Albanian youths see a better future elsewhere

TiraNa (albania): After emerging from his hiding place inside a truck packed with children’s toys at a British port, Alban Tufa saw the police and realised his attempt to slip into the country had failed.

Several weeks later, the 21-yearold was put on a plane back to Albania.

That was six years ago but Tufa still longs to leave his home country – a desire he shares with most other young people in the Balkan state.

Their country is not at war nor ruled by an authoritarian regime, and not battered by natural disasters.

And yet Albanians’ desire to emigrate is among the strongest on the planet.

“In Albanian villages, all families have a member who emigrates.

“So I went for it too,” Tufa said of his failed attempt to sneak into the UK, which involved travelling across Europe by plane, train and truck with the help of smugglers. “My idea was to work.

“I was not interested in what, as long as my job was honest,” he added.

According to a 2018 Gallup poll, 60% of Albanians would like to leave their homeland, a figure that ranks it fourth globally.

The hunger is even stronger among the youth.

Back in 1990, Albania had a youthful population of some 3.3 million people.

But with falling birth rates and huge numbers of people leaving, it now has an ageing population of some 2.9 million, World Bank statistics show.

And although the government does not track data on emigration rates, there are believed to be nearly 1.2 million Albanians living abroad – a figure equivalent to some 40% of the population.

The longing to leave is driven in large part by economics, with Albania having one of the lowest average monthly wages in Europe

€ at around 400 (RM1,800).

Unemployment is also high, with one in three young people jobless.

Another major factor is the widespread culture of corruption and clientelism, or jobs and favours in exchange for political support.

“If you don’t have a powerful friend you can’t find a job,” explains Daniela Duli.

The 18-year-old law student living in Tirana is hoping to work in Italy after she graduates.

The only other option to secure work is “to give a lot of money”, she says with a sigh.

The angst bubbled over in December when thousands of university students took to the streets to demand a reform of the education system.

“Most of (my friends) have emigrated... because they don’t see a future here,” said 23-year-old student Armando Xhaxho.

He is one of the last holdouts of the strike that ended this month.

“They see no employment here, no quality of studies,” he said. After several weeks of protests which drew thousands onto the streets, Prime Minister Edi Rama reshuffled his cabinet and promised investments in education infrastructure.

He also said his government would hire 1,000 graduates to work in public administration, giving preference to those who have studied in the West in a bid to encourage returnees.

Yet Rama has shrugged off talk of any emigration “crisis”.

“There are people all over the world who move from one country to another and nobody talks about it,” he said in December.

What worries Adrian Civici, an economics professor in Tirana, is that most youth who emigrate express little desire to return, creating a “brain drain” effect that further degrades the economy.

Among youth living abroad, “almost 80 to 85% of them say that they do not consider the idea of coming back in Albania,” said Civici.