Besmira is just one of hundreds of women in Has, a northern town in Albania, who have found themselves victims of an emigration dilemma. As their partners allegedly smuggle themselves into the UK due to the unemployment crisis back home, they are left completely alone.
Miles away from her in England, Besmira’s husband, Arben, remains as she spends endless days waiting for a call on her battered mobile phone. At 32 years old, they both hoped to start a family of their own, but that dream seems to be moving further and further away from their future.
Four years have passed since Besmira has spoken to or seen her husband in the flesh, since he decided to flee Albania in 2021. According to the Daily Mail, he set off for work in the UK, having paid £5,000 to travel across the channel via France, leaving behind his wife, a former state statistician.
Now it’s believed that he’s settled in Manchester, working 12-hour days, six days a week as a construction-site worker. Arbden then rents out a small room and saves up the majority of his money to send home to support his wife and other relatives.
Besmira explained the struggles she has faced with this long-distance relationship: “I am depressed, like many of the women here left behind,” the Daily Mail reports. “Emigration of men destroys family bonds. Families are torn apart.
“The men who leave may forget the family they have here. There is an increase in divorces when there were once hardly any in our close-knit society. The town has been upended. There is money coming in, of course, sent from the UK. But money isn’t everything.”
It’s thought that despite its small size, with a population of just 5,000 people, Has is a place that sees high numbers of men migrating to Britain. Two years ago, the Daily Mail reports, their local council honoured their links to the UK by putting up a monument that is decorated with a Union Flag, alongside an Albanian flag.
In recent years, the crackdown on Channel boat crossings by Albanian migrants has now left them seeking alternative routes, such as lorries to enter Britain, at a much higher cost. It was reported that a ticket for this type of journey could cost up to £22,000, and while Besmira admits she has considered moving to join her love, it’s a price she cannot afford to pay.
“All the money my husband sends goes to his parents, whom I live with, or our other relatives whom he supports,” she shared. “There is none left for the journey to England.
“We know we are missing out. The idea was that he would come back, but that never happened because of the money he needed to send us. There are no jobs for him in Albania.”
As men and young boys leave the town, many women are leading families and taking responsibility for roles that were typically male-led, such as council road sweepers. Not to mention, these women can be left raising children alone, all while caring for their elderly parents and often, their husbands’ parents too, after their abandonment.
Jahir Cahani, a 50-year-old former schoolteacher who has seen the town’s change in demographics and alteration of traditional values, opened up to the Daily Mail about his concerns. “It is too much for them. They are doing this enormous job that their husbands should be sharing with them,” he said.
“It is the opposite for the family unit. For teenage boys, it is a problem if they don’t have a father figure. They need a father and a mother to be raised properly and happily as good citizens.”
“The normal chain of boy meets girl, engagement, marriage, then children coming along, is broken. It is difficult for girls here to meet boys in the first place, to even start the chain. The boys are in the UK.”
Although it was reported that eight out of ten families in Has heavily rely on money from their relatives in the UK for survival, due to the lack of work available for them back home. At what cost are these men providing for their loved ones as they continue to find work abroad, both legally and illegally?
“I feel as though I am living life secondhand,” Besmira confessed. “Waiting and waiting for my husband is not good for my mental health or for that of the hundreds of other Has wives and girlfriends in my position.
“Whenever Arben is not working, we talk on the phone. But we are married, we love each other, and we want to have a baby. Just having mobile calls over four years is not a real marriage, is it?” It seems many other women in her position are left asking themselves the same thing.