Migration

Moldova and the EU: Freedom Just Across the Border

13/09/2010 -  Bernardo Venturi Chişinău

For Moldavians, Europe is a fever. A collective aspiration to enter the magic circle of “the 27” is reflected in everything from public advertisements to names of squares, even in a new-found freedom of movement that Moldavians now enjoy. This aspiration is visible despite the fact that the little republic is still dealing with nostalgia for and economic tensions with its big Russian neighbor

A true story from Chechnya: Milana

30/07/2010 -  Majnat Kurbanova

Milana used to breed nestlings. Then her village was bombed and she was forced to flee to Ingushetia with her nestlings. Had she let failures dishearten her, however, she would not have been a true Chechen businesswoman. Majnat Kurbanova tells her readers yet another true story from Chechnya

White Orphans, the enlargement's children

07/07/2010 -  Cristina Bezzi

Romania’s 350,000 “white orphans” have been left behind by one or both parents, who emigrated to search for jobs and resources to grant their children a better future. During the “Left Behind” conference in May 2010 in Milan, Italy the “Albero della Vita” association presented the results of their study of the problem

Italian syndrome

24/11/2009 -  Laura Delsere Rome

There are roughly 90,000 Moldovans living in Italy - with numbers growing fast, as shown by a recent report by Caritas-Migrantes. Among the many difficulties of living abroad, one problem is spreading very quickly: the Italian syndrome, a depressive form that affects illegal immigrants and their children

The "big excursion" of Bulgarian Turks

04/11/2009 -  Francesco Martino Edirne

In Bulgaria, a few months after the fall of the Wall in 1989, the Communist regime triggered the exodus towards Turkey of 360,000 Bulgarian citizens of Turkish ethnicity. The mass exodus, gone down in history as the "big excursion", has left deep scars on the people who lived it. Our reportage

Illegality is in the eye of the beholder

08/09/2009 -  Irene Dioli Lesvos

Woodstock meets No Global in a week of activism and debates at the No Border camp on the island of Lesvos, first step of many migrants' journey to Europe. A reportage

Destination: Greece

20/08/2009 -  Gilda Lyghounis

Two thousand years ago, pirates held Julius Caesar captive on Farmakonisi, a big rock in the middle of the Aegean Sea. Today migrants land on the small, uninhabited island before transfer to the crowded Greek detention centres

'Gastarbeiter' economy

14/05/2009 -  Veton Kasapolli Pristina

The Central Bank of Kosovo warns that the remittances are falling as the diaspora starts to feel the effects of the global economic crisis. Kosovo's diaspora has a long tradition of sending money home because of strong family ties, a practice developed because of Kosovo's difficult political and social environment during the last decades

Best friends

25/09/2008 -  Davide Sighele

One of her best-known novels is Amiche per la pelle (Best Friends), a story of four migrant women in Trieste. However, there is also a fifth actor in the story. An interview with the writer Laila Wadia

Macedonian Refugee Children: Exodus Anniversary

12/08/2008 -  Risto Karajkov Skopje

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the exodus of the "refugee children" from Aegean Macedonia (Northern Greece). They fled their homes amidst a civil war and when they became adults, could not return to their homes nor claim their land. For the first time ever, the Macedonian government endorsed their demands

Lost in Transition

06/05/2005 -  Risto Karajkov Skopje

Polls carried throughout the Balkans repeatedly show that 50-70% of young people would leave their countries at the first given chance. The reasons are lack of perspective, poverty, unemployment. Usually youth unemployment rates are 2-4 times higher than the overall ones