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Contemporary · ·5 min read

Sarajevo — the new hotels are going up, and the workers building them flew in from Nepal and India

Nejira Pašić's University of Sarajevo employer survey documents the shift. Construction and hospitality labour used to come from Serbia and Turkey. Between 2023 and 2024, work permits for Indian nationals rose 168.3%, Nepalese 88.8%, Chinese 39.4%. About 17,000 total foreign permits in 2024, up from under 3,000 in 2019. And 50% of employers still hesitate about non-European hires.

By Nedim Hadzimahmutovic · Sarajevo

Walk through Marijin Dvor, Ilidža, or the Skenderija axis today and you’ll see new hotel construction sites at multiple locations. Most target the tourism boom that has come to Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2019 (with a Gulf-tourism component the site has covered separately).

What’s less visible from the street: most workers on those sites aren’t Bosnian. Increasingly, they’re not from the traditional labour-source countries either. They’re from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and China.

Nejira Pašić’s 2025 University of Sarajevo employer survey is one of the first academic-sociological readings of the shift. It doesn’t include worker interviews, it’s employer-side only, but as a baseline document of what’s happening in Sarajevo’s tourism-construction economy in 2024, it’s the source.

The numbers

Pašić’s study draws on data from the Agencija za rad i zapošljavanje BiH (BiH Employment Agency), the state agency that administers foreign-worker work-permit approvals.

Work permits issued in 2024 vs. 2023:

  • Indian nationals: +168.3%.
  • Nepalese nationals: +88.8%.
  • Chinese nationals: +39.4%.
  • Bangladeshi nationals: not itemised individually but included in a “South Asian, other” category that also grew.
  • Serbian nationals: -4%.
  • Croatian nationals: -6%.
  • Turkish nationals: modest +12%.

The 2024 total foreign-worker work permits in Bosnia and Herzegovina was about 17,000, up from under 3,000 in 2019. About 65% of the 2024 total went to jobs in construction and hospitality, the two sectors most directly driving the tourism-construction boom.

Where the workers go

Pašić surveyed 64 BiH employers across labour-intensive sectors (construction, hospitality, food service, cleaning, security). The findings on where non-European foreign workers are placed:

  • Construction: about 42% of surveyed sites employ non-European foreign workers as the majority of site labour. Skilled roles (electricians, plumbers) tend to be Turkish or Serbian. Unskilled and semi-skilled (labourers, scaffolders, tile-setters) tend to be Indian, Nepalese, or Bangladeshi.
  • Hospitality: about 28% of surveyed hotels employ non-European workers, mostly back-of-house (kitchen prep, cleaning, laundry). Front-of-house (waiters, receptionists) still mostly Bosnian, for the language reason.
  • Food service and cleaning: about 35% of surveyed cleaning-service companies and 22% of food-service operations.

Why the shift

Pašić’s employer interviews (about 20 of the 64) capture the reasoning.

Bosnian workers aren’t available. The Bosnian working-age population has been in demographic decline for two decades, emigration to the EU, low birth rates, post-war population loss. The construction and hospitality sectors face chronic labour shortages.

Turkish and Serbian workers are getting expensive. The wage-differential that made Turkish and Serbian construction labour cheap for Bosnian employers in 2005–2020 has been closing. Turkish workers command wages close to Bosnian wages for equivalent skill levels.

New source-country workers accept lower wages. Indian, Nepalese, Bangladeshi workers will accept wages about 40–60% below the equivalent Bosnian wage for unskilled and semi-skilled roles.

The 50% hesitation

Half of the surveyed employers, Pašić p. 184, express hesitation about non-European hires. The reasons cited:

  • Language barriers. Most incoming workers speak no Bosnian and limited English.
  • Cultural adaptation. Dietary requirements (Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist food practices), accommodation logistics (multi-person shared housing), religious observance patterns.
  • Community integration. A number of employers expressed concern about the reception of non-European workers by Bosnian co-workers and by residents in neighbourhoods where workers are housed.
  • Regulatory uncertainty. The 2023–2024 rapid increase in work permits has run ahead of the administrative-social infrastructure. Housing, health services, worker-rights enforcement are underdeveloped.

The hesitation hasn’t slowed the hiring rate. The labour shortage is severe enough that operational necessity overrides it.

The worker perspective

Pašić’s study doesn’t include worker interviews. It’s an employer-side survey. The worker perspective is a gap in the current sociological literature. Pašić flags this as a limitation on p. 186.

A subsequent field study, likely 2026 or 2027 SSSR volumes, will presumably address it. For now, the documentation is one-sided.

The general pattern in parallel EU studies (Poland, Czechia, Hungary), which have had similar labour-import surges: Indian, Nepalese, and Bangladeshi workers typically arrive on multi-year contracts, live in employer-arranged shared housing, remit substantial fractions of their wages home, and return home after 2–4 years.

Whether Sarajevo will follow that pattern isn’t yet documented.

Why this matters

The shift is one of the most visible economic-geographical changes in Sarajevo in the last three years, and it’s largely invisible to the tourist.

If you stay in a hotel in Sarajevo in 2026, the building was probably constructed by workers from Kathmandu or Delhi, and the back-of-house kitchen and cleaning staff are probably from those countries too. The labour geography of the tourism industry has changed in three years, and it’s outpaced the administrative-social infrastructure that would normally accompany a labour transition of that size.

This is one piece of what a tourism boom looks like when it happens in a labour-scarce country. Hotel prices, route changes, and pressure on city services are covered elsewhere on the site.

What to do with this

If you engage with construction workers in Sarajevo, be aware that most speak neither Bosnian nor English. Basic gestures, a bujrum (welcome), a nod, an offer of water on a hot day, travel regardless of language.

If you eat at a hotel restaurant or a chain restaurant in central Sarajevo, back-of-house staff may be South Asian. Front-of-house is still mostly Bosnian.

If you want to read Pašić’s study, it’s in Sarajevski žurnal za društvena pitanja Vol. 14 (2025), pp. 181–187. Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Sarajevo.

Sources

  • Nejira Pašić, Trends in Labour Market Migration in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Sarajevski žurnal za društvena pitanja Vol. 14, No. 1-2 (2025), pp. 181–187.
  • Agencija za rad i zapošljavanje BiH — Work permit statistics for foreign nationals, 2023–2024.
  • Related site coverage: Sarajevo’s tourism map is now Gulf-shaped.

Sources & further reading

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