Remittances in Albania in the Frame Work of South-Eastern European Countries and Crises Gripped European Union Members

Abstract

Our study aims at defining the reasons of a downward trend of remittances in Albania lately. We mainly adopted the method of the questionnaire to study such a topic. Our questionnaire covers Albanian migrants in Greece and Italy. The analyses of the data provided by our questionnaire defines such factors influencing the level of the remittances: -The economic crises i.e. the economic situation in the host country; -Job insecurity and wage lowering; -Living cost increase as well as rising costs of children's education; -Family reunion; -Weaker links of the migrants and his family members in Albania. Our study attempts that using rather simple methods to rank the factors influencing the money flow of the remittances based on their importance. There is quite a host of methods to analyze the main factors yet we adopted one of the simplest methods that of the contingences tables and Log-Linear Models for Contingency Tables as the data offered by the questionnaire are subjective ones and not so massive, too. The data on the money flow of the remittances are rather few and unstable ones thus all the predictions based on all other methods offer similar results. We stress the fact that it is beyond any doubt that the remittances follow a downward trend every year. Judging by the models there is a very law probability to this series that it changes its trend (i.e.it increases). The main factors influencing the flow of the remittances to Albania are the economic crises and the family reunion.