Jobless Kosovars Head Abroad

In front of the Swiss consulate in Prishtina, Vehbi Bajraktari, a man in his thirties from the town of Istog, in western Kosova, accompanies his wife waiting for a visa.

It is not the first time he has been there. Bajraktari headed for Switzerland in the 1990s to escape being drafted in the Yugoslav army, but returned home after NATO’s air war ended Serb rule in the territory, with hopes of a better life.

“I expected things would work out in peacetime and I would be able to get a job,” he says.

But five years on, with no job in sight, hopes have faded and Bajraktari is lining up to get his wife and children a tourist visa so they can join him back in Switzerland.

Waiting in the same queue is Lindita, a woman in her twenties from a village in western Kosova who has got engaged to a local Albanian now living in Switzerland.

Her future mother in law hopes the engagement will be enough to get Lindita into Switzerland, where her marriage awaits her.

After 1999, Albanians working in western Europe returned home en masse, thinking that they would have jobs and a secure future.

“A huge number of people who left Kosova during the conflict years of the Nineties returned after the war,” said Bekim Ajdini, public information officer for the local office of the International Organisation for Migration, IOM.

About half a million Albanians left Kosova in that turbulent decade. Most emigrated to Germany, where more than 100,000 sought asylum, while lesser numbers went to Scandinavia, Austria, Switzerland and Britain.

According to IOM figures, just over 87,000 of these migrants came back to Kosova in 2000 alone, most of them returning from work as “gastarbeiters” in Germany and Switzerland.

But since then, the flow of returnees has tailed off sharply, to be– replaced by another surge in the opposite direction. Only 2,200 people returned voluntarily to Kosova in 2003.

The slowdown reflects the collapse of the immediate post-war enthusiasm. Five years on, most people feel disappointed with the lack of job openings, poor education and the general inefficiency of Kosova’s institutions.

Unemployment is the single greatest factor stimulating emigration. According to Rifat Blaku, director of the Centre for Migration Research and Helping Refugees, more than 60 per cent of Kosova’s population is unemployed.

The dearth of work touches all layers of society – the educated as much as those without qualifications – but it especially affects women and the rural population.

Blaku says unemployment explains why so many young Kosovars are ready to take considerable risks to reach the West, even if that means crossing borders illegally.

“We have identified three or four main clandestine channels through which young people leave Kosova,” he said.

One of these routes runs through Bosnia and Croatia. People buy forged Croatian passports and then move on to western countries.

“We know this because Kosovan youngsters have been caught in Germany and Switzerland with such fake documents,” explained Blaku.

Another route is across the Adriatic Sea from Albania to Italy. Young people taking this path pay a high price for the chance of a better life, as they have to pay 2,500 to 3,000 euros for fake documents.

A second factor driving young people from Kosova is the lack of appropriate education. Although Kosova has had a university for several decades, most students in Prishtina are dissatisfied with the quality of their studies.

“I don’t feel I’m learning anything,” complained one 20-year-old agriculture student. “We don’t do any practical work, which means when I want to get a job I won’t know how to go about it.”

The student, who did not want to be named, said that the closer he got to graduation, the more he felt he would have to leave Kosova to get a job.

“If I get stuck in Kosova, the only job I will get is as a day-labourer – standing on a street corner and offering myself as a manual labourer or cleaner,” he said.

Even those Kosovars with local diplomas who have found jobs are often still looking for a way out because salaries are so low.

Blerim Saqipi, who graduated last year from Prishtina university and now works as a lecturer there, plans to continue his postgraduate studies in Canada in September.

“A student with a foreign degree has a better chance of getting a job that is paid more than I now get,” Blerim said.

The obvious solution to the blight of emigration that is draining youth and talent out of Kosova is to build a healthier economy.

But few believe a solution is in sight.

According to Nuhi Ismajli, advisor to the Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, neither the economy nor the employment situation is expected to improve much before around 2010.

“The year 2003 and the start of 2004 have seen complete stagnation,” said Ismajli. “It should have been the opposite.”

Like many economic analysts, he is deeply critical of the way the United Nations administration, UNMIK, has handled economic policy.

“They have a wrong way of administering Kosova. They are more interested in keeping the status quo than in developing the economy. But the Kosovan government also lacks a development strategy,” Ismajli said.

Meanwhile, Bajraktari and a host of others like him are willing to use one of the clandestine channels to get out of the country if legal options fail.

“I want a job, even if it means cleaning toilets for a salary that I can live on,” said Bajraktari. “Kosova does not offer me even that at the moment.”

Krenare Kurtishi and Mevlyde Salihu are trainees on IWPR’s Primary Journalism Course, which is supported by the OSCE in Kosova.