For the thousands of Kosovans who have left their country for Hungary in recent months, Vila Lira has stood as poetic reminder of the opportunities and risks of trying to sneak into the European Union.

The name of this restaurant and hotel complex in Palic, northern Serbia, resembles “Freedom Villa” in Albanian – a nod to its clientele’s hopes for a better future outside of their impoverished and isolated home country. Until last week, when Serbian authorities finally shut it down, Vila Lira had connected migrants and people smugglers who promised to get them across the nearby border to Hungary illegally. For €200 (£148) apiece, they bought their entry into the EU’s Schengen area.



On one of the days in the week before it closed, 70 Kosovan men, women and children were gathered outside. A thirtysomething man with blond hair emerged from inside with a beer in hand. “Didn’t I tell you not to stand out there on the roadside? I don’t want you to be seen outside. Get inside now,” he snapped at the migrants in colloquial Kosovan Albanian.



“We know people who have been tricked by the owner of Vila Lira,” said a Kosovan-Albanian man in his 20s called Fitim, from Broja in central Kosovo, standing with a friend on the side of the road in the muddy outskirts of Palic. “After taking everyone’s money he shops some to the Serbian police, so they have to pay them too. We are going to walk to Hungary on our own at dusk – we are not paying any trafficker.”



As Kosovo marks the seventh anniversary since it declared independence from Serbia on Tuesday, a sudden exodus is indicative of a country that has endured a difficult birth. Kosovan police say about 25,000 people have crossed illegally from Kosovo into Hungary since September to seek a new life in the EU. According to the Kosovo Intelligence Agency, that number is 50,000. Other estimates run as high as 100,000.

In one of Europe’s poorest regions, it is clear – from the nightly crowds at Pristina’s bus station, to the well-worn paths through the forests of Vojvodina and the packed trains in Hungary – that the number is substantial. The migrants usually cross into northern Serbia and then pay people smugglers to take them illegally across. By December, Kosovan citizens accounted for the largest share of people – 40% – detected illegally entering the EU’s external borders, according to Frontex, which patrols the bloc’s borders.

Serbian border police detain Kosovan nationals near Subotica. Photograph: Darko Vojinovic/AP

Hungary received 13,000 asylum requests in January, mostly from Kosovans. But for the majority, their final objective is to reach Germany. For these migrants, leaving is a big gamble. Kosovans have sold off land, homes and cars, and given up steady jobs in some cases, just as many others like them have done during the past 60 years. The journey is dangerous, and they stand a good chance of being caught by authorities. Most of those who are caught try to seek asylum, which only serves to buy time, in some cases in detention centres. Yet it seems for many, any shot at escaping is worth taking.



Earlier this month in Lluge, a village in Podujeve, Zahide Konushevci was putting ski gloves on her three children, Nita, Rinesa and Gentrit, preparing them for the long crossing across the cold forest on the Serbia-Hungary border. “It will be tough on kids to cross that border, walk on foot in this winter weather, but it is better to suffer hardship for a few days rather than suffer hardship for the rest of your life,” their father, Isa Konushevci, said.



About 200 people have left this village of 2,000 people in the past four months. Isa, along with 100 others, used to work at a factory that produced sunflower oil. When business slowed, the company cut their staff back to 30 people.



Last week, the Konushevci family was one of those struggling through the crowds at the bus station in Pristina. In recent weeks, the station has been packed with would-be migrants and their families, wrapped in goodbyes. Additional bus routes, have been added to meet demand. When the Konushevcis eventually found their bus, they had to stand because it was so crowded.



“I don’t know exactly where I am heading but I am dreaming of a place where my children will have proper education and where they won’t need connections to get a job once they graduate and where neither of us need to bribe the doctor if we need health services,” Isa said on board the bus. “The government did not prove they can provide us with any of this, and I never thought I would be here 15 years after the war.”

The family’s journey would not be an easy one; Serbian police arrested them a few days later in Subotica, near the Hungarian border. They were released after paying a fine, according to Isa’s brother, Gazmend. “They are now in Budapest and they told me they suffered tremendously on the road,” he said.



It is not known what exactly has caused the dramatic increase in migration from Kosovo in recent months, though many point to the country’s economy. Unemployment has stayed between 40% – 50% for a decade, despite average annual economic growth of 4%.



Hungarian police check the documents of a Kosovan family at Keleti train station in Budapest. Photograph: Bernadett Szabo/Reuters

“People do not die of hunger in Kosovo and they are not leaving because of lack of food on the table,” says Armend Malazogu, who runs Frutomania, a company that employs 70 people all year round and 300 seasonal workers making fruit juices. Malazogu said he knew of two of employees who had left for the EU.

“They are leaving because the authorities have not been able to provide good education and good health for them – so all in all, they leave because they want their kids to achieve more than their parents in terms of education and because they want to be served by a health system that does not let them down.”



The surge in migration has not failed to attract attention in Kosovo and the EU. This week, Germany said it would send 20 police officers to the border between Hungary and Serbia to help control the flood. Frontex forces are also expected to be strengthened there.



Kosovo’s president Atifete Jahjaga, a former policewoman, has pleaded with citizens to stay put. “We know that Kosovo is not in the condition which we wanted it to be today but emigration is not the solution,” she said in a town hall meeting in Ferizaj earlier this month.



Agron Demi of the GAP Institute, a Pristina-based economic thinktank, disagrees, saying history has told many Kosovans that migration can bring significant economic benefits. The diaspora numbers in the hundreds of thousands and grows each year, with the largest number in Germany and Switzerland. They typically send home more than a €500m each year – an important driver of the home economy.



“Considering that a large part of Kosovo’s population currently lives on remittances – money sent back by family members living and working abroad in places like Germany - Kosovans who are sick of living like that just want to try making money for themselves,” he said.



The odds are stacked against them, however. In Germany, about 99% of asylum applications from Kosovans were rejected last year and in January the approval rate was reported to have dropped even lower to 0.3%. “The hope of a better life in Germany is not a justified one,” Manfred Schmidt, president of Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees told Deutsche Welle.



“We’ve always been told that the vast majority of the illegal migrants have no status rights and will be sent back,” Kovoso’s interior minister, Skender Hyseni, said. “I hope that happens quickly.”



Jeta Xharra is director of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Kosovo, which produces www.balkaninsight.com

