MONTENEGRO: GERMANY’S BALKAN STIPENds – Asylum and the Rožaje exodus
MONTENEGRO: GERMANY’S BALKAN STIPENds – Asylum and the Rožaje exodus

Author(s): Author Not Specified
Subject(s): Migration Studies, Asylum, Refugees, Migration as Policy-fields
Published by: ESI – European Stability Initiative
Keywords: Asylum; Rožaje; emigration from Montenegro;
Summary/Abstract: In 2015, many Montenegrins went directly to the Braunschweig reception centre; when an NGO visited it in June it met hundreds of people from northern Montenegro. There, Halima and her relatives filled out a form. They provided personal data and fingerprints. They did not have to explain then why they applied for asylum (they did this in an interview a few weeks later, referring to their desperate economic situation). They spent the first three days in the reception centre, before being taken to a hostel. Two weeks later, they were assigned a house in a village near Bremen. A social worker visited them regularly to see how they were doing; there were bikes provided for them to move around. In late August, they were allocated a house with two floors in a small town closer to a kindergarten for Halima’s daughter. “It is equipped with modern household appliances and there is even a garden,” they told relatives in their village. In addition to free housing and health care, the five receive a total of € 1,290 per month. This is more than five times the monthly salary in the private sector in their municipality. It means even more for them; in their village, almost nobody has a job and many households do not get any social aid.

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