“I have applied to join the Kosovo Police twice, but was not accepted. Now I have applied again, but even if I get a positive response, I will not come back,” Gent said.

The long line of people waiting in front of the embassy for a working visa for Croatia – the new favourite country for Kosovo Albanians to work in – illustrates the shifting trend from illegal to legal migration, but has also raised concerns about whether this is labour migration, or escape from the country.

Rinor, aged 27, from Podujeve/Podujevo, who works as a waiter in his hometown, also got a working visa to Croatia. After finishing his BA studies in economics and management, he spent several months in Pristina trying to find a job, but was unsuccessful.

“It is agonising for me to work as a waiter here and earn 200 euros a month, bearing in mind that I put in so much effort at university,” he told BIRN.

He also got his working visa on Thursday, and claimed the whole application process of was quite easy, and was assisted by an employment agency.

The Croatian embassy in Pristina told BIRN that from January 1 until April 15, 2019, the number of applications for visas was 2,414. In the same period in 2018, there were 1,155 applications, and in 2017, there were 901 applications.

This data shows that visa applications for Croatia has doubled. Most of the applicants wanted to travel to Croatia to work.

People from Kosovo wait to board coaches to Serbia at the bus terminal in Pristina, Kosovo, 12 Febvruary 2015. Photo credit: EPA/BORIS BABIC

From illegal to legal migration

In the period from 2008 to 2018, a total of 203,330 Kosovo citizens left the country and filed asylum applications in the EU, says a new study published this month by the European Policy Institute of Kosovo.

On top of this, 141,330 Kosovo citizens were found to be illegally living in the EU. The data does not include legal migrants, such as those whose stays abroad are covered by work permits, says the report.

“One fifth of Kosovo’s population tried to escape from Kosovo through illegal means,” said Taulant Kryeziu, co-founder and director of programmes at the Institute.

The institute’s statistics show that from 2016 to 2018, illegal migration has fallen considerably.

The top destination for Kosovo citizens is still Germany, with 38,000 visas issued for 2018, of which 13,000 were for long stays.

Graph credit: EPIK

Domestic or global causes?

Last week the Kosovo parliament had a heated debate about youth migration, with politicians on all sides expressing their concerns about young people leaving the country.

The opposition accused the ruling parties of poor governance, claiming this is the main reason why young people are quitting Kosovo.

Ruling party lawmakers insisted however that the exodus was a consequence of a free-market economy.

“What we see is quite a substantial movement of the labour force across Eastern Europe and the Balkans,” Kosovo’s former Foreign Minister Petrit Selimi wrote on Twitter on April 12.

Selimi said the phenomenon began when former Communist countries including the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the EU.

“It started with Poland and New Europe a decade or so ago, but now it appears to be the Balkans’ turn to feed the insatiable EU/German labour market for (mostly) low-skilled labour,” Selimi said.

Croatia joined the European Union in 2013, and its citizens have been given freedom of movement to work in any other EU country, with some restrictions due to transitional arrangements, which will end in June 2020.

Some countries, like Germany, opened their market to Croat workers earlier, causing labour migration on a large scale.

Over the last decade, in Croatia, the workforce has been reduced by around 500,000 people, with fewer young people entering the labour market, and more and more older people retiring. About 250,000 people have left the country, Croatia’s Novi list newspaper estimated on Friday.

The depletion of the labour force in Croatia appears to have had a knock-on effect for Kosovo, which has a 31.4 per cent overall unemployment rate, and a 57.3 per cent youth unemployment rate.

Visar Ymeri from opposition Social Democratic Party speaking in the Parliament of Kosovo on the topic of youth migration. Photo credit: Atdhe Mulla

The reasons for leaving

Unemployment, a lack of job security, long working hours and low remuneration are the main factors that push people to migrate.

Baki, 36, from Podujeva/Podujevo, has been living in Zaton in Croatia for seven months now. He is working in a construction company, one of the biggest ones in Croatia, he said.

“Life is good here, they treat us well,” he told BIRN.

He was working in Kosovo as a company driver and got paid 350 euros a month – not enough for him to support a family and pay off debts from building a new house.

“I never thought of leaving Kosovo before, but things have changed,” he said.

Baki now gets around 1,200 to 1,300 euros a month, and his employer also pays for his food and the accommodation. After he finishes his contract, he and some of his colleagues plan to go to Germany to work there.

“In Germany, they pay better,” he said.

But there are those who only go to work in Croatia during the summer season.

One of them is Besim, 26, from Prizren, who is going to Rijeka to work in a bakery owned by his relatives this summer.

“I will come back to Kosovo in October,” he told BIRN.

“I don’t see myself as living abroad, I have my family here, and I plan on staying here,” he added.

Demographer Besim Gollopeni told BIRN that migration will cause imbalances in the demographic structures of society – specifically in terms of age and gender.

Gollopeni predicted that the population will get older and the birth rate will decrease. By 2021, today’s population of 1.7 million might have fallen below 1.5 million, he said.

“The labour force will decrease, which will cause an increase in demand for workers, the cost of labour will be higher, and this will cause an economic imbalance too,” he added.