Albanian immigrants in Lecce and Modena: narratives of rejection, survival and integration

Abstract

AbstractThe Albanian exodus to Italy was one of the most dramatic European migration events of the 1990s. Initially welcomed, by the summer of 1991 an intensely negative sociocultural stereotype of Albanian migrants had been installed by certain politicians and the media in Italy. They were condemned as disorganised and prone to criminality; and this stigmatisation became more entrenched as the decade passed. Based on in‐depth interviews and other field observations, this paper examines how Albanian migrants in two contrasting places in Italy have fared in terms of negotiating their way around these stereotypes, and of integrating within the local social and economic environments, specifically in relation to work, housing and social space. Lecce in the southern region of Apulia is the principal area of migrant arrival and a zone of passage as well as of settlement; however, it is one of Italy's poorest provinces. Modena, in the north of Italy, is one of the country's richest cities. The broad picture is that Albanian migrants are economically better integrated in Modena, but do not participate much in the social and cultural life of the city; whereas in Lecce, social contact with local people is more intense, but labour market success is more limited, above all because of the narrow range of employment on offer. Three key factors conditioning the process of differential integration of the migrants are their legal status, their access to network‐based support, and the socio‐economic and institutional settings encountered in each local context of immigration. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.