A Spatial Approach of Migration and Poverty in Albania: An Inevitable Correlation?

Firstly, this paper discusses the relation between migrationMigration and povertyPoverty in Albania, with a dual focus: the analysis of spatial patterns of the Albanian internal and international migration and how these are related to poverty; and, also, the examination of the evolution of these patterns over time. Secondly and most importantly, the paper questions the prevalence of  such a  perspective on Albanian migration, i.e. through povertyPoverty.  Considering that various processes are at work—within and in parallel to the migratory process—, our paper seeks to understand whether these might be more critical with respect to the Albanian context than the nexus poverty-migration. We maintain that it seems impossible to deal with the Albanian migrations without acknowledging migration as an intrinsic part of broader social changeSocial change. This shift in the study of migration in Albania  aspires to enhance our understanding of Albanian migrations and  to provide more sophisticated explanations on the observed phenomena, in particular related to the intensity and substantiality by which they take place, during the last three decades. For the purposes of our research, we rely heavily on the reports of the Albanian Institute for Statistics (INSTAT) and research work based on data coming from the Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) in Albania. More precisely, we examine census data of 1989; census data and data on poverty in Albania from the 2001 census in Albania and the LSMS survey in Albania in 2002, 2005, 2008, and 2012; census data from 2011 and regional data on population of 2019; data on povertyPoverty and inequality in Albania in 2004 and 2015; data on migrationMigration in Albania in 2014 and 2020; and data on tourism in Albania in 2019.