The Balkans are disappearing, and if you want to see the coming extinction, you need merely leave the capitals and board any heaving, antiquated bus for the villages and shrinking provincial cities. You will pass miles and miles of emptiness in the bare regions; gaze out the window, and you’ll see worn-out municipalities inhabited by the very old, fields cluttered with the vast ruins of socialist industry, and crumbling monuments to the nation’s forsaken heroes.
In Kukës County in Albania’s north, more than half the population has emigrated since the collapse of communism. Smaller cities have not been spared the exodus: Shkodër and Fier have both lost nearly 14 percent of their population in the past ten years, while Vlorë has lost nearly 2 percent. Glamoč, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, lost nearly 70 percent of its population between 1991 and the country’s last census in 2013, and villages in the plains of Glamoč’s wider municipality, like Popovici and Drvar, are completely abandoned. Vukovar-Srijem County in eastern Croatia has lost more than 20 percent of its population in just the past fifteen years. The town of Blagojev Kamen in eastern Serbia was once a flourishing gold mining community; as of 2020, it had been reduced to just eight residents. In the Serbian municipality of Knjaževac, the population has been cut in half over the last half century. It is now about what it was during the First World War. A few years ago, the Serbian government reported that the country is losing the equivalent of a town each year—about 103 people a day.
After centuries of nationalist wars, the EU-aspirant countries of the so-called Western Balkans—Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina—along with EU member state Croatia, now face demographic oblivion. Along with neighboring Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, the region’s population is shrinking at a faster rate than almost anywhere else on earth due to a combination of emigration and low fertility rates. More of the native-born population of Bosnia and Herzegovina lives outside of the country than in it—53 percent percent as of 2021. Albania isn’t looking much better, with some 45 percent of native-born Albanians now living abroad. As of 2022, Serbia has lost 12 percent of its citizens in thirty years, while North Macedonia had lost nearly 4 percent during the same period. Bosnia and Herzegovina lost 24 percent of its population over the course of three decades, while Albania has lost 14 percent. All in all, more people have left the Western Balkans over the past two decades than in the immediate aftermath of the fall of communism, or during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia.
Where the Future Happens First
I have watched the Balkan exodus firsthand, as friends emigrated year after year, never to return. A decade ago, Julian Assange said that “Serbia is the country where the future happens first.” Instead of the hoped-for outcome at the turn of the millennium, whereby the Balkans would come to resemble the West via the neocolonial discipline of “Europeanization,” the reverse is true. Certain pockets of despair in the United States—Appalachia, Detroit—bear a more than passing resemblance to the Balkans’ postindustrial hinterlands; in a word, they have been balkanized. But in the imperial core, there is no distant beacon where one can emigrate for a better life; opiate-induced oblivion provides one avenue for escape, and the political situation is perpetually tenuous. The turbulence across the Balkans also sends out a warning. Political extremism dominates the headlines, but nationalism conceals a pernicious current of apathy, the sense that there are no real alternatives.
Videos promising to smuggle Albanians into Britain for £4,000 keep popping up, depicting a flashy life of easy money, cars, and girls.
Against such a despairing backdrop, it’s little wonder that fertility rates are plummeting across most Balkan countries. At just 1.37 births per woman, Bosnia and Herzegovina has one of the lowest in the world. In Albania, the change has been especially dramatic. In 1967, the average for Albanian women was 5.40 children; in 1990, it was 2.90; today, the fertility rate is almost half that. By the year 2100, Serbia, North Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are projected to have fertility rates below one birth per woman. This reality runs contrary to the dubious contention of right-wing Western conservatives, who have long fantasized about the region as an outpost of traditionalism and female obedience, where women aspire to large families and lives of bucolic domestic work. The designs of the Western male sexpat are as chimerical as they are predatory—and at any rate, such libertinage is beyond the reach of most Balkan households given their poor economic prospects. According to a recent EU Commission report, the unemployment rates in 2022 were 11.3 percent in Albania, 14.5 percent in North Macedonia, 15.1 percent in Montenegro, 9.4 percent in Serbia, 15.4 percent in Bosnia, and 17 percent in Kosovo. While the unemployment rate decreased across the region in 2023, this optimistic news belied the dire youth unemployment rate, double that of the adult population; in Bosnia, it stands at just under 30 percent.
Those who do have jobs earn precious little compared to EU citizens. Across the twenty-seven member states, the average monthly salary was €2,302 per month in 2022. Meanwhile, in Serbia, the average monthly salary was just €734, and that’s as good as it gets. In Albania, the average salary is €658; in Bosnia, it’s €573; and in North Macedonia, it’s €518. The average monthly salary in Kosovo is just €521—less than half of what it is in Romania and Bulgaria, among the most sluggish markets in the EU. The resulting desertion of the region’s young people, in search of a more promising alternative in the West, has left the Balkans with a prevailing sense of mediocrity, not to mention an antimeritocratic political culture that rewards servility.
Even many of those who have so far resisted a move abroad are considering one. According to a 2023 survey, 44 percent of Balkan residents are thinking about leaving for good, a 5 percent increase since 2022. More striking, however, is that 71 percent of young people aged eighteen to twenty-four are considering leaving their home country—a 10 percent increase in just two years. For one thing, they enjoy privileged access to the German labor market, since Germany granted fifty thousand work visas to citizens of these countries as of June 1, 2024—double the number offered last year.
When it comes to identifying the problems that motivate the widening exodus, the usual culprits are the economy, unemployment, and corruption. The situation is so dire that some are willing to risk their lives. In 2022, twelve thousand Albanians crossed the English Channel on inflatable dinghies with outboard motors. Some sixteen thousand applied for asylum in Britain that year, many of whom claimed to be victims of modern slavery. The number of arrivals by boat ballooned from over fifty in 2020 to more than twelve thousand in 2022, partly facilitated by TikTok. Videos promising to smuggle Albanians into Britain for £4,000 keep popping up, depicting a flashy life of easy money, cars, and girls. Expat influencers flaunting their cushy lives in the UK have made them idols to young males at home. But a December 2022 agreement between Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and then UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak established a joint task force to disrupt illegal migration, and the number of Albanians arriving via boat has dropped accordingly. There was also a concentrated demonization campaign against Albanians in the British press, with devastating consequences. At least two Albanian men have died by suicide in migrant detention centers in the UK: one at Brook House Immigration Removal Center at London’s Gatwick Airport and another on the Bibby Stockholm barge.
Only Females
So many people have left the Balkans in recent years that there is a shortage of labor. Just as people have emigrated to the West in droves, there is also the opposite phenomenon: new migrants coming in. The countries of the Western Balkans, along with Croatia, have come to depend on labor from countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, Turkey, Pakistan, the Philippines, and India. In Croatia, the labor needs are especially acute. According to one forecast by the Croatian Employers’ Association, the country of 3.8 million people could require as many as half a million foreign workers by 2030. The number of work permits issued to foreign workers in Croatia rose from thirty thousand in 2021, to fifty thousand in 2022, to over 170,000 in 2023—a more than fivefold increase in just three years. In the first two months of this year, 7,038 work permits were issued to citizens of Nepal alone, representing a major shift: this number exceeded the work permits granted to workers from neighboring Bosnia and Serbia, who have traditionally comprised the bulk of Croatia’s foreign labor force.
The Russians in Serbia live in what some have characterized as a “parallel society.”
By the end of last year, there were twenty thousand Nepalese people living in Croatia. The head of the local Nepalese Association says Croatia’s popularity as a destination for migrant workers grew after the country made the World Cup final in 2018. Here, TikTok has again been a critical source of recruitment. In addition to videos about Croatia’s newish digital nomad visa for Westerners looking to get into geo-arbitrage, there are dozens of clips advertising immigration and visa support services aimed at individuals from the so-called Global South. They include a recent clip of a professionally dressed woman telling “ladies” that Croatia needs massage therapists (“only females,” she emphasizes), urging applicants to come work in Europe to “make their dreams come true.” Another TikTok video consists of footage of some kind of factory with Nepalese music playing in the background; the text advertises jobs for factory workers between the ages of nineteen and forty-five, with promises of a salary of between €700 and €1,000. Many migrant workers from Nepal have paid large sums of money—media reports have cited a figure of €7,000—for fees, legal documents, and travel expenses to obtain legal work. The conditions they live and work in are notoriously poor. In the capital of Zagreb, local media reported that in one case, thirty-two migrant workers were found living in an eighty-three-square-meter apartment.
About 90 percent of Croatia is ethnic Croat, making it one of the most homogenous countries in Europe. Far-right parties stoked anti-immigrant sentiment ahead of parliamentary elections this April, including the usual fearmongering about migrants stealing jobs from the native Croatian population. Employers complain that migrant workers from Asia do not want to stay in Croatia and that they view the country as a mere entry point to the wider Schengen Area, the EU zone without internal border controls that Croatia joined in 2023. Others have quipped that the Nepalese could eventually form their own political party. Croatian political scientist Anđelko Milardović said that “instead of Milorad Pupovac”—the leader of the Independent Democratic Serb Party—Croatia might someday have a leader from a Nepalese minority party as a part of its ruling coalition.
Serbia also imports migrant workers from outside of Europe in light of the labor crisis. In July of 2023, the Serbian parliament amended the Foreigners Act and Employment of Foreigners Act, aiming to liberalize the labor market and streamline the process that allows foreigners to obtain work and residence permits. The number of new migrant workers has increased dramatically: in 2022, some thirty-five thousand foreign workers found jobs in Serbia, while thirty thousand did so in the first half of 2023 alone. Economists say that the mass exodus of Serbs will require the import of many more migrant workers; in addition, it will pressure the government to speed up the introduction of digitalization and automation to address the shrinking workforce and low worker productivity. While antimigrant rhetoric is a less prominent feature of mainstream political discourse in Serbia than it is in Croatia, it has flourished at the political fringes. Serbian far-right opposition parties have launched campaigns aimed at the government’s supposedly migrant-friendly policies. Here, the Serbian far right’s position aligns with that of Brussels: Serbia has been under significant pressure from the EU to toughen its generous entry rules for migrants. Many citizens from the Global South have long been able to travel to Serbia visa-free based on close Cold War ties dating from the Non-Aligned Movement; the EU objected when people began entering Serbia without visas only to cross into neighboring EU member states. Serbia has acquiesced to the EU’s demands, but as the demand for migrant labor increases, and as newcomers seek better-paying work beyond Serbia’s borders, the EU-candidate country may be on a collision course with the twenty-seven-member bloc, especially as it has recently lurched right on the issue of immigration.
Belgrade Grubbing
The most unexpected of all demographic changes in the region, however, has been more abrupt. In Serbia, there has been a massive influx of Russians—more than 370,000—fleeing conscription and the impact of Western sanctions since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Exact numbers are difficult to come by, as many Russians in Serbia live in a gray area of legality, doing “visa runs” to the border each month to “reset” their number of allotted days. But a significant portion are believed to have established residency, mostly in Belgrade and Novi Sad, enabled by Serbia’s independent foreign policy. Other countries in Europe were quick to close their borders to Russians; Turkey and Serbia are the only two European countries that have not joined sanctions on Russia and where Russians can still fly directly without a visa. Meanwhile, at least sixteen thousand Ukrainians have fled to Serbia as well. In March 2022, Serbia granted temporary protection to people fleeing from Ukraine. Later that year, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić described his country as a “Casablanca,” that rare wartime place where all sides of a conflict could mingle.
The new Russian population is overwhelmingly opposed to the war in Ukraine and to Vladimir Putin. When Russian elections were held in March 2024, Russian citizens voting from Belgrade showed some of the lowest support for Putin of all diasporas in the world. According to one exit poll circulated by Vote Abroad, an initiative started by a worldwide group of Russian activists, just 3 percent of Russians in Belgrade voted for Putin. A leaked document purportedly listing the results from a polling station in Belgrade showed Putin receiving about 10 percent of the vote. The same document showed that New York City exit polls recorded 15 percent of the vote as having gone to Putin; 20 percent in Geneva, 31 percent in Dubai, and 38 percent in Rome.
It’s little wonder that, in a region that gave the world the term “ethnic cleansing,” the census is a highly politicized event.
None of this would be remarkable if it weren’t for Serbia’s reputation as an island of intransigent Putinism in a sea of Euro-Atlanticism. Much has been made of the two nations’ supposedly intractable bond. Foreign media have described Serbia’s Vučić as “Putin’s puppet” in the Balkans. Following a deadly confrontation between Kosovo police and Serbian gunmen last fall, The Daily Beast alleged that the incident had “Putin’s fingerprints all over it.” Foreign observers tend to emphasize the obvious similarities between the two states: Serbia and Russia share an Orthodox Christian faith; both are Slavic peoples. Their ties are often characterized in terms of brotherhood. Ahead of the All-Serb Assembly in early June, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “Russia will never turn a blind eye to any injustice towards the fraternal Serbian people and attempts to demonize them.” But there is something more significant than cultural affinity at work: both countries harbor antipathy toward NATO and the West. In Serbia’s case, the resentment is anchored in the recent past. The country was bombed by NATO in 1999 at the height of the war in Kosovo, and Serbs have never forgotten it. Today, just 3 percent of Serbs are in favor of becoming a full member of NATO. Serbia is more sympathetic to Russia than any country in Europe. But popular opinion is somewhat more complex than this point suggests. A recent poll by market research firm Ipsos asked Serbs which direction they thought the country’s foreign policy should go; the most popular answer, given by 31 percent of respondents, was that the country should pursue a foreign policy that is both pro-West and pro-Russia. Only 12 percent said the country’s foreign policy should be strictly pro-Russian. In short, most Serbs support some form of neutrality, which aligns with the policy of the current government of President Vučić.
When anti-Putin Russians started arriving in Serbia by the tens of thousands, there was some hope that they would enlighten the locals as to the realities of Putin’s Russia and thus promote pro-Western sentiment. This has not happened. Enthusiasm for the EU and West has even diminished in Serbia since 2022, with support for EU integration falling from 44 percent then to 40 percent this year. That could be because there has been remarkably little interaction between the Russian émigré community and the local population. The Russians in Serbia live in what some have characterized as a “parallel society.” Russians have their own bars, cafés, florists, manicurists, and their own nightlife. Those who hoped that the Russian wave would result in an abundance of new jobs for Serbs have also been disappointed. Many ads for vacancies with Russian companies are published in Russian, meaning the community tends to recruit among its own.
Still, there have been some attempts to bridge the divide between Serbs and Russians, particularly in the realm of culture. In late January, the Quotes bilingual Russian-Serbian film festival was inaugurated in Belgrade. The festival featured five Russian films and five Serbian films, all with subtitles in both languages. The Quotes festival co-organizer Anna Gorelik explained that the hope was to use film “to give a deeper look at each other’s culture.” The festival was sponsored by Yandex, a sort of Russian Google, and one Belgrade-based employee of the company told the Moscow Times that the event was meant to help integrate the large Russian workforce. And in late fall of last year, Moscow’s former Gogol Center returned and held a joint Serbian-Russian performance of An Ordinary Story (1847) by Ivan Goncharov in Belgrade.
There is also a critical class component to the recent wave of Russian emigration. The Russians in Belgrade are middle-class, well-educated, and urban (St. Petersburg being the most common point of origin); many are employed in the IT sector. Yandex is a major employer; the tech colossus moved more than four thousand of its workers to Belgrade after the start of the war. For the most part, the Russian émigrés are much wealthier than the Serbian population, and the sudden influx of Russians has sent rents skyrocketing in Belgrade, with many long-time residents of the city center priced out. While Serbs have been largely sympathetic to the new émigrés—the experience of displacement due to war is a living memory for many Serbs—there is also some muted resentment. For vast swaths of the political mainstream, attitudes toward the Russians remain broadly tolerant, if somewhat grudgingly so. But Putin supporters on Serbia’s far right have expressed vehement opposition. In one widely reported incident, an antiwar Russian émigré was assaulted and left with a perforated eardrum on the streets of Belgrade; he alleged that he had been attacked by Miša Vacić, the leader of the ultranationalist party Serbian Right. Vacić called the wave of middle-class Russians a “revolution of liberals” who had come to “liberate Serbia from Serbs” and Serbian traditional values.
The new wave of Russian émigrés has also received something of a mixed welcome from the Serbian government. Several of the most vocal antiwar activists who had organized protests in Belgrade have encountered trouble with visas, residency, and gaining entrance to the country. These problems have generally been resolved. But given their precarious position, many Russians in Serbia are reluctant to involve themselves in domestic politics, or to criticize the Serbian government too much.
Dead Souls
Beyond immigration and emigration, questions about the native population have also proven contentious. It’s little wonder that, in a region that gave the world the term “ethnic cleansing,” the census is a highly politicized event. Some Balkan countries still have complex ethnic compositions wherein a delicate balance of political power is allotted according to demographic weight. In North Macedonia, successive governments failed to organize a census for twenty years over fears that it would illuminate an inconvenient demographic reality: that the Macedonian population had gotten smaller and that the Albanian population had grown, weaking the Macedonian claim to power. In 2021, the country finally held a census; it revealed that 58 percent of the population described themselves as Macedonians, while 24 percent identified as Albanians.
Albania has its own census headache. After years of delay, the country finally held one in 2023, accompanied by much fanfare, as it aligned with the centenary of Albania’s first census. However, in February of this year, their National Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) was hacked by the Iranian hacker group “Homeland Justice.” Albania has been subjected to several debilitating Iranian cyberattacks in recent years; the country has been targeted for hosting the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, an Iranian dissident cult championed by American neocons. Since INSTAT was hacked, some have said that the census data has been compromised. Suspicions intensified when INSTAT opted not to release preliminary results. However, members of the opposition have claimed that the government is withholding results to hide that the depopulation of Albania over the past decade has been more dramatic than projected. They were finally published in June; the census results revealed the population has fallen 14 percent since 2011.
Finally, emigration of the scale and speed seen in the Balkans leaves states more vulnerable to election tampering. The December 2023 parliamentary and local elections in Serbia were accompanied by allegations of fraud, including the manipulation of voter registers. The Gogolian engineering of elections—whereby long-dead or emigrated voters cast ballots for the ruling party, or people from neighboring countries registered to local addresses are bused in—becomes easier with so many citizens gone and so many buildings and villages sitting vacant.
The abandonment of the Balkans is especially poignant given the region’s recent history. Territories for which wars were fought, and regions that were cleansed in the name of ethnic purity, are now being emptied of their people. Only a few decades ago, nationalists fought and died for the dream of homogenous nation-states; today, their countries require mass in-migration of foreign workers to sustain their existence. Youth once yearned to fight nationalist wars of liberation; today they hunger for a good salary in the West. Perhaps this is the silver lining of the Balkans’ desertion: it may sustain a temporary peace. The countryside has been abandoned; the cafés of the capitals are filled with idle youth plotting their escape alongside members of a foreign laptop class. If a new war comes, how many young people will be willing to fight it?