The countries of the Western Balkans have long been characterized by declining populations due to low birth rates, ageing populations and high levels of emigration.
Official concerns have driven various studies in the region over the years, and misconceptions and mistakes in interpreting data have generally created a strong sense that migration is damaging the region's social and economic prospects in all countries of the region.
A new study by the European Training Foundation (ETF) in collaboration with Vienna's Institute for International Economic Studies, "Migration dynamics from a human capital perspective in the Western Balkans", looks at how migration, human capital and the labour market interact in six countries in the region - Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania.
The reports, beginning with a study on Serbia, will be published by the ETF over the next few weeks and months.
Historic migration
Serbia commands the leading economy in the Western Balkans. It has a history of labour migration going back to the 1960s when low-skilled labour moved to Germany and Western Europe. High levels of migration continue to be a feature of its economy today. Some 14% of Serbians (around 950,000 people) live abroad, and their remittances home provide an increase of around 8% in Serbian domestic disposable income.
The figures make labour Serbia's biggest export "product", the report notes, with its emigration rate "four times the world average of around 3.5 per cent."
However, the cash transfers are vulnerable to economic and other factors - as the Covid pandemic has proven.
Serbian government concerns that migration is damaging the country's efforts to modernize and improve economic achievement have led to measures to encourage the return or retention of highly trained or desirable workers - such as skilled IT professionals and medical professionals.
The ETF and Vienna study, focusing on the triangular relationship between the labour market, migration and the Human Capital pool in a country, shows that - properly managed - migration can be positive.
Although "reliable and detailed data on migration are notoriously difficult to obtain", by studying the relationships between migration, skills supply and labour market demands, it is possible to sketch a more accurate portrait of the role migration plays in Serbia.
EU - a magnet for migrants
The EU countries have traditionally been a magnet for Serbian migrants - with Germany accounting for more than a third. In recent years (2015-18, a period of austerity in Serbia), new member states, such as Slovakia and Slovenia, have become more attractive, particularly to middle-skilled emigrants.
Figures for 2010 and 2018 show an overall dip in Serbian migration to, for example, Germany (290,092/232,338) or Austria (111,708/104,800), although there was strong relative growth to Slovakia (3,826/13,555) and Slovenia (8,273/17,766) during the same period.
Closer studies of the figures show that "educational attainment levels of current Serbian diaspora roughly reflect those of non-migrants, albeit with medium-skilled migrants under-represented."
Until 2010 Serbian migration showed a higher-than-average share of low and high-skilled migrants and lower emigration rates of medium-skilled migrants. However, in recent years, outflows of medium-skilled migrants have increased, but the report finds "no indication of a brain drain from Serbia."
Most migration from Serbia tends to be circular, with most migrants obtaining temporary work permits to the new EU Member States, but few gaining either citizenship or family-reunion visas. However, German policies on attracting skilled labour to address its own shortages mean that many Serbians who emigrate to Germany are likely to stay.
Recent changes to laws and regulations in Germany has tended to increase that tendency, and the new Skilled Immigration Act, which came into force in March 2020, making it easier for high- as well as medium-skilled workers with vocational, non-academic training from non-EU countries to migrate to Germany for work.
Although figures on the success of Serbia's IT show that there is actually net immigration of the highly educated and features such as large numbers of freelancers (20,000) who live and work in Serbia but telecommute to work for foreign IT companies online, Serbia still needs to address issues that a driving migration - the so-called "push" and "pull" factors.
Push and pull
Push factors include an imbalance between well-paid public sector jobs and relatively poorly paid, insecure employment in the private sector, prompting around 64 per cent of 25-29-year-old to consider moving abroad, or the oversupply of well-trained medical specialists who quit the country for higher wages in Europe (which has created shortages of key specialists in some areas, prompting the government to increase salaries in 2019 by 10 per cent for doctors and 15 per cent for nurses, with a further increase in 2020 in the light of the Covid-19 outbreak.)
Increasing the national supply of skills by spending more on higher-quality, labour market-relevant skills training alongside a "more systematic monitoring of skills shortage and high-demand occupations" could help mitigate some of those push factors.
Pull factors are those policies foreign governments put in place to attract labour to address their own skills shortages.
Cooperation strategies
Addressing such "pull issues" in migration should be a Serbian government priority, the report states.
"It would be a wise migration strategy for middle-income countries like Serbia, situated in close proximity to one of the richest regions in the world, not to attempt to minimize all migration. Rather, it should aim to minimize permanent migration.”
"Germany could become a partner in helping better manage Serbian migration [by negotiating] a comprehensive arrangement that would benefit both parties by balancing Germany's growing need for high-skilled workers with Serbia's interest in improving the human capital of its resident labour force and minimizing permanent migration."
"Serbia will, in the foreseeable future, remain vulnerable to various undesirable effects of being a labour-exporting country", the report states.
Acknowledging this is the first step to building policies to promote sustainable circular migration that could be of lasting benefit both to migrants and the country, it adds.
"Serbia should engage with the EU to make sure that the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum lives up to its promise of "comprehensive cooperation with partner countries to help boost mutually beneficial international mobility."
Attached, you might find both the English and the Serbian version of the report.
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