Migration in the Western Balkans

What do we know?

Russell King, Nermin Oruc, Russell King, Nermin Oruc

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000740455
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Droit
• Thema: Droit de l'immigration

Migration in the Western Balkans rectifies the under-investigation by migration scholars of the Western Balkans region, by bringing together recent research at a time when migration is a hot topic for the future of Europe.

The book explores issues such as the complex geopolitics of the region, the relationship between migration and development, diasporas, and refugees and humanitarianism. Expert contributors present new research on economic migration, forced migration, diaspora formation and return migration at a time when migration is of crucial relevance for the future of Europe. The chapters shed new light on the multiple migration dynamics of a region which has had a troubled past yet stands on the threshold of EU membership.

As a theatre of multiple migration processes Migration in the Western Balkans reveals new information on the region, and will be of great interest to scholars of migration, the Balkans and geopolitics. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies.

Migration in the Western Balkans – Trends and Challenges

Russell King and Nermin Oruc

ABSTRACT
This introductory paper sets the scene for the special issue on migration in the Western Balkan region. First, we briefly outline the background to the research networking initiative in the Western Balkans—‘WB-MIGNET’—which resulted in producing the set of papers presented here. Then we describe the context in which the analysis of migration, return and development in the Western Balkans takes place, highlighting the role of diasporas and return migration. The region exemplifies a wide range and interrelation of migratory forms, including temporary and permanent labour migration, forced migration of refugees, temporary displacement, high-skilled migration and transit migration. Quite apart from the scale and diversity of migratory phenomena in this region, the special relevance of the Western Balkans rests on mass emigration, predominantly of educated young people, and their possible return, including to post-conflict areas, and role in the development of their home countries. Such processes within the Western Balkans also offer useful lessons for designing future migration policies in Europe and worldwide. The final section of this introductory paper summarizes the papers that follow and highlights their originality and key findings.

The Western Balkans and migration

The Western Balkans have a particular relevance in the study of migration in its various forms, including labour migration, high-skilled migration, forced migration, diaspora formation and return migration—all of which are present in this region. Migration has also shot up the European Union policy agenda, due to both the legacy of past migrations, which were intrinsic to the formation of the Common Market, European Community and then the EU, and more particularly to the emergence of new challenges—often labelled migration and refugee ‘crises’—in the last few years.¹ Within the Western Balkan region, countries such as Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) and Kosovo experienced mass displacements of their populations during the early transition periods coincident with the end of the communist/socialist era and the break-up of Yugoslavia. Ethno-national conflict and prolonged economic crisis have been, often in tandem, the main drivers of exodus from the region. And yet this region as a whole remains under-investigated by migration scholars.² This special issue represents an effort to reduce this gap in policy-relevant research.

This issue is one of the first concrete outputs of an initiative called the Western Balkans Migration Network (WB-MIGNET), which gathers migration scholars from within the region and connects them both with each other and with experts from outside who are active in the region. The countries currently included as core members of the Network are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The activities of the Network include the organization of conferences and other events, linkage with other networks and drafting new projects, the outcome of which is research papers such as those contained in this issue. The papers that follow represent a selection of those presented at the Network’s second annual conference, held in Sarajevo in May 2017.³ They cover important topics such as the geopolitics of migration in the region, forced migration and return, the role of diaspora in political life, recent refugee flows through the region, and comparison with other regions.

Trends and challenges

Emigration from less to more developed countries has gathered pace in the last two decades. According to the International Organization for Migration, there were globally 244 million migrants in 2015 (3.3% of the world’s population), a significant increase over the 155 million estimated for 2000 (2.8% of global population).⁴ Whilst most of this movement of people is driven by economic opportunities in the countries of immigration, recent years have witnessed an increased number of conflicts, which also ‘produce’ migration in the form of forced displacement and resettlement elsewhere. Meanwhile, return migration is becoming ever more salient in recent years, as the current worldwide economic recession impacts on the livelihoods of migrants in various host countries (notably in Greece and other countries of Southern Europe) and pushes them to return to their home countries or to move on elsewhere (see the paper by Kerpaci and Kuka in this special issue). Moreover, the new wave of literature on the consequences of migration generally emphasizes its positive impact on home countries through remittances, diaspora activities and return migration.⁵ Most of the existing research on the economic ties between migrants and their countries of origin has focused on remittance flows, and remittances are certainly important for the economic survival of many households in the poorer countries of the Western Balkan region.⁶ More recently this has expanded to include the potentially transformative political and social roles that migrants and diaspora members can play in their countries of origin, through such varied forms of activity as political and party support, media and cultural events, and civil society development.⁷ Less attention has been paid to diaspora members’ investments in countries of origin.⁸

Like lower-skilled labour migrants, the emigration of high-skilled individuals has a mix of positive and negative effects for the source country. First, and again like their less-skilled compatriots, high-skilled migrants often send remittances back home, unless they are from wealthy families. These remittances have the potential to have multiple impacts on the members of the household who remain in the home country, one of the most significant being investment in education of younger family members (see the paper in this special issue by Oruc et al.). At a more macro scale, diaspora involvement has a range of other positive effects on a country’s economic development, through its facilitation of trade, foreign direct investment, tourism and other relations with the migrant-origin country. High-skilled return migration brings an important channel of transfer of financial savings, human capital, cultural and other assets from the migrants’ host to their home countries. These gains may overcome the principal negative effect of highly skilled migration—brain drain. The magnitude of the positive effects that diaspora involvement and return migration can bring to the source economy depends on the scale of the impact, its evolution over time, and the involvement of national and local governments, in coordination with diaspora and migrant organizations, in maximizing the benefits.

Return migration to areas which were previously consumed by conflict deserves a separate analysis, for several reasons. First, conflict-induced migration is predominantly family migration, since the migration decision is ‘forced’ and not shaped by the need to seek employment or to diversify the risks of household economic hardship. This may result in a weaker incentive to return. Second, the pull factors of return migration are different in the case of conflict-induced migration. Rather than the possible pulls of economic improvement, nostalgia for the home community, or the wish to rejoin family members ‘left behind’, conflict migrants usually harbour negative experiences and even traumatic memories of the situation that drove them away. Also, the situation in their home area might not be sufficiently attractive, economically or in terms of inter-ethnic security, for them to decide to return.⁹ These experiences of various parts of the Western Balkans that went through these cycles of mass departures and returns may be of relevance for current and future policies of return as regards recent refugees to the EU.

Specific country experiences

Albania experienced a dramatic period of mass emigration starting in 1991, following the fall of the communist regime that had kept the country closed off from the outside world since the end of World War II. Tens of thousands crossed the mountain border into Greece or took to boats to sail across to southern Italy.¹⁰ Another large-scale exodus took place in 1997 as a result of the (inevitable) collapse of corrupt pyramid savings schemes, which disastrously affected a large share of the Albanian population. With emigration continuing in subsequent decades, it is currently estimated that Albania has ‘lost’ between a quarter and a third of its total population to emigration.¹¹

During the war in 1991–1995, around a quarter of the total population of BiH left the country due to the ‘ethnic conflict’, mainly fleeing to countries in Western Europe. Whilst on the one hand much of this was whole-family migration inclusive of all socio-economic groups, there was an over-representation of highly skilled individuals. Uvalic estimated that around 85% of PhD degree holders and 75% of Master’s degree holders emigrated during the wars.¹² Even more dramatic, in relative terms, was the near-total displacement of the Kosovo population by the ethnic persecution of the brutal Milosevic regime in the late 1990s.

Emigration from other countries during the 1990s was also considerable, due to the war (Croatia), economic sanctions against the Milosevic regime in Serbia, and economic crisis in Macedonia. All countries of the region, due to ongoing political instability and protracted economic crisis, have experienced continued emigration in the twenty-first century. The available evidence from each country suggests that migrants are positively self-selected: i.e. the share of highly skilled individuals among migrants is usually considerably larger than their share in the total population.

Return migration to the Western Balkans has its specific characteristics and is diverse in form. Return to Albania is a relatively recent phenomenon, driven more by economic crisis in Greece than by strong pull factors from the Albanian economy, which remains weak and productively underdeveloped.¹³ The situation with the return of refugees has been different. Most of the refugees from BiH in the early 1990s received ‘temporary protection’ status in EU countries, which then allowed host countries to ‘repatriate’ those people when the conflict was over and it was deemed ‘safe’ to return. This happened already at the end of 1995 and so during 1996–1998 most of those under temporary protection were sent back to Bosnia.¹⁴ The mandatory repatriation process from Germany started immediately after the cessation of hostilities in Bosnia, which was ‘questionable on moral and humanitarian grounds, given current circumstance in BiH’.¹⁵ Moreover, most of the ex-refugees were returned to a place different from the one they lived in before the war, due to the re-drawing of the ethno-religious map by opposing warring parties. Thus, they became internally displaced instead of refugees. The return of refugees to Kosovo was broadly similar, with the major difference that their stay abroad was a few months and not four years as in the case of BiH. Soon after the air strikes of the NATO forces and the withdrawal of the Serbian army from Kosovo, the refugees returned home. Return migration to Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia, where voluntary migration has predominated, is largely a return of retired workers after a long stay abroad. Such a return poses challenges of reintegration, health and service provision, and portability of social benefits.

The large scale of emigration from the region, primarily before and during the 1990s, has created large diaspora communities for each country. Because of the generational effect, including intermarriage, estimates of the size of diasporas are approximate and often exaggerated. But two examples of more recently formed diasporas are likely to be fairly accurate: both Albania (1.4 million diaspora Members) and BiH (2 million) have diaspora populations equivalent to half the population living in the respective countries.¹⁶ The current size of the Serbian diaspora is around 1 million, which is equivalent to 15% of its population in the country.

Thus far, these large migrant and diaspora populations have mainly been contributing to the economies of their home countries by sending remittances. This has created a strong and potentially dangerous reliance of these countries on these financial inflows, which in most cases greatly outstrips the scale of foreign direct investment. Only recently have the countries of the region recognised that contributions from the diaspora can go beyond remittances and include investment in businesses, knowledge transfer, tourism and cultural contributions. There is a move to put policies in place to encourage this more diversified economic and cultural relationship. Still, the effectiveness of such government actions, and their durability, remain uncertain. Recent evidence also suggests that a wider involvement of the diaspora includes fomenting their interest in more active political participation.¹⁷ Such a choice was largely driven by the motivation of nationalist governments to secure more votes, in the belief that migrant and diaspora populations would support the nationalist agenda. But more recent migrants are often in opposition to the current political establishments in their home countries, which in some cases may induce a different behaviour of governments towards their migrant diasporas (see the paper by Prelec in this issue).

The papers: highlights and key findings

Seven papers follow this editorial introduction. The first three treat the region as a whole, from a variety of angles, whilst the subsequent four papers focus on migration-related processes in individual countries—B...