Die weite Welt und das Dorf. Albanische Emigration am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts

The submitted book is dealing with one of the most crucial experiences of the Albanian society during the last decade: with emigration or labor migration of a considerable part of the population, primarily to Greece and Italy. There is hardly a family that is untouched by the phenomenon of migration and that does not comprise a member which lives temporarily in a neighboring country. The waves of migration have impact on different levels: they touch the demographic and economic developments as well as the every day-culture of the country. The volume unites contributions of scholars of different fields (demography, history, anthropology) that have been working on aspects of Albanian migration and represents a first preliminary result in the field. The volume consists of two parts. The first deals with more general aspects: demographic developments of the last decade, the impact of the Italian mass media on migration decisions, migration strategies, questions of identity. The second presents the results of scholarly fieldwork that had been conducted in Southern Albania by the applicant jointly with a group of anthropologists and historians in the summer of 1998. This part reflects the different and similar consequences of migration in two different village contexts: Fterra being inhabited by Muslims and Corraj by Orthodox people. Different religious affiliations are causing different migration strategies for Greece. Whereas people of Orthodox religious affiliation relatively easily get visa and the permission to stay in the country for a while for Muslims the change of religious affiliation or of the first name is the consequence or precondition. The topics of this second part are: dying out villages, youth, self-images and images of the other, visa-strategies, change of the name and historical migration patterns. The applicant is professor for Southeast European history at the University of Graz, the coeditors are specialized on Albanian studies: Robert Pichler at the University of Graz, Stephanie Schwandner at the University of London.