Following ties and traces of migration

Abstract

The Albanian town of Gjirokastër is located 30 kilometers from the Greek border. While this proximity has inevitably contributed to directing migration flows to Greece, the focus of this article is to understand the characteristics of migration from Gjirokastër to Italy – the second destination for Albanian migrants after Greece. Findings will show how, despite its marginality, migration from Gjirokastër to Italy plays a significant role in remaking the symbolic boundaries within the social space under consideration. Based on a short period of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in the summer of 2015, this research follows the ties and traces of migration from Gjirokastër to Italy through an experimental analysis of the town’s visual landscape and soundscape and that of the narratives which emerged from photo-elicitation sessions and face-to-face interviews with individuals related to Albanian migrants in Italy. Thanks to the analysis of both these public and private spheres, the article specifically proposes an understanding of the migration phenomenon which focuses on its transformative role within the place of origin, its categories and its hierarchies.In particular, we will see how migration to Italy may become a way to transform the status of Muslim Albanians vis-à-vis Orthodox Albanians in Gjirokastër through religious conversion to Catholicism, as well as as through the opportunities provided by learning the Italian language. In fact, both language learning and religious conversion – either before or after migration – seem to act as tools for social mobility on an individual basis. This concerns not only migrants, but also their kin and, more extensively, the local population of Gjirokastër through infrastructures (church, honorary consulate, school, etc.) indirectly linked with migration to Italy.