Anđela Despotović

Auslender

Coming as a student is a privileged way for Bosnians to migrate to Germany. Only a tiny number receive a scholarship, as a Bosnian Serb, a Bosnian Croat, a Bosnian Bosniak, hung with the mission to foster peace in Bosnia while getting an education abroad. And here we are, toiling away for a living and an uncertain future.

170 000 Bosnians left Bosnia in 2021 alone, which marked the highest rate of annual emigration since the Dayton agreement was signed – and Andrej and I contributed to this number as well, thanks to our admission to a university in Germany. As receivers of substantial scholarships we might have had a more pleasant journey than most, but only in terms of border control, legal and visa issues. It is true that this anxiety applies only to me, as Andrej holds a Croatian (EU) passport, which Bosnian Croats are entitled to. I could also get a Serbian one, but Serbia is not in the EU, it doesn’t make any difference, and that’s another story. So once we made this step of entering the promised (read German) land, we basically got the hardest part done. Now I only have to think about how to maintain, extend, prolong and trade my papers. In this sense, having a job is for me a priority over studying, because no money for housing means no university… and no visa. 

Meanwhile, Bosnia is depopulating. Bosnia counts around 3.3 million inhabitants, and government sources estimate that around two million Bosnian citizens live in the diasporas. The population decline for the next thirty years is projected to be almost twenty percent. Sixty percent of the people leaving Bosnia migrate to countries in the European Union, with Germany being in first place, hosting around 204 000 people with Bosnian citizenship. However, the number of Bosnians is even higher when accounting all the people that came to Germany during the war and have by now acquired German citizenship. I have six relatives living in Germany. Four of them by now only hold German citizenship. 

Video, 2022