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The Final Straw

“I made the final decision to leave Serbia the moment I saw with my own eyes that a party membership card was more important than my university diploma.”

This is how Tanja Milic, a 25-year-old graphic designer from Kragujevac, Serbia, begins her story. For the past two years, Tanja has been living in Sweden with her partner, having left shortly after graduating from the Faculty of Philology and Arts at the University of Kragujevac. Today, she is an art director at a Swedish graphic design firm.

“I didn’t leave for economic reasons, as I lived decently in Serbia too. However, the moment I realized that you shouldn’t look for a job through the National Employment Service, but rather at the addresses of political parties, my decision to leave Serbia was final. I simply didn’t want to put up party posters in exchange for getting a job in my field,” Tanja recalls.

“I spoke English and that summer I learned Swedish. With some savings and a laptop, I arrived in Sweden where, after a few months, I got a job at the firm where I still work. Meanwhile, my fiancé, a graduate economist, joined me. We got married and now live like any normal couple,” says Tanja.

Tanja’s peer from neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ilda Mesic, left her native Sarajevo during her studies. She lives in Berlin, where she graduated in architecture from a university where she now works as a lecturer.

“Young people are leaving Bosnia and Herzegovina because they are losing hope, losing faith that things will get better. They leave disappointed by corruption, crime, divisions, and politicians who divide them and lock them into national and religious silos while lining their own pockets. They leave because they see no alternative for positive change. Germany isn’t perfect, far from it, but here I have a special sense of security. The foundation of that feeling is the stability of the system here, which gives me confidence that everything can’t collapse overnight. That, unfortunately, is something Bosnia and Herzegovina lacks,” shares Ilda.

 

The Brain Drain Crisis

The stories of Tanja and Ilda are just two voices among the more than one quarter of the population that lives abroad, acccording to World Bank data. As the numbers multiply almost daily, and empty offices and closed schools become part of the urban landscape, the question arises: is the Western Balkans becoming a region without a future?

The World Bank states that over 70% of young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina are considering leaving the country, while in Serbia, a staggering 80% of young people want to leave in search of better opportunities.

One of the key problems of migration in the Western Balkan region is the departure of highly educated young people, specialists in IT, engineering, medicine, and other crucial sectors.

For example, the healthcare sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina is facing a serious shortage of doctors and medical staff. The Chamber of Doctors of Medicine says that nearly 10,000 doctors have left Bosnia and Herzegovina in the last 10 years. The departure of such specialists creates not only a direct economic loss through the reduction of the workforce but also indirect costs like the lengthy education of new staff, who are becoming fewer and fewer.

Meritocracy vs. The Party Card

Professor Amer Osmic from the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Sarajevo, believes that dissatisfaction with the entire social system is one of the key factors driving youth emigration from the region.

“They are dissatisfied with healthcare, education, security, and the political system. They want to live in a society where these segments are better and more organized than in ours. Their parents are witnesses that almost nothing has changed in the last 20 years regarding the creation of a society of equal opportunities. What young people are fleeing from here is the perception of hopelessness, the inability for young people to envision that in this country, in this society, things will be significantly better in two, three, or five years,” emphasizes Professor Osmic.

Tanja Milic, from the beginning of our story, points out that life in Sweden gives her a vision of the future that she never had in Serbia, and that she very quickly became convinced of the advantages of an orderly social system with clearly defined rules, obligations, and rights.

“While I was in Serbia trying to find a job by applying wherever there was a chance, no one deemed me worthy of a response via email or even an SMS. In Sweden, it was completely different. Everything was completely transparent – from the advertisement of the vacancy to the hiring process. After a series of tests and interviews, I got the job I really wanted, even though all the other candidates were Swedish. Simply put, no one asked me anything unrelated to the job,” Tanja recounts.

A Political Failure

Sociologist Cedomir Cupic, a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade, says that the most capable people in their prime, who are also the most qualified, are leaving Serbia.

“When an economic crisis is combined with the internal political structure, in such a situation people don’t want to wait for years for a job, while political parties employ their own members. Naturally, they won’t put up with it, they refuse to be servants, they refuse to be subservient, and they leave the country,” says Cupic.

He notes that migration also exists in developed countries, usually for economic or sociological reasons, but that migration in the Western Balkans has an additional political dimension.

“If a country’s development strategy is determined by incompetent servants prone to corruption, people who curry favour with an incompetent government, then the perspective for development is lost, and without it, there is no place for young people to stay and survive in that area. This means that if a society is impoverished of its most qualified and educated people, it loses great potential for future development. Over time, only those who have no other choice will remain in such a country,” concludes Cupic.

The Crossroads

At the crossroads between a past they want to leave behind and a future they are building in other countries, young Balkan people stand as a living bridge between two realities. While Tanja in Sweden and Ilda in Germany build lives marked by stability and meritocracy, their peers who stayed behind struggle with a system that often values loyalty over competence.

Yet, faced with the continuous departure of the youth and demographic decline, the countries of the Balkans have a choice: continue to decline or act strategically. A sustainable response lies in creating an attractive environment – from quality education for the young to support for entrepreneurship. Although migration is a challenge, it can also become a force for development if it is channelled towards a returning wave of knowledge and skills.

Because, in essence, no one wants to leave their home – they just want a future they cannot find within it.

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