‘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

Gendered relations and filial duties along the Greek-Albanian remittance corridor

Remittances stand at the heart of the migrationdevelopment debate. However, they are overwhelmingly considered in financial and economic terms, neglecting important dimensions, such as gender and patriarchal family structures. This article contributes to rectifying this oversight by analyzing flows of remittances resulting from Albanian migration to neighboring Greece. We draw on a detailed questionnaire survey with 350 remittance-recipient households in rural southeast Albania and 45 in-depth interviews with a selection of these respondents and with remitters living in the Greek city of Thessaloniki. We found that gender is interlinked with generation and life-course stages within the context of Albanian patriarchal norms and that remittances are shaped accordingly. Although remitting to older parents is a filial duty for unmarried sons, upon marriage only the youngest son has this responsibility—other sons send small amounts as tokens of respect and love. Sending remittances is overwhelmingly seen as a “male thing.” Single young women rarely migrate on their own for work abroad. Meanwhile any remittances sent by married daughters to their parents are considered “unofficial,” referred to as “coffee money.” Within nuclear households, some increased power-sharing among husband remitters and wife recipients takes place. However, the latter are far from passive recipients, since they struggle to combine caring for children and the elderly with farmwork or day labor. We conclude that a deeper understanding of how remittances are gendered can be gained by placing their analysis within the migratory and sociocultural context into which they are embedded.ecge_1128 393..42

Exploring Links between Internal and International Migration in Albania:a View from Internal Migrants

Over the last 20years, Albania has experienced sweeping economic and social changes, caused in part by increasing internal and international migration flows. Migration trajectories of Albanians represent a combination of internal, international, and return migration. Whereas scholars have previously focused mainly on international migration, the current research explores the dynamics between internal and international migration. Typically, the internal migration of a family is supported, psychologically and financially, by the international migration of other household members. This paper reports on the influence that social and economic remittances have on the livelihoods of internal migrants. Using an ethnographic approach, financial and social remittances were shown to improve internal migrants' quality of life, assisting their adjustment process. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd