tourism sector need labor and cannot find workers, they are starting to hire Pakistani emigrants”, says Arbër, information corroborated by Professor Gedeshi. Many people, he continues, "simply leave to earn more money, because they see the standard of living of those who have left and want it too", although many also suffer great suffering.
But while “everyone talks about those who left and did well, they don't say anything about the people who have returned to build their lives here. I have met many. They know that they will not be able to have the welfare standards of the US or in Europe, but they love their country and have come back to invest in it”, celebrates Arbër. One of the illustrious returnees is Bledar Kola, chef at the Mullixhiu restaurant.
In 1999, at the age of 15, he went to London alone. He arrived hidden in a truck and went to work as a dishwasher in a restaurant. The chefs, a disciplined Japanese and an Austrian, encouraged him to take cooking classes and little by little he worked his way up to work in the kitchens of the most prestigious restaurants in the British capital, including Pied à Terre. In 2007, he decided to return home, apply what he had learned and put Albanian cuisine on the map.
"My friends told me I was crazy," recalls the chef. After several stays at Noma in Denmark and Fäviken in Sweden, in 2016 he opened Mullixhiu. The international recognition of his work gave him the push his restaurant needed, recognized as one of the best in Europe in its commitment to market cuisine. "I would not have learned what I know if I had not left," he defends. He is clear about it: "Everyone should emigrate and go out and see the world." Not only to access opportunities that they don't have in Albania but to see what it means to work in countries like Germany and learn “discipline” that one day can be useful to his country.
The Government of Edi Rama observes the migratory phenomenon with pragmatism. "I don't think we have the right to tell young people what to do or ask them to stay here. People are free to make their own decisions. Thank God we no longer live in a bunker that we were told we couldn't get out of," he says. Rama alluding to the obsession of the paranoid dictator Hoxha, who built 175,000 shelters to defend himself against an invasion that never came. "Young people have the right to try, not to want to wait for Albania to be like a prosperous EU country. But I think we are nearing the end of this trend. The world is becoming a more complicated place, it is not so much anymore easy to leave like 10 years ago," he says in an interview in his colorful office.
At the Berlini travel agency, Xhoana continues to work for the migration dreams of her compatriots. "In the end I'm not going to be left here anymore than me", she jokes with a sad smile. But she is 26 years old, she has a degree in Physiotherapy and she herself, she shyly admits, has begun to think about it. “No one wants to stay here. It really is very sad. The country is getting old because all the young people are leaving,” she says as she enters a customer's data into the computer. If the request is successful, she will know because she will return to her table in the form of flowers.
