‘Why did you come here?’ says Arta S, rolling her eyes and smiling. The 37-year-old says that’s the first question people ask her when they find out that she’s from Albania. She arrived in London in 2019 with her husband and two children, now eight and five, and was granted asylum after ‘six hard months’ where she was placed in ‘two houses full of mould’.

Things are better now. Today she’s wearing a sparkly headband and a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Today is a Good Day’. She lives in Stratford and works in recruitment. So… why did she leave the small Balkan nation just north of Greece? ‘Albania is an amazing country,’ she says. ‘It has beautiful landscapes and many sunny days… but not everything that glitters is gold.’

Arta is keen to stress to me that she didn’t arrive by boat, but in recent months many Albanians have done just that. According to Home Office figures, from May to September last year, Albanian nationals made up 42 per cent of small boat crossings — 11,102 Albanians arrived this way in just five months (in the whole of 2020, only 50 Albanians made this journey). Dan O’Mahoney, formerly the clandestine Channel threat commander, estimated that 1-2 per cent of Albania’s entire adult male population had come here this way (a figure which Albanian officials dispute). ‘There are undoubtedly people who need our help — but there is also a large number who are deliberately gaming the system,’ he told MPs.

This spike in Albanian arrivals is partly what led Home Secretary Suella Braverman to talk of ‘an invasion on our southern coast’. It also inspired the deeply controversial Illegal Migration Bill which the Government is currently trying to pass through Parliament, which would allow anyone arriving by small boat — even children — to be immediately deported. In November, there were protests at Westminster with banners reading ‘Not all Albanians are criminals’ and the Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama, tweeted: ‘[The] UK should fight the crime gangs of all nationalities and stop discriminating [against] Albanians to excuse policy failures.’

So what’s behind this surge in arrivals from a small and, by all accounts, beautiful place, which Rishi Sunak has described as ‘safe and prosperous country’? Usually a rise in migration from a single area is triggered by the outbreak of war or a natural disaster, but Albania’s problems are deep-rooted and more complex. Dr Andi Hoxhaj, a Balkan expert and lecturer in law at University College London (UCL), moved to London from Vlora, southern Albania in 2004. He now lives in west London and recently gave evidence at a home affairs select committee inquiry into Albanian migration.

‘Most Albanians willingly migrate because of the political and economic instability, corruption, lack of meritocracy and employment, and low wages,’ he says. ‘But others are tricked into travelling to Britain. Albanian organised crime networks based in the UK and northern France have strengthened their ties to impoverished rural areas of Albania, and they are focused on luring young Albanian men to the UK to work and engage in illegal activities, like cannabis farming.’ Albanians are the most common victims of modern slavery in the UK, although part of the Government’s new bill would make it more difficult for people to claim this.

Dr Hoxhaj explains that last summer’s spike might be down to the route to the UK becoming more affordable. Traffickers used to charge £15-20k to smuggle someone to the UK, often via lorry, now small boat crossings can cost as little as £3,000 and services are advertised on social media. One TikTok clip shows a boat speeding towards the white cliffs of Dover, with the words ‘F*** school. Let’s take the boat to England’ in Albanian. Another post reads ‘Departures everyday… We can take families also. You come today and leave tomorrow. We are the first and the best (for boats).’ The post has 2,706 likes and 52 comments.

"Youngsters are bullied in schools because they are Albanians. A young mum told me her son didn’t like to go to school any more because all his friends called him an Albanian criminal"

Although the journey is fraught with risk — another four people died trying to make the crossing in December — for people living in one of Europe’s poorest countries, where the average salary is 66,000 Albanian leks a month (about £500), it might feel like the only option. Albania has one of the youngest populations in Europe and they don’t have many prospects. ‘Young people in Albania have lost hope that things will get better for their generation,’ says Dr Hoxhaj. ‘They see migration as their only way out.’

On a street in Canning Town which sums up London’s cultural diversity — there’s a pie and mash shop, a Polish superma rket, a mosque a nd a Ukrainian restaurant — you’ll find Shpresa. This charity works to help recent Albanian arrivals integrate into the UK. Here staff offer language classes and advice sessions alongside a food and clothing bank. Outside I meet Ari, 20 (many of the Albanians I meet don’t want to give their full name for fear of attacks or discrimination). He arrived here by boat last summer.

‘While you wait for your case to be processed you have nothing to do, [there are] people offering jobs to sell drugs, they make it seem so easy,’ he says. ‘If police catch you, you end up in prison. Because you don’t have any option that’s what seems right. I don’t have enough money — you think: okay, if I get caught, I go to prison, but at least that is better than being in Albania and risking my life.

From the Taken movies to the Gangs of London TV drama, Albanians are often portrayed as gangsters. But how accurate is that depiction? Albanians make up the largest group of foreigners in prisons in England and Wales, roughly 14 per cent of the more than 9,200 foreign nationals. According to the NCA (National Crime Agency), Albanian organised crime networks are the most influential players in the London drug market. If you recently did a line at a party, chances are it passed through the hands of Hellbanianz.

This notorious gang, based on the Gascoigne Estate in Barking, regularly post trap videos and pictures of Ferraris, fans of £50 notes and guns to lure ‘falcons’ — fresh recruits. Behind the street dealings of Hellbanianz is the Mafia Shqiptare, the Albanian organised crime syndicate which now dominates the drug trade by negotiating directly with Colombian cartels for huge shipments of cocaine and setting up industrial-scale cannabis farms.

But the fast cars and wads of cash are a world away from everyday life for the vast majority of the estimated 150,000 Albanians making a life in the UK, yet many feel demonised by the current debate about migration. Ari says he never puts the word ‘Albanian’ on his CV, and has friends who pretend to be Polish if questioned.

‘This campaign of discrimination against Albanians living here in the UK should stop,’ says Qirjako Qirko, the Albanian Ambassador in London. ‘There are people, especially youngsters, who are bullied in their schools because they are Albanians. Yesterday I had a young mum, she had a child of three or four years old, and her son didn’t like to go to school any more because all his friends called him an Albanian criminal. Albanian doctors, lawyers, engineers, labourers of all sorts, pay taxes and contribute to British society. Any other [negative] portrayal of Albanians in the UK is a demonstration of a lack of knowledge of this reality. Reinforcing negative stereotypes over a prolonged time fosters only discrimination and racism.’

‘All the Albanians I know are taxpayers who want to contribute to society,’ agrees Arta, who also runs visits to London museums for refugee families through the charity Fences & Frontiers. ‘We work hard and it feels very bad to see these negative stories about us. Politicians need to understand that how they communicate with people, the language they use, has a direct effect on us.’

Arta is emphatic when I ask her whether Albania is a safe country. ‘It may not have a war, but it is not a safe country.’ She doesn’t want to go into detail about the incident which made her flee but says: ‘When something happens to you, and you go to the police, and nothing is done, you know corruption is at every level of society from the top down.’

To understand the Albanian diaspora we need a brief history lesson. Under the rule of the dictator Enver Hoxha from 1944-1985, Albania was known as ‘Europe’s North Korea’. Travel was banned, as were beards and religion. Bunkers were erected and political prisoners were kept in gulags. With the fall of Communism in the 1990s, Albanians were able to travel for the first time and when the economy collapsed in 1997, hundreds of thousands fled, many to the UK. Ties with England are so strong that Albania even has a ‘Little London’ in the north-east region of Has, where you’ll find red phone boxes and British-themed bars.

This mass exodus hasn’t really slowed down. Estimates suggest around 40,000 Albanians leave the country every year. According to a Gallup poll, 60 per cent of the adult population want to migrate. Albania has been trying to join the EU since 2009, and it is hoped that when it does it will bring much-needed investment and opportunity.

When I ask Dr Hoxhaj to characterise the Albanian psyche, the word he uses is ambition. ‘Albanian people have had centuries of being oppressed, by the Ottomans, by Communism, so they have suffered a lot and now they feel they have a lot to achieve very quickly,’ he explains. ‘They want to make money and get the top jobs, and they are willing to take major risks to do so, which would take more than three generations in other societies.’

Ari says his mother pleads with him to come back to Albania. He has been here six months and is unable to open a bank account, rent a house or legally work, although he has earned money washing cars and doing manual labour. ‘I’m not a criminal,’ he says. ‘I just dreamt of a better life in a big country.’