Albanians, welcoming to foreign workers/Serbia and North Macedonia, skepticism about increasing work permits
The Regional Cooperation Council's Securimeter report sheds light on the perceptions of citizens of six Western Balkan countries regarding policies for foreign workers.
Support for opening the labor market to foreign workers, provided that there are job vacancies, varies significantly across Western Balkan countries, reflecting different public approaches to labor migration.
According to the data, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo show the highest levels of acceptance for this policy, with 76.9%, 61.9% and 61.0% of respondents supporting the idea that people from other countries should be allowed to work as long as there are jobs available. This high level of support suggests a more liberal orientation and perhaps a need for labor in these economies.
Montenegro presents an average support of 52.6%, indicating a cautious but generally positive approach to labor migration, which can be linked to local market demands.
In contrast, North Macedonia and Serbia show the lowest levels of support, with around 43% of respondents accepting this policy. In the case of Serbia, this result is particularly significant, given the large number of work permits issued each year to foreign workers, which indicates a discrepancy between public perception and economic reality.
At the regional level, 56.5% of Western Balkan citizens support allowing the employment of foreigners when there are vacancies, while 62.6% prefer to impose strict restrictions on the number of foreign workers. Only 32.4% support banning entry from countries outside the region and the European Union, indicating that protectionism is not dominant, but exists as a tendency.
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