‘Albania: €1’ or the story of ‘big policies, small outcomes’: how Albania constructs and engages its diaspora

Since the fall of the communist regime in the early 1990s, Albania has experienced one of the most significant emigrations in the world as a share of its population. By 2010 almost half of its resident population was estimated to be living abroad – primarily in neighbouring Greece and Italy, but also in the UK and North America. This chapter discusses the emergence and establishment of the Albanian diaspora, its temporal and geographical diversity, and not least its involvement with Albania itself. Albania’s policymaking and key institutions are considered, with a focus on matters of citizenship; voting rights; the debate on migration and development; and not least the complex ways in which kin-state minority policies – related to ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo, Montenegro, southern Serbia, Macedonia and Greece – are interwoven with Albania’s emigration policies

Da Valona ad Otranto: rapida evoluzione di un modello migratorio

a cura di BARJABA K, Ed Franco Angel

Remittances, return, diaspora: framing the debate in the context of Albania and Kosova

This paper is an introduction to the special issue and is in five parts. The first part provides a brief overview of post-1990 migration from Albania as a route out of poverty and a quest for freedom and self-realization for Albanians. The Kosovan migration has a different history: labour migration in the 1960s and early 1970s, refugee flight in the 1990s. Then the authors outline a theoretical framework for migration's contribution to development. Third, this framework is applied to the cases of Albania and Kosova, drawing on findings from the papers in this issue and other literature. The fourth section of the paper revisits the migration-development nexus from a policy perspective, examining in turn remittances, return migration and host- and home-country government responsibilities. Finally, we speculate on the global economic crisis that started in mid-2008 and its impact on the region and its migrants