Suchergebnisse

Dit boek is een academische en persoonlijke reis naar het postcommunistisch Albanië om inzicht te krijgen in de relatie tussen de interne en internationale migratie en hun invloed op de maatschappelijke ontwikkeling. De auteur volgt de trek van dorpelingen naar steden in het binnenland en buitenland. Door middel van aanzienlijke diepte-interviews, reeks groepsgesprekken en etnografische opmerkingen wordt hun leefomgeving in kaart gebracht. Deze multi-sited, multidisciplinaire en multiniveau benadering maakt onderzoek naar beide migratiesoorten, als onderling verbonden en sociaal ingebedde processen, mogelijk. Zij laat zien hoe deze verwevenheid aanzienlijk invloed uitoefent op de levens van migranten, hun families, hun gemeenschap van herkomst en het land

An academic and personal journey into Albania's post-communist society, examining the links between internal and international migration in one of Europe's poorest countries. Starting from a cluster of villages in south-east Albania, the author follows rural migrants to their native urban destinations within the country as well as abroad to Thessaloniki, Greece. Migrants' lives, experiences and feelings are captured through 150 in-depth interviews, a number of group discussions and ethnographic observations.

An academic and personal journey into Albania's post-communist society, examining the links between internal and international migration in one of Europe's poorest countries. Starting from a cluster of villages in south-east Albania, the author follows rural migrants to their native urban destinations within the country as well as abroad to Thessaloniki, Greece. Migrants' lives, experiences and feelings are captured through 150 in-depth interviews, a number of group discussions and ethnographic observations

Starting from a cluster of villages in southeast Albania, Albanian-born British scholar Julie Vullnetari follows rural migrants to domestic urban destinations such as Tirana and abroad to Thessaloniki in Greece. Vullnetari has conducted more than 150 interviews, and drawing upon this rich empirical material, she offers a profound account of Albanian migration from start to finish. A rare, exhaustive overview of Albania's post-communist internal and international migrations, Albania on the Move is a powerful combination of ethnography and multifaceted academic analysis, grounded in the personal experience of the author.

This article applies a generational lens to understanding the role of older people in development, focusing primarily on older parents who stay in areas of origin while their adult children emigrate. An emerging body of literature from around the world demonstrates that older parents frequently provide childcare for their migrant family members, mainly in the country of origin, and sometimes through migrating themselves. This article goes further. It makes the conceptual argument that this carework should be regarded as development work. Drawing on research into Albanian families, located in Albania and Greece, the article asks how does carework by older people contribute to development and what are the relations of power around this? The analysis shows that grandparents provide significant support particularly for childcare but also for social reproduction and critically for building and maintaining productive assets and safety nets for migrants in their home country. In short, grandparent carers are the lynchpins in complex intergenerational strategies of migration and livelihood development. The analysis contributes to the literature on migration and development by bringing older people from the margins to the centre of these debates. Older people's childcare, together with other productive and reproductive activities that they undertake for migrant children in countries of origin, is central to invisibilized 'economies of care' that underpin migration's contribution to development. Moreover, this carework by older people contributes to development in home and host countries, thus bridging the Global South–Global North divide. Finally, older people's carework is gendered, with older women doing the vast majority. Taken together, these insights disrupt two dominant (economistic and Eurocentric) narratives that: (a) development in migration contexts only happens in the Global South and (b) the most significant drivers of this development are migrants' social and financial remittances from the Global North.

Albanien ist ein Auswanderungsland. Bis 2010 war fast die Hälfte der Bevölkerung ausgewandert und lebte im Ausland. Zuwanderung und Transitmigration haben zwar in den vergangenen Jahren zugenommen, sind aber bislang nicht signifikant. Die gesamte albanische Migrationspolitik und der entsprechende institutionelle Rahmen orientieren sich an den Bedürfnissen und Forderungen der Europäischen Union, die Albanien verstärkt in ihr Grenzregime eingebunden hat. Diese Anforderungen zu erfüllen, gilt als wichtige Voraussetzung im EU-Beitrittsprozess.

Albania is a country of emigration. By 2010 nearly half of Albania's resident population had emigrated and was living abroad. In more recent years some immigration and transit migration has taken place, numbers, however, remain insignificant. The country has increasingly become a part of the European Union border regime. Thus, the entire Albanian migration policy and the corresponding institutional framework are framed by the needs and demands of the EU.

AbstractSince the fall of communism in the early 1990s, Albania has experienced migrations of epic proportions: 17 years later almost one in four Albanians has emigrated and lives abroad, primarily in Greece and Italy. Albanian emigration has by and large represented a typically male‐dominated model, whereby men have "led the way" and women have followed as family members. Despite the considerable participation of Albanian women in this migration, their roles and experiences remain under‐researched. Based on in‐depth interviews with rural migrant women and their families, as well as additional ethnographic material collected from 2004 to 2006 in Albania and Greece, this paper aims to fill this knowledge gap. The findings demonstrate the various ways in which Albanian rural women participate in the migratory process. They are often the most important pillar for supporting the family migration strategy through their productive and reproductive labour when remaining behind. They are also closely involved in decision‐making about the migration of other family members. Furthermore, they have been among the pioneers of the early 1990s migration themselves, including taking the long and risky journeys across the mountains to Greece. Overall, their contribution to the migrant household is beyond their presumed reproductive role and includes a strong economic component.While some "traditional" norms and values persist and are reinforced during migration, change does take place, albeit at a slow and gradual pace. However, for the emancipatory benefits women could accrue through migration to be enhanced, immigration policies need adjusting to address their position as fully autonomous economic and social actors, thus reducing their dependency on male "bread‐winners."Albanian women's particular migratory experiences, combined with their increasing numbers as migrants, make a compelling case for further attention from researchers and policymakers.

LIST OF MAPS & ILLUSTRATIONS; LIST OF TABLES; ABBREVIATIONS; PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS; 1. INTRODUCTION; 2. MIGRATION, GENDER, REMITTANCES AND DEVELOPMENT: A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE; 3. ALBANIAN MIGRATION, REMITTANCES AND GENDER DYNAMICS; 4. THE GENDERED TRANSNATIONAL HOUSEHOLD; 5. REMITTANCE FLOWS, PATTERNS AND PROCESSES: THE SHAPING ROLE OF GENDER; 6. REMITTANCES AND DEVELOPMENT; 7. MIGRATION-DEVELOPMENT-REMITTANCES-GENDER: WHAT ROLE FOR POLICY-MAKERS?; 8. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS; NOTES; BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX.

AbstractOlder people have been the main social casualties of the collapse of the Albanian communist system and the ensuing mass emigration of younger generations since 1990. Some have had to forage for survival on a near‐starvation diet, making broth from grass and weeds. For others, remittances from emigrant children ensure adequate material well‐being, but a loss of locally‐based trans‐generational care and of intimate family relations occurs. Rates of emigration have been highest in the southern uplands, where our fieldwork took place. Migration has been mainly to Greece, but also to Italy and elsewhere. Interviews with elderly 'residual households' ‐ single people and couples ‐ reveal stories of loneliness and abandonment; cross‐generational rupture of hitherto tight family structures is seen as emotionally painful because of the impossibility of enjoying mutual benefits of care sustained by geographical proximity. Profoundly upsetting is the denial of the practice of grand‐parenting, which the older generation see as their raison d'être. Cost of travel, visa regimes and emigrants' irregular status conspire to prevent international visits. Finally, we examine various strategies of overcoming the 'care drain' produced by this situation, one of which is for older people to try to join their migrant children and grandchildren abroad.