PSYCHOSOCIAL ASPECTS OF MIGRATION: A STUDY OF MIGRATION IN KUMANOVO AND GOSTIVAR

Abstract

Migration from North Macedonia to Western European countries has become a common thing. The most frequented embassy it’s the German Embassy which each day allocates dozens of work visas. This kind of migration, with this intensification, has not been marked from the time the country declared its independence from the former Yugoslavia. Even though migration has been increasing, public and political institutions remain silent, and they have not been undertaking any preventive strategy. Despite the positive signals of improvement of the country’s overall situation, such as change of the political course of the new government, the creation of new political environment after the name change and normalization of relations with the neighbors, increased probability for integration in Euro-Atlantic structures, growth of investment potential, the migration wave has not stopped. The phenomenon that is indicative and that we want to emphasize in this paper, is the fact that besides of unemployed people, i.e. people that indeed are in difficult social condition, there are couples already employed that quit their jobs to migrate to Germany. Review of existing literature in migration studies refer to this phenomenon as a migration in pursuit of a better quality of life and it is closely related to psychosocial aspects of migration. While the number of the migrants is increasing this trend should capture academic attention. Through in-depth interviews, media reports and review of literature this study aims to deepen understanding of Kumanovo and Gostivar migrants’ experiences from a psychosocial perspective. Findings show that “lifestyle” does play an important role in motivating Macedonian migrants to relocate to Germany whereas there are also many reported cases of returned back to their home country due to disappointment.