Kosovo

Cutting the lifeline

In 2008, Kosovo’s Albanians finally achieved their dream of an independent state. However, with practically no industry, and with unemployment rates among the highest in Europe, Kosovars depend upon the traditional extended family to survive. While Pristina is struggling to establish its identity as the newest European capital, most Kosovars remain trapped in rural poverty.

Inner immigration

Adelheid Wölfl*

It seems paradoxical. Like the unrendered, ridiculously large houses, randomly scattered across the land and often uninhabited; like the excessive number of filling stations that are not used to sell petrol but to launder money. Surely it is absurd for someone who supports the new state to call on young Kosovars to emigrate. And surely it is an irony of history when Ben Crampton, who co-authored the Ahtisaari Plan, thinks that the Kosovars should have the same freedom to travel that they had in Tito’s Yugoslavia. After all, it was the conflict in Kosovo that marked the beginning of the disputes that eventually led to the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
However, Ben Crampton is actually right. Given the utterly hopeless employment situation – almost half of the population is jobless – it is the income of Kosovar expats that ensures economic survival in the country. Kosovo has always resorted to migration, since, under and before Tito, even one hundred years ago when many were sent to work in Istanbul and Belgrade. Return to Europe tells the story of the men who have left their homes to enable their families to live in a viable homeland. Even the strategies that eventually led to the declaration of independence on 17 February 2008 were conceived, as is commonly known, by emigrants living in Switzerland and Germany.
As the filmmakers’ well-founded analysis reveals (the film is based on a study by the European Stability Initiative or ESI), economic hardship in Kosovo in the 1980s brought the emancipation of society to a halt; the patriarchal family remained the only social safety net. Even today, people do not have health insurance, nor do they get unemployment benefits; the extended family is all they have, and this, especially for women, can be an instrument of oppression. The fatal thing about today’s quasi-protectorate is that no one has a plan for improving the economic situation. This is another topic that Return to Europe broaches directly, without, however, proposing any real solutions. But it does point out that the economic hardship is exacerbated by the Schengen visa regime, which is responsible for isolating the Kosovars, who at the same time are regularly preached to about European values.
The head of the Vetëvendosje! (”Self-determination”) movement, Albin Kurti, is calling for real sovereignty without the “internationals”. He lived through the paternalism of the Milošević regime and is now no happier under the UN administration. He believes that this new paternalism promotes the clan system and black market and thus feels little more than rage and hopelessness. This film about Kosovo is not particularly optimistic in general. Instead, it reflects a sense of helplessness, and thus gets very close to reality.
*permanent member of staff with DER STANDARD