Every day, I see the same email with the same boring phrase in my inbox: ‘Thank you for your interest in this role, but we have decided not to take your application further.’
It always makes me stop and reflect: Was it worth spending £35,000 to leave my home in Albania for London? Has moving to the UK really changed my life for the better?
Studying in London was always my dream.
I grew up in a working-class family in one of the poorest regions in northern Albania, Kukës, and since I was a teenager, I have wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to tell the truth about society, and Albania didn’t offer me any options for a good career.
I believe media independence is key, and the latest index from Reporters Without Borders ranks my native country 99th out of 180 countries for press freedom.
I wanted to discover where I belonged, and I was eager to find other opportunities. Abroad, these seemed endless and I knew that London had some of the best universities in the world, especially for journalism.
In 2024, I got accepted to study a masters in journalism at City, University of London.
At the same time, I secured a job as a communication campaign lead coordinator for an international NGO in Albania, to help me save up some money. Then my brother in Italy helped me by getting a £10,000 loan to pay my university fees and visa costs.
Last September, after I passed an English Language test, I applied for a UK student visa in Albania. Soon, I received my passport with a visa sticker and it was at that moment I knew that I’d done it: my dream was coming true, and I was moving to the UK to study in London.
When I first said to my parents that I wanted to go to the UK, my dad, previously a migrant in Italy, was against it. His own experiences made him scared that I’d never come back once I left.
My mum, who is a former teacher, was more positive: she has always been a supporter of my education and wanted me to be educated outside of Albania.
So, in the early hours of 15 September, 2023, at Tirana airport, I said goodbye to my parents as they cried.
I headed to the check-in desk with a dream of making myself and my family proud – excited about what was to come, but sad and guilty about leaving my parents behind. All without really knowing if I would come back.
‘Where are you coming from? Is it your first time here? What are you studying? Which university?’ These testing questions were the first communication I had in the UK with the migration officer. Then, I was asked for my fingerprints.
I wasn’t surprised to be treated with suspicion knowing the rhetoric against Albanians on the issue of illegal migration in the media, and in British politics.
Once famous for its nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize for welcoming thousands of refugees during the war in Kosovo, my hometown of Kukës is now known as a source of illegal immigrants to the UK.
Yet, when I started university in London, that suspicion faded away. My English friends and professors were curious to learn about my small country in southeastern Europe.
All the facilities that the university offered, like access to hundreds of online resources to study and the professionalism of the teaching staff, were what I expected and hoped for. I couldn’t have been more excited.
One of my first assignments was to interview people for news stories in Hackney, which was challenging, but helped me to get to know new people and places.
Most of my classmates were English, and I started to socialise with them, often in the pub after classes in the first month. I thought it would be difficult to make new friends, but for me, it was easy.
And so London was great in those first days. I loved the city’s architecture and its vibe, especially the pubs, and cultural life like museums and libraries. As a Chelsea football fan, I visited Stamford Bridge stadium, too.
Thankfully, my relatives offered me a place to live in South London, which felt a little like being home. But I didn’t know that I’d accidentally moved from a poor country, to one of the poorest places in the the capital: Croydon.
When Albanian migrants return to Albania on holiday, they show off their luxury UK lifestyles. Things like UK licence plates and brand new clothes from North Face, or opening a business in the country with the money made in the UK, create the fake reality of a wealthy and rich life offered abroad.
The reality is very different.
In Croydon, I saw countless young homeless people, especially in train stations. I saw people eating unhealthy foods because they didn’t have another option and vaping constantly. After one month of seeing first-hand the poverty in the UK, my illusion of a great country was being destroyed.
I was also finding it impossible to get a journalism-related job. Even if I could, the maximum salary for UK journalism jobs at my level seems to be about £33,000 a year, which I’d find hard to live on in London when I’d need to pay £3,000 for a graduate visa to have the right to work for two more years.
The job I left in Albania, which was not well-paid, had a medium monthly salary of £500, but at least I had money left in my pocket after payday.
After five months studying in the UK, I felt I had no choice but to sign up at a construction site to earn what I could. It was very easy to find a job in this industry through my Albanian connections – it’s an industry preferred by my compatriots because it’s those who come here illegally have found work in its ranks.
On a site, I got talking to a young Albanian man who told me he had come to the UK illegally in a small boat two years before. ‘Do you like it here?’ I asked him.
‘No, I don’t like it,’ he said, ‘but what can I do in Albania? I can’t return.’ Obviously, he was disappointed with the life he found here, but had no other option.
He didn’t have the same fortune as I did to study, and many illegal Albanian migrants have to support their families financially back home. If life was so hard for me with a visa, how hard must it be for them?
After seven months, I had to pay £50 to see an emergency dentist. The fee shocked me. After telling the dentist my nationality, he sincerely suggested that I should go back to Albania as dental care there is much cheaper than here. I thought, again, about the man on the building site – what would he do in my situation?
It’s been a year now, and I feel exhausted from the difficulties I have faced in my new life in the UK.
Other migrants’ sacrifices give me hope, and encourage me not to give up until I find a job, but I can’t help but feel conflicted.
With all the money spent, lack of well-paid journalism work as well as the sacrifice of not seeing my family and friends, I don’t know if it’s possible for me to stay – to make a life here, and fulfil my dreams. Working in construction made me understand that I’d never have the social position I used to have in my country.
Even if things don’t go well and I have to go back to Albania, I’ll let young people who dream of coming here for a better life know the truth.
It doesn’t exist. It’s not worth it.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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