‘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

A population on the move: migration and gender relations in Albania

Under the harshest communist regime in Europe, emigration from Albania was impossible, and internal migration was tightly controlled. After 1990, everything changed. Twenty years later, 1.4 million Albanians, equivalent to half of Albania’s resident population, live abroad; internal migration has also taken place on a massive scale. This paper describes these largescale migrations within the broader setting of ‘post-Wall’ European mobility and relates them to the changing context of gender relations in Albania

“Left Like Stones in the Middle of the Road”: Narratives of Aging Alone and Coping Strategies in Rural Albania and Bulgaria

Objectives We explore and compare older adults’ lived experiences and coping strategies in two postcommunist countries—Albania and Bulgaria. Wholesale youth outmigration and economic and institutional regional decline have led to decaying rural areas where older adults become “abandoned.” Aging alone, as couples or widowed, they are socially marginalized and in constant search for coping mechanisms which enable them to survive. Methods We adopt a social-psychology theoretical framework which distinguishes between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping. Data include 28 in-depth interviews with older residents and participant observation in selected rural areas of the two countries. Results In both countries, rural social isolation is expressed as a lack of close family ties—mainly due to the removal through outmigration of children and grandchildren—and detachment from society at large. The most prevalent coping mechanism consists of practical and emotional support from non-kin ties, especially neighbors. Remittances help to resolve material needs, especially in Albania, where most rural young people migrate abroad. In both settings, a range of emotion-focused coping strategies were identified, including perceptions of decreased needs, lowered expectations about relationships, and satisfaction at the achievements of the younger generations. Discussion Similarities between research findings in Albania and Bulgaria reflect their shared political and institutional history. Although few, differences relate to a combination of contrasting migration and cultural patterns. In both settings problem- and emotion-focused adaptive strategies are overlapping, and successful aging efforts seem to be of a communal rather than an individualistic nature

Ageing and later life: unsettling development assumptions

This Special Issue brings into focus the topic of ageing and the group of older people, both of which have been neglected and/or narrowly addressed in development studies and policymaking. As such, this collection of articles seeks to unsettle some of the stereotypes that are commonplace in development debates that tend to portray older people as frail, vulnerable, burdensome and passive. It does so by looking at the process of ageing and the lived experiences of older people across a range of topics and geographical locations. We hope that through this collection we have initiated a conversation around the place of ageing and older people in development from a relational and intergenerational perspective; that is, from a perspective that is focused around interdependence between older people and wider society rather than one restricted to the dependence of the former on the latter

Sapientia, 1949, Vol. IV, nº 11 (número completo)

Contenido: El existencialismo, último estadio de la desintegración de la filosofía moderna / La Dirección – El dato inicial de la metafísica existencialista / Ángel González Álvarez – El pensamiento de Kierkegaard / Régis Jolivet – El problema del historicismo y la distinción real entre esencia y existencia / Alberto García Vieyra – Valoración crítica del existencialismo / Octavio Nicolás Derisi – Notas y comentarios -- Bibliografí

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