Abstract
Mobility — or the lack thereof — has been one of the defining features of the socialist period in Albania and of the social transformations following the regime’s collapse in the early 1990s.1 The ban on foreign emigration during the communist era created a sense of deep isolation amongst the population, who literally stormed the country’s borders once the fall of the ‘system’ was considered inevitable. By 2010, around 1.4 million Albanians — equivalent to half the resident population — were estimated to be living abroad, prima-rily in Greece and Italy (World Bank 2011: 54). Within communist Albania internal movements were strictly controlled through a set of laws and regulations. The post-communist response was large-scale internal migration, especially from rural areas towards the capital Tirana and the port city of Durrës. This impressive spatial mobility, both international and internal, has brought about social mobility for some, immobility for others. Meanwhile, everyday mobility has also changed, reflected essentially in the rise of private car ownership from zero during the communist years. At the same time, being stuck immobile in queues for food and consumer goods — typical of shortage economies — has not been eradicated but transformed, for during the post-communist era long queues have been about getting visas at foreign embassies, or waiting to be checked by immigration police at border-crossing points.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Andrijasevic, R (2007) ‘Beautiful dead bodies: gender, migration and representation in anti-trafficking campaigns’, Feminist Review 86: 24–44.
Basch, L, Glick Schiller, N and Szanton Blanc, C (1994) Nations unbound, London: Routledge.
Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalization: the human consequences, Cambridge: Polity.
Bekteshi, V (2009) Vila me dy Porta [The Villa with Double Gates], Tirana: K & B.
Brunnbauer, U (2005) ‘“The town of the youth”. Dimitrovgrad and Bulgarian socialism’, Ethnologia Balkanica 9: 91–114.
Burrell, K (2003) ‘The political and social life of food in socialist Poland’, Anthropology of East Europe Review 21 (1): 189–94.
Büscher, M and Urry, J (2009) ‘Mobile methods and the empirical’, European Journal of Social Theory 12 (1): 99–116.
Castles, S (2003) ‘Towards a sociology of forced migration and social transformation’, Sociology 37 (1): 13–34.
Chari, S and Verdery, K (2009) ‘Postcolonialism, postsocialism, and ethnography after the Cold War’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 51 (1): 6–34.
Cresswell, T (2006) On the move: mobility in the modern western world, London: Routledge.
Cresswell, T (2010) ‘Towards a politics of mobility’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28 (1): 17–31.
Cresswell, T and Merriman, P (2011) ‘Geographies of mobilities: Practices, spaces, subjects’, in T Cresswell and P Merriman (eds) Geographies of mobilities: practices, spaces, subjects, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1–15.
Cresswell, T and Uteng, T P (2008) ‘Gendered mobilities: towards an holistic understanding’, in T P Uteng and T Cresswell (eds) Gendered mobilities, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1–12.
Davies, J (2009) My name is not Natasha: how Albanian women in France use traf ficking to overcome social exclusion (1998–2001), Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Davin, D (1999) Internal migration in contemporary China, London: Macmillan.
Dravis, M W (1992) ‘Storming fortress Albania: American covert operations in microcosm, 1949–54’, Intelligence and National Security 7 (4): 425–42.
Dedja, S (2012) ‘The working of EU conditionality in the area of migration policy: the case of readmission of irregular migrants to Albania’, East European Politics and Societies 26 (1): 115–34.
Geiger, M (2007) ‘Migration management in Albania. Mapping and evaluating outside intervention’, Migration Letters 4 (2): 119–33.
Hall, D (2004) Albania and the Albanians, London: Pinter.
Hannam, K, Sheller, M and Urry, J (2006) ‘Mobilities, immobilities and moorings’, Mobilities 1 (1): 1–22.
Harvey, D (1990) The condition of postmodernity: an enquiry into the origins of cultural change, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
INSTAT (2004) Migration in Albania, Tirana: Instituti i Statistikës.
International Crisis Group (2005) ‘EU visas and the Western Balkans’, Europe Report N°168, http://www.crisisgroup.org (home page), accessed May 2010.
Kapllani, G (2009) A short border handbook, London: Portobello.
Kaufmann, V, Bergman, M M and Joye, D (2004) ‘Motility: mobility as capital’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 28 (4): 745–56.
King, R and Vullnetari, J (2009) ‘The intersections of gender and generation in Albanian migration, remittances and transnational care’, Geografiska Annaler 91B (1): 19–38.
King, R, Castaldo, A and Vullnetari, J (2011) ‘Gendered relations and filial duties along the Greek-Albanian remittance corridor’, Economic Geography 87 (4): 393–419.
Lubonja, L (2007) Larg dhe Mes Njerëzve: Kujtime Internimi 1973–1990 [Far from and amongst people: exile rnernoires 1973–1990], Tirana: Fjala and Instituti i Kontakteve Kulturore.
Mai, N (2001a) ‘“Italy is beautiful”: the role of Italian television in the Albanian migratory flow to Italy’, in R King and N Wood (eds) Media and migration: constructions of mobility and difference, London: Routledge, 95–109.
Mai, N (2001b) ‘Transforming traditions: a critical analysis of the trafficking and exploitation of young Albanian girls in Italy’, in R King (ed.) The Mediterranean passage: migration and new cultural encounters in Southern Europe, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 258–78.
Manfrass, K (1992) ‘Europe: South-North or East-West migration?’, International Migration Review 26 (2): 388–400.
Massey, D (1993) ‘Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place’, in J Bird, B Curtis, T Putnam, G Robertson and L Tickner (eds) Mapping the futures: local cultures, global change, London: Routledge: 59–69.
Mëhilli, E (2011) ‘Defying de-Stalinization: Albania’s 1956’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 13 (4): 4–56.
Mëhilli, E (2012) ‘The socialist design: urban dilemmas in postwar Europe and the Soviet Union’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13 (3): 635–65.
Nixon, N (2009) ‘“You can’t eat shame with bread”: gender and collective shame in Albanian Society’, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 9 (1): 105–21.
Okólski, M (2000) ‘Recent trends and major issues in international migration: Central and East European perspective’, International Social Science Journal 165: 329–41.
Papailias, P (2003) ‘Money of kurbet is money of blood: the making of a “hero” of migration at the Greek-Albanian border’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 29 (6): 1059–78.
Pojani, D (2011) ‘From carfree to carfull: The environmental and health impacts of increasing private motorisation in Albania’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 54 (3): 319–35.
Sheller, M and Urry, J (2006) ‘The new mobilities paradigm’, Environment and Planning A 38 (2): 207–26.
Sjöberg, Ö (1991) Rural change and development in Albania, Boulder: Westview.
Sjöberg, Ö (1992) ‘Urbanisation and the zero urban growth hypothesis: diverted migration in Albania’, Geografiska Annaler 74B (1): 3–19.
Sjöberg, Ö (1994) ‘Rural retention in Albania: administrative restrictions on urban-bound migration’, East European Quarterly 28 (2): 205–33.
Tarifa, F (1995) ‘Albania’s road from communism: political and social change, 1990–1993’, Development and Change 26 (1): 133–62.
Thompson, P (2000) The voice of the past: oral history, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Urry, J (2007) Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Verdery, K (1996) What was socialism and what comes next? Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Vertovec, S (1999) ‘Conceiving and researching transnationalism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (2): 447–62.
Vullnetari, J and King, R (2011) Gender, remittances and development: Albania’s economy and society in transition, London: I.B. Tauris.
World Bank (2007) ‘Albania urban sector review’, World Bank Working Paper no. 37277-AL, Washington, DC: World Bank.
World Bank (2011) Migration and remittances factbook 2011, Washington DC: World Bank.
Zelinsky, W (1971) ‘The hypothesis of the mobility transition’, Geographical Review 61 (2): 219–49.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Julie Vullnetari and Russell King
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vullnetari, J., King, R. (2014). ‘Women Here Are Like at the Time of Enver [Hoxha]…’: Socialist and Post-Socialist Gendered Mobilities in Albanian Society. In: Burrell, K., Hörschelmann, K. (eds) Mobilities in Socialist and Post-Socialist States. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137267290_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137267290_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-44337-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-26729-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)