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The Albanian town that TikTok emptied
- techwiz137 3y agoThe curse of Eastern Europe, to die and empty out. It's the same in my country. Life in the UK and Germany > at home. And it's an exponential process, for every 1 person, 5 probably leave. My hometown was nearly 100k in the 80s, down to 50k if that by now. And it's mostly elderly, children, who grow up, go to the capital or just immigrate.
- aa1234556 3y ago[dead]
- lr4444lr 3y agoCurious why you think that is. I understand that a higher standard of living can be had abroad, but there is there not investment interest in the country given its relatively well-educated but low wage workforce? The tug of wanting the familiar? Think it'll ever equilibrate and reverse?
- reisse 3y agoThere is no low wage workforce to invest into, because the job market is the whole EU. People (especially educated younger generation) won't work for low salary at home if they can earn more euros for the same work on the other side of the fence. Local businesses have to pay competitively. And the fact countries can't use protectionist measures inside EU does not help either.
- epolanski 3y agoI really would not say it applies to whole Eastern Europe. Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Romania and many other places are developing fine and less and less people are emigrating. And the picture definitely is nowhere near as depressing as Albania and this region in particular.
- betaby 3y agoBaltics lost and continuing losing population for decades, however currently their population is propped by migration from Belarus (since August 2020 and then next waive after Feb 2022). Even with those trend Lithuania has lost 1/3 of its population in 30 years. Czechia and Poland has a influx of Ukrainians since Feb 2022. On other side Bulgaria is losing ~1% annually without signs of stopping. So yes, I would say the trend is very visible everywhere in Eastern Europe + Balkans.
- epolanski 3y agoSo does Italy, Japan, China and many other places. Birthrates are low.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoThese are the growing pangs of globalization. Abandoned cities will be everywhere over the next century. Especially after the population collapse in Asia.
- e-master 3y agoMy personal experience is quite the opposite - globalization allows capital to move to the lesser developed and cheaper places, bringing jobs and education, and over time an improved quality of life, so that people who were before desperate to leave no longer feel it’s necessary. Sure, it’s not as simple, but just wanted to mention it, since it’s not as straightforward as it seems. On a slightly related note, I’d rather point the finger at urbanization - in my short lifetime I’ve witnessed multiple small villages (1.5 - 2k population) pretty much disappear as the younger generation moved out for multiple different reasons.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoThe abandonment of rural areas and the mess that left behind were the seeds to populism growing in my part of the world (US). It was an unforeseen aspect of winner-take-all globalism-driven economic growth.
- bluescrn 3y agoYet we're repeatedly told that every single migrant entering the UK illegally is a desparate refugee fleeing war or persecution?
- panick21_ 3y agoIf you are being told that you are following the wrong sources.
- laputan_machine 3y ago> In 2022, around 16,000 Albanian citizens applied for asylum in the UK, making up 16% of all asylum applicants. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries/albanian-asylum-seekers-in-the-uk-and-eu-a-look-at-recent-data/ https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries... What's that? Let's be real, there is no reason for any country to be granting Albanian citizens asylum. There isn't a genocide going on, it's a (relatively) free country: https://www.equaldex.com/region/albania https://www.equaldex.com/region/albania
- logifail 3y ago> there is no reason for any country to be granting Albanian citizens asylum ...and most European countries don't. Q: Why does the UK?
- throwaway751 3y ago[dead]
- TheGigaChad 3y ago[dead]
- logifail 3y ago> fleeing war or persecution Q: Is there much war or persecution in France at present?
- assbuttbuttass 3y ago[flagged]
- noah_buddy 3y agoThe fall of communism was one of the largest drops in quality of life and lifespan ever recorded, IIRC.
- 542458 3y agoI’d like to see a source for that. I don’t really see how it could compare to WW2 or the Three Kingdoms War or Taiping Rebellion or Great Chinese Famine or Black Death or either the Justinian or Antoine plagues.
- goodbyesf 3y agoIn comparison to ww2, the fall of the soviet union was worse than ww2. https://www.rferl.org/a/life-expectancy-cis-report/24946030.html https://www.rferl.org/a/life-expectancy-cis-report/24946030.... To put it into perspective, after ww2, the russian population recovered in a few years. The russian population today is still below their 1990 levels. In terms of population, life expectancy, quality of life, etc, ww2 (as horrible as it was ) was an insignificant blip. The fall of the soviet union has been a generational catastrophe for russia. A funk they seem unable to get out of demographically, economically, politically, etc. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/population https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/population In the US, our population has grown 50% since 1990 ( almost 150 more people ). The russian population has dropped 5% since 1990. After ww2, russia had major population growth like the US. After germany and japan lost ww2, their population, economy, etc improved drastically. For some reason, losing a hot war ( japan, germany ) turned out to be much better than losing a cold war ( russia ). Think about it, we are nearly 2 generations into the post-soviet world and russia still hasn't recovered their population. After ww2, russia almost doubled their population in 2 generations. Losing the cold war appears to have demoralized the russian elite and people far more than losing ww2 did to germany and japan. Why? Who knows.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoPeople will read this article and draw possibly misleading conclusions about the entire country. Emigration is certainly a problem everywhere in Albania, but northeastern Albania where the town in question is located, is a special case. It has always been, for centuries, the poorest, most backward part of the country, unable to benefit from trade and intellectual exchange with more prosperous neighbors like other regions of Albania could. Even within the country people were moving en masse from there to Shkodër near the coast, or Tirana.
- illwrks 3y agoAs sad as it is, it's no different from any country at any other point in time. In the past it was letters, postcards, phone calls, now it's just tictok AND youtube, facebook etc. Even in the UK the young move from less prosperous areas to more prosperous ones. Globally, people need to be educated on the reality of what's behind the camera not the illusion portrayed in front of it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- paxys 3y agoSocial media's sheer reach and algorithmic targeting makes it way more lethal than postcards.
- illwrks 3y ago100%. It's pure exploitation/manipulation of the gullible, ill-informed and uneducated.
- jmrm 3y agoTotally true. In Spain happened the same in the from the 50s to the 70s with thousands of people emigrating to France, Germany, and other European countries, talking about how well they could live and how they can eat every day, but excluding how they live in mass in barracks away from local people, and how most of local people made an effort to avoid them to integrate (like making them go out of bars and buses).
- WeylandYutani 3y agoI saw a program once about Dutch people emigrating to Australia in the 1950s. They made a good life for themselves but they weren't welcomed with champagne and caviar when they came off the boat.
- joshe 3y agoNice that social media is providing a clear pathway out of towns like this. Sad for the people left behind but the answer is for them to leave, not for everyone to be trapped there. And note the Eastern Europe is doing great at the country level. In general people should engage in more geographic mobility.
- secondcoming 3y agoRight, but did you miss the part where these young men are being forced to work for criminal gangs and the girls are most likely in the sex trade? They're also abusing the asylum process to get to stay in the UK. It's a massive problem.
- koheripbal 3y agoThere are always some people who stay, and always some of the children of the people who left will return to revitalize the area. It takes one or two generations for that secondary effect of revitalization but it happens as children and grandchildren of those who emigrated want to return to their culture and find land prices very low. I've seen it in rural China, India, and Italy before that. Even Russia had a large number of emigrant's (or their children) return during the economic book in the 2000's. Potion ruined that, and many have since left again, but it demonstrates the effect. Eastern Europe will be the same.
- paxys 3y agoGet misled by a TikTok "influencer" and go join a street gang or be forced into prostitution in other parts of Europe? I wouldn't call that "escaping" anything.
- abenga 3y agoAre those really the only two options?
- epolanski 3y agoDid you even read the article? It points at how miserable virtually all Albanians that get baited into traveling to UK have it
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- mensetmanusman 3y agoMere mortals have no chance against the AI algorithms optimized for engagement.
- paxys 3y agoI was just reading an article about an agency that rents out fancy penthouse suites, supercars and private jets by the hour to social media "influencers" who want to promote their baller lifestyles and amass a following. I see posts of this kind in my feed every day even though I have no interest in such content or the people behind it. It is a wild industry. 100% smoke and mirrors, yet teenagers and young men and women around the world are hooked by it. People going to college and getting jobs nowadays are "NPCs", and the only true way to live is to go on luxury vacations and drive fancy cars full time. How do you afford it? By becoming an influencer yourself, of course. The "hustle culture" pyramid scheme is going to collapse soon, and lots of young people are going to have a rough life because of it.
- woleium 3y agoSadly it's all getting rather Douglas Adams. Maybe Elon can send them all to Mars, along with the telephone sanitation technicians.
- latchkey 3y agoWait a second, are you saying that "accidentally" torching Ferrari F8's, is a culture that won't last? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXi-CV--Wq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXi-CV--Wq0
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago> People going to college and getting jobs nowadays are "NPCs", and the only true way to live is to go on luxury vacations and drive fancy cars full time. What do you expect when there are no good jobs left over for college grads between the double whammy of a pandemic and LLM automation threats? Not everybody can be software engineers and most other entry level jobs simply don't pay well enough for a decent life in most cities. It's no wonder that the average non-STEM major are turning towards "hustling" on tiktok when their future contains either prostituting themselves on OnlyFans or being a perpetual serf in the service industry.
- andromeduck 3y agoSkilled trades still pay decent - and will probably improve as gen xers who dominate it rn ages out. I think given the housing shortage there's a lot of untapped potential in construction/furnishings we'd only need a but of deregulation to unleash.
- soared 3y agoI would like to read another article on this with perspectives from Albanian. I don’t doubt that gangs/etc are taking advantage of immigrants, but the language used to describe innocuous things (rather than “growing cannabis” it’s “adding chemicals” etc) feels like they’ve exaggerated on points. Additionally, though clearly unfair - 1-2 years of labor with pay seems like a reasonable trade off for the rest of your life to be significantly improved? Making immigration legal or at least legitizming parts of it even if the immigration remains illegal seems like it’d be a huge step.
- raincom 3y agoEurope's Cocaine Tsunami[0], a documentary by VICE, is about Albanian Mafia and Columbian clan del gulfo. Here, you can hear about how Albanians in UK are 'enslaved' by Albanian mafia families, and how many young Albanians from Northern Albania leave to work in the cocaine field. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTOwZxRT5Qc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTOwZxRT5Qc
- d1sxeyes 3y agoNot available in my (EU) country. Are you aware of any other links to this? I’m interested but a quick google showed nothing
- gumby 3y agoI felt at the time, and still do, that the arab spring was fueled by the ability of people to see life in other places via satellite TV and Internet. "Hey, life doesn't have to be as bad as it is here." Even before then I thought it might be great to make A4 phased array antennas with photographs of dictators on them so people could put them on their walls were satellite dishes are forbidden.
- dubeye 3y agoAmazing looking mountains, lakes and natural beauty. People pay a hefty premium in UK to live near such features.