Albanians are one of the most stressed nationalities in Europe, according to a recent survey by Gallup.
The 2018 Global Emotions Report measured the emotions of over 154,000 people in 145 countries. An average of 1000 citizens per country were asked a series of questions including “did you experience stress in the last 24 hours?” and “were you treated with respect all day yesterday?”
The results showed that 55% of Albanians surveyed experienced stress in the last day, second only to neighbours Greece with 59%. Cyprus came in third place with 51% and Italy with 48%. On a global scale, Albanians are the fourth most stressed people in the world, on a par with Iran and Sri Lanka.
The least stressed out nations were Ukraine and Estonia with just 18% of citizens saying they felt stressed recently, closely followed by Latvia and Denmark with 20%.
Interestingly, countries such as Venezuela which is currently in the grip of a severe economic and political crisis, placed 8 positions better than Albania.
In addition to this, less than half of Albanians said they did or learnt something interesting in the last day, and around 50% said they had five or more negative things happen to them during the last 24 hours.
Albanians were also ranked as highly emotional with almost 60% of those surveyed considering themselves as such. Unfortunately it seems that this emotion is mainly anger, if the results are to be believed. It seems that the Mediterranean climate does little to cheer the mood on a local level.
In another survey conducted by Gallup that was released in January, Albanians were found to rank fourth out of 152 countries for number of adults that want to leave the country. The survey stated that around 60% wanted to migrate, putting the country in the same ballpark as Haiti, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The report also found that citizens in war-torn Syria were more inclined to stay in their country than your average Albanian.
According to another report, this time conducted by the Eurostat- Albania holds the world record for the highest number of asylum seekers in relation to the size population. It also has one of the lowest rates of recognition of applications at just 8%.
Since 2011, almost 100,000 Albanian applications have been rejected in an EU Member state with the highest number of refusals occurring in 2016 with 34,000 applications refused.
In 2018, a total of 19,025 Albanians applied for asylum, and in terms of the population, more Albanians want to flee than many who are living in war torn countries. For every 1000 Albanian citizens, 6.6 applied for asylum, placing the country above Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Even more alarming is the fact that Albania has the highest number of unaccompanied minor asylum applications in the Balkans. According to figures from Eurostat, in 2018 alone a total of 475 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in EU countries, accounting for around 2.5% of global applications of this type.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) 2,001 Albanian citizens applied for asylum in the UK, ranking alongside Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and the “pariah state” of Eritrea.
These statistics are quite staggering when you consider that Albania is not at war, is considered a “safe country of origin”, and is hoping to open EU negotiations in June.
