By Martine Munkholt Christensen & Gabriel Hilty
For our international semester project, we wanted to cover youth emigration in Albania.
We didn’t have any expectations before going, and neither of us had been to the Balkans before. Reporting on the ground, we were only met with kind people who wanted to tell their stories, share their knowledge and help us.
When we first had the idea for covering youth emigration, we thought the only reason people wanted to emigrate was for higher salaries abroad, but we learned that it was so much more than that.
For 23-year-old Celjeta Mema, the push to emigrate came after finishing her bachelor’s degree and meeting a job market where she realised that she hadn’t learned the required skills. Dissatisfaction with the education system is common for the youth in Albania where there’s also a big difference between the public and private universities.
Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf0Kjuh9RB4
37-year-old Aulon Harizaj is thinking of emigrating to one of the Nordic countries. He dreams of more than a pay cheque, and wants to have a better professional culture and learn from the way others are doing businesses. It is not an easy choice for him to leave though, as he feels deeply connected to the city where he lives. He knows that after emigrating, he will one day return to his mother country.
Our travel to Albania was a great experience where we learned a lot of journalistic and personal lessons.
The funding from TV Tonic was used for transportation. A big thank you to TV Tonic for giving us the opportunity to tell this story.
Link to the story: https://resonance.mediajungle.dk/2025/06/10/when-you-cant-plan-a-future-albanias-emigrating-youth/ (the password is “corona”)