Kosovar Diaspora

Kosovar Diaspora

A substantial emigration from Kosovo has been taken place in three phases during the second half of the 20th cenutry. It is estimated that about a third of people of Kosovan descent currently live outside of Kosovo. Emigration took place in three main waves and was mostly motivated by economic reasons, but was in the final phase also reinforced by the Kosovo War:

• First phase: initially as seasonal workers (1960, in Switzerland and Germany)
• Second phase: while the dissolution of former Yugoslavia (1990s)
• Third Phase: immigration during and after the Kosovo War (1997–1999)

As the population of Kosovo mainly consisted of Kosovar Albanians, emigrant population was of a corresponding composition, with about 90% Albanians besides smaller numbers of Kosovo Serbs, Bosniaks, Roma, Ashkali, Egyptians, Turks etc.

The largest number sof Kosovan emigrants are found in Germany (300,000), Switzerland (150,000), the U.S. and Scandinavia, making almost 800,000 Kosovars living abroad.

Since 2008, the constitutional status of Kosovo is under dispute, it is reconized by some states as the Republic of Kosovo and by others as a part of the Republic of Serbia. In practice, the Kosovar emigrants abroad were registered as Serbian nationals by their host countries until 2009, when the Republic of Kosovo began issuing its own passports. Since 2009, parts of the Kosovar emigrant population has acquired such new passports and are now registered as of Kosovo nationality while others retained their old Serbian passports and continue to be registered as Serbian nationals. For this reason, there is no reliable statistics of the size of the "Kosovoar diaspora" in individual host countries.