By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Feb 6 2002 (IPS)

Half a million young people fled Serbia during the ten-year rule of former president Slobodan Milosevic, a new study shows.

“This is a dramatic number for such a small country” says Aleksandar Bogojevic, professor at Belgrade University and one of the authors of the study entitled’The Brain Drain’.

Serbia is a country of some eight million people and according to the report 6.3 per cent, or one in 16 Serbs left in the past decade. This was the decade of wars and poverty that marked Milosevic’s ten-year rule.

The study showed that 50,000 of these people held university degrees, meaning that Serbia was left without a significant number of qualified and educated youngsters who could have been the basis for its development, Bogojevic told IPS.

‘The Brain Drain’ was a joint project of the Belgrade non- governmental organisation Education Forum, United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and United Nations Science and Culture Organisation (UNESCO).

The study took six months to complete. It was based on interviews with Serb emigrants through a questionnaire sent by e-mail or filled during their stay in Serbia.

According to the study, most of the people who left Serbia since the wars of disintegration in former Yugoslavia began in 1991, were aged between 24 and 40. They moved mostly to the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany and Holland.

The study shows that many took foreign citizenship but remained close to their country. About 43 per cent visit Serbia at least once a year.

“An average emigrant is in his mid-thirties, single, technically educated, reads J.R.R. Tolkien and dreams of returning to Serbia once the situation finally improves in an economic sense,” says Vlastimir Matejic, another Belgrade University professor who conducted the research.

“The social structure of Serb émigrés shows that they could have been a strong nucleus of the middle class, now destroyed by the former regime and struggling to recover after ten years of poverty,” Matejic says.

“The émigrés make the part of society that re-produces middle class values like research, technological development, culture and good manners.”

Under Milosevic’s rule in the 90s, Serbia lived through four wars and several rounds of strict international sanctions that ruined its once stable economy. Milosevic fell from power in October 2000 after losing the elections.

‘The Brain Drain’ shows that more than 60 per cent of Serbs living abroad would like to settle back in their native country once the economy improves. Another 24 per cent responded with a “maybe”, when asked about a possible return to Serbia.

“The émigrés remained an important link between Serbia and the world during our isolation and are very willing to share their knowledge and abilities under the changed economic circumstances in Serbia,” Matejic says.

“But simple political changes here can not make them return.”

The democratic changes in Serbia 16 months ago did not bring immediate economic improvement. The new administration is still stuck with serious problems left by Milosevic’s regime when industrial production was practically non-existent and the economy survived largely on the production of food and electricity.

“I want to graduate and emigrate,” still remains a motto for many of the young. Long queues of youngsters, waiting for visas outside Western embassies, remain a trademark of Belgrade.

Marija Stanojevic graduated in pharmacy last year and now thinks of leaving. “It’s easy when you study – the only goal is to graduate,” Marija says. “But the real problems start after you graduate. What to do later on?”

As a brilliant graduate, Marija was offered the post of assistant professor in her faculty. But Marija does not want to pursue a university career. Full-time professors earn only about 200 dollars a month. “There must be some better place for me somewhere else,” Marija says, adding that she would try to go to Holland.

The brain drain from Serbia has left all sorts of other problems. With the traditionally low birth rates, it has become a country of the old. For years deaths have outnumbered births by more than 30,000 a year. Official statistics show that 31 per cent of the population of Serbia is more than 60 years old.

“This is hardly a promising situation,” the study concludes.

“Besides being deprived of 500,000 émigrés in the 90s, Serbia is practically losing a small town of 30,000 each year.”

The study ends with a stark warning: “It needs an economic miracle to attract the return of émigrés and to improve the living conditions at home in order to get on the road of development it left at the beginning of the 90s. And that is not likely to happen in the near future.”

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