Abstract
Albania's restrictions and planning controls on rural-to-urban migration make its efforts to restrict citizens' mobility among the most vigorous in the world. Prior to its fall in 1990, the government used allocated housing, rationing of goods, restricted employment at enterprises, and requirements for permission to change domicile, to live in urban areas, and to carry a domestic passport or identity card, to keep people in the countryside. Since early 1991 there has been a mass exodus to the cities, though its scale and effects remain uncertain.