In Search of a Better Life

As the majority of countries in transition, Macedonia too is confronted with the problem of emigration, unfortunately, for the most part of the most promising portion of the population. Without pathos so dear to the local "bearers of happiness" - politicians of all shades and tones – an old migrant workers' song describing the never-ending sorrow of parting with ones homeland has probably never been as up to date as at present.

AIM Skopje, December 21, 2000

An ordinary scene in front of western embassies in the capital of Macedonia: long, much too long, queues of people waiting for a visa that will take them to some, they believe, happier country. Thus, year in year out... and the sense of uneasiness is only growing deeper since the rumors of the possible further lowering of the "Schengen curtain" started - in case the EU really liberalizes its visa-granting regulations towards Bulgaria. True, the Bulgarians have promised visas will not be required of Macedonian citizens, but who is to tell ...

Instead of stagnating or declining, it seems as if multitudes of those who wish to leave Macedonia are forever on the rise. Precise facts are hard to come by, though. The media believe foreign embassies have rather exact records they do not wish to disclose, while the government has no reliable estimates whatsoever. In any case, experts dealing with migratory trends have made public some startling figures.

An analysis based on the research of the labor force carried out by the state Statistics Agency in spring of 1999 operated with the figure of 25,174 citizens who have left Macedonia from 1990 to April 1998. Data originating from the selfsame Statistics Agency published by the Puls weekly last October differ to a degree and point to the fact that the number of people who have left Macedonia in the last decade with one-way tickets in their hands amounts to some ten thousand odd per year. One thing is certain: an evident upward trend is taking place. While in 1993, 7,030 Macedonian citizens left the country, four years later the number of emigrants totaled 12,293.

In a recent interview to Dnevnik, Slave Ristevski, professor at the Faculty of Economics in Skopje, made public a bold estimate based on his own research according to which nearly 100 thousand people have left Macedonia in the past ten years! His calculation that in the past 25 - 30 years around 600 thousand Macedonian citizens have forever said good-bye to their homeland is even more crushing.

The economic advisor to the government, Sam Vaknin, on the other hand, claims that his own research has yielded different results. According to him, in the first half of the nineties, around 20 thousand people left the country annually. Both Ristevski and Vaknin, as well as a number of their colleagues, warn of the possible disaster triggered by the departure of the young and well educated for the most part. They believe that the reproductive capacity of the nation is in peril. As a corroborating argument, some experts cite the fact that the Macedonian army hasn't been able to fill up its recruit ranks for years and that in years to come the said rate is bound to drop to an even lower level. The hypothesis that the security of the country is therefore sinking lower with the passing of time is gaining in persuasiveness. The novelty in the phenomenon of migration is the trend of entire families leaving the country - a rare occurrence in the past.

In his alarming interview to Dnevnik, professor Ristevski pointed to the fact that the situation is particularly disturbing in eastern Macedonia, in Bitola and Resen for instance, where, according to him, the population has diminished for 30-40 percent in recent years. This means that the country is facing the so-called depopulation phenomenon.

Motives for migration are primarily economic, but political ones should not be underestimated either. Most accounts of those who have "forever slammed the door" reflect the social despair these people have disentangled themselves from: they have ceased believing in the rosy promises of the local politicians national leaders and consider the 200

• 300 DM to be more of a day-laborer's wage than a decent monthly income... Nor is the issue of security to be regarded as a negligible factor. Wars that have rumbled across the Balkans in the past decade have not inspired much hope of better days to come.

The altered social structure of the migrants causes concern, too. Figures deriving from the research of the Statistics Agency on labor according to which 7,000 individuals with elementary schooling and around 2,000 ones with three years of secondary education have left the country, seemingly confirm the deep-rooted notion that the labor market absorbs the under qualified cadre hardest of all. But the perspective shifts once another finding is taken into account: in the examined ten year period, 5,000 individuals with secondary-school diplomas, 1,200 with college degrees and 256 of those with master's and doctoral degrees have left the country. Furthermore, available data point to the fact that the actual figures are much higher. Some unofficial data show that, on an average, 900 young people migrate annually solely to the USA, for example. For the most part, this refers to Macedonian students studying in the States.

The Ministry of the Interior admits to not having precise records of the number of people that have left Macedonia, but is nevertheless inclined to agree with the expert estimates of Ristevski and Vaknin. The ministry's excuse for not having any kind of records at its disposal is somewhat Kafkian: citizens that have emigrated have failed to perform their civic duty of reporting their departure to the authorities !?

The phenomenon of migration is no novelty as far as Macedonia is concerned. Migratory processes have marked its entire twentieth century history and, historians say, a substantial portion of the previous hundred years' period. Solely the motives and the destinations differed: at one point neighboring countries were the favored destination, at some latter point, the overseas. Whatever the case, the process has never been insignificant. In the years preceding World War II, the motives for emigration were both economic and political; at the time of the socialist ex-Yugoslavia, a mild trend of stagnation and decline manifested itself, while the period of transition brought about a manifold increase of new emigrants. The said research of labor has finally - to a certain point, at least - yielded a more accurate picture of the ethnic structure of the emigrants, shredding to pieces the stereotyped idea that Macedonians are practically the only ones inclined to seek their happiness in far off parts of the world. Statistical tables show that from 1990-1999, 9,424 Macedonians, 5,928 ethnic Albanians and - in view of their portion in the population as a whole, hardly without significance - 359 ethnic Turks and 609 Romanies have migrated from Macedonia. On the whole, Macedonians choose overseas countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and, only of lately, the USA, as their final destination - the customary migrant worker's El Dorado. Ethnic Albanians prefer Western-European countries, such as Germany, Switzerland, the Scandinavian states....

>From the time it was in opposition, the ruling VMRO-DPMNE has been re-activating the issue of the voting right of the Diaspora for a brief period prior to each elections. Estimates carried by the press reckon with the figure of some 110,000 potential voters. Political scientists confront the advocates of the inclusion of the Diaspora into the electoral system with several counter-arguments: true, the VMRO-DPMNE which presents itself as "the most Macedonian" of all political parties, enjoys the support of the emigrants, but it has overlooked the fact that the Diaspora plays an important role in the electorate of the ethnic Albanians as well; this, hardly immaterial element, should be taken into account too.

Furthermore, the economic potential of the country is such that it does not allow for a quality execution of the electoral process in each and every corner of the world where people with Macedonian passports live. The participation of the Diaspora at the next elections to be held in 2002 is not very likely. Arguments do not end here.

All former Macedonian governments and all political parties have given consideration to the prospect of attracting the considerable capital of the emigrants. All of them have reflected upon the "deliverance of the nation" as whole, too. None of them have managed to do away with the queues of those who believe that "life is somewhere else" stretching in front of western embassies. Let the last to leave turn out the light!

AIM Skopje

ZELJKO BAJIC