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Making A New Start in Kosovo

Tens of thousands of Kosovars made unsuccessful attempts to leave their home country in recent years. Now the „returnees“ are being given new hope at home.

by Chris Cummins

In 2014 and 2015 80,000 Kosovars tried to leave their hard fought-for homeland. It was the biggest exodus since the war of the late 1990s.

Kosovo, a Balkan nation of 1.8 million people that declared unilateral independence from Serbia in 2008 after almost a decade of post-war UN administration, has struggled economically in its fledgling years and the exodus was fuelled by a mixture of poverty, rampant corruption and a crippling unemployment rate of 33%, which rises to nearly 60% among young Kosovars. Many had been attracted by misleading rumours about Germany’s „open doors“ policy.

Sent Back

Yet despite the dire economic situation, Kosovo is now essentially stable and, in terms of asylum, has been designated a “safe country”. Therefore over the past two years, and often after disorientating stays is asylum centres, many of the would-be emigrants have been sent back. Germany, for example, rejects 99.7 per cent of asylum applications from Kosovo.

Many of these “returnees” bear the psychological scars of being forcibly deported and are in a state of emotional limbo: having given up on their home country, they’ve seen door to more prosperous countries shut in their face.

In the town of Ferizaj, a dusty concrete sprawl at the foot of a snow-capped mountain 30 minutes south of the capital Pristina I meet 34-year old Hanife Kurtaliqi, a 34-year old divorcee. She was sent back to Kosovo in November 2015 after a 18 months being passed between asylum facilities in Vienna, Traiskirchen, where she gave birth to a pair of twins, and then, finally at a Caritas-funded women’s home in Hollabrunn.

A returned migrant doing some hairdressing

ADA

She was taking German courses when she was told her application for asylum had been rejected by the Austrian authorities. “The police came the first time and I didn’t open the door,” she says, “but then they came a month later and deported me.”

“I have no place else to go.”

Mrs Kurtaliqi seems, quite understandably, wary of being quizzed by a foreign journalist, via an interpreter, about this discombobulating experience. I ask her cautiously whether she feels her future now lies in Kosovo? “Yes,” she replies, “I have no place else to go.”

“They have lost faith in their government’s ability to help them,” says Mirlinda Gojani , Project Assistant of the initiative Back Home. “Our job is to try and restore that faith. We help them to reintegrate and cope which their new circumstances.”

Back Home is a Caritas project that is run on the ground in Kosovo by the group Mother Theresa Society. It tracks down the returnees, offers them the support of a psychologist and helps them negotiate government bureaucracy so they can access various channels of social support. It also works with the returnees to find out what employable skills they might have and then uses its connections to find them a job.

For Hanife Kurtaliqi, one of the 120 women supported by the Back Home project, this means a job in a hair salon in Ferizaj. She’s busy because the hectic wedding season is approaching (Kosovar brides often have their elaborate hair styles rearranged midway through their wedding day). She says she enjoys the work now that her children are old enough to go to kindergarten.

„A lot of people feel worthless“

This sort of employment has two functions. Firstly, it gives the returnees some financial independence and that is a vital aspect for women in this still deeply paternalistic society. Secondly, it helps restore pride and a sense of purpose: “A lot of people feel worthless after being deported,” says Mirlanda Gojani. “A job returns their self-esteem.”

It’s not only returnees who are supported by the project, but also socially vulnerable women who have fallen through the wide-holes in the social safety net. There’s a focus on low-income families, ethnic minorities, the unemployed and single mothers.

Sale Gashi working as a tailor (smaller format)

Chris Cummins

44-year old Sale Gashi’s life began to unravel when her husband died leaving her with two children to support alone. She says she had no income at all, nor any professional work experience. She was, however, adept at sewing and clothes making.

„A light at the end of the tunnel“

Back Home, which has received 360,000 euros of financing from the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), helped her buy some sewing machines. The group also found her some space in a cellar level tailors shop beneath a busy street in her home town of Lipjan.

“It was a light at the end of the tunnel,” says Mrs Gashi. She shows me one of her dresses on a mannequin. The dress is white with splashes of violet and red down one flank and looks alluringly Asiatic. She has obvious talent. “This project has given me hope and inspiration for life again,” she beams. “I work here during the day and in the evening when I go home I work on the sketches of the dresses and I have ideas. And my two daughters support me.”

It’s not charity as such: it is a stepping stone to independent life. Just as despondency breeds despondency, optimism breeds optimism. With great pride, Sale Gashi describes how her oldest daughter has improved at school since Sale got her tailoring job.

“She is so motivated nowadays. She’d like to be a tailor too.”

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