Emigration is a disturbing phenomenon in Malësi e Madhe

In Albania, the 2023 Census data, published recently, testify to a significant decrease in the number of inhabitants, a large part due to the high level of immigration. According to INSTAT data, only from 2018 to 2022, about 195 thousand people left Albania. One of the most affected areas is Malësia e Madhe. The Albanian-American researcher Lulash Palushaj presented in Malësi i Madhe his latest book dedicated to the scourge of immigration in this area.

The Albanian-American researcher and writer Lulash Palushaj, author of 15 books dedicated to the history and traditions of the Great Highlands, presented today to researchers and authorities from the Great Highlands, here and there the current state border, his latest book " Where did you go, O Great Highlands, is there, O Albanian", dedicated to what he calls the greatest wound of the Highlanders, emigration.

"The biggest wound is that we left those old people in empty houses. The most serious wound is the tears that the elders shed about where the people of the house are. That there can be no home without people and people without their homeland. This is the most important thing that I have reflected in this work", he says.

For the vice-mayor of the "Malësi e Madhe" Municipality, Sytki Ndreca, researcher Palushaj has managed to touch on one of the main problems that Malësi e Madhe continues to have.

"Fleeing and emigration outside the territory of Malësi e Madhe, but also outside Albania, in emigration, in the diaspora, has taken on a large scale, what is happening is very scary", he says.

The deputy mayor says that the latest data, published by the population and housing census, also prove the extent of the departure of residents from Malësia e Madhe, both towards emigration and to other areas in the interior of the country.

According to the 2023 census, Malësia e Madhe has 21,640 inhabitants, or less than 15,000 inhabitants compared to 2011 and about 32,000 less than the 1991 census.

The participants from Albanians in Montenegro emphasized during the meeting that the topic of emigration is worrying for the mountaineers living on both sides of the border and that the treatment of this topic is related to the need to stop the depopulation of Albanian lands.

"This topic is a disturbing phenomenon even for Lulash because he himself is living the emigration to the USA. In almost most of his works, he deals with the fate of the mountaineers, both over there and over the border", says Rrok Gjolaj. advisers in the Ministry of Education in Montenegro.

Albania, says Lulash Palushaj, has natural and economic potential to keep Albanians in its country, but it is necessary to promote employment and use natural resources for the benefit of development.

Poet Mimoza Rexhvelaj, a resident of Malësi e Madhe, says that there are already villages in the highlands that have been left empty due to the abandonment and departure of the inhabitants towards emigration, mainly to America and England. Therefore, Lulash Palushaj's last book, she says, is a cry for changing this reality.

"The cry and howl, in fact, that Professor Palushaj makes in his book, is return to the homeland, return to the threshold, return to the family, to the mother, to the father who are waiting for you".

INSTAT data show that, from 2011 to 2023, Albania has about 600 thousand fewer inhabitants. While within a period of 5 years, from 2018 to 2022, 194,900 people have left Albania, with an average of about 39,000 people per year. VOA