The immigrant self perception, social status and the myths influence. A comparison study of the...

MYTHS OF THE OTHER IN THE BALKANS

Representations, Social practices, Performances Licensed under Creative Commons Αttribution-ShareAlike Greece 3.0. Please visit the conference website at: http://www.balkanmyth.com

ISBN: 978-960-8096-05-9

e-book production: Paris Aslanidis

Thessaloniki 2013

MYTHS OF THE OTHER IN THE BALKANS

Representations, Social practices, Performances

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 6 Fotini Tsibiridou & Nikitas Palantzas 1. Opening Talk Conference “Myth About the Other” 17 Marietta van Attekum 2. The Social Production of Difference in the Global Hierarchy of Value: Stereotypes and Transnational Experience in Greece and the Balkans

19

Michael Herzfeld 3. The Other Town: How the Greeks and the Turks perceive mythical neighbours

31

Hercules Millas 4. The Fanariote myth in Bulgarian historiography 40 Raymond Detrez 5. The Hellenicity of the linguistic Other in Greece 56 Peter Mackridge 6. Aspects of Greek “Myths” related to the Albanians during the Age of Nationalism

66

Lambros Baltsiotis & Elias G. Skoulidas 7. Fear and Desire: Foreign women in Bulgarian National Mythology 75 Nikolay Aretov 8. Macedon: Communicating the Reality or Myth? An Interrogation by the Provisions of Franklin Rudolf Ankersmit’s Theory on Aesthetic Political Representation

83

Gjiorgji Kallinski 9. The Representation of the National Self and the Balkan People in Turkey’s New Textbooks

92

Kenan Çayir 10. Pupils’ perceptions of the Balkan ‘‘other’’ 105 Chrysa Tamisoglou 11. The Question of the Other in the reminiscences of former pupils of the Bulgarian secondary schools in Thessaloniki and Edirne

115

Lyubomir Georgiev 12. “If on a cold winter night a foreigner...”: Researching the perceptions of student kindergarten teachers about the ethnic Balkan “Other”

123

Kostas Magos

13. Baba Noel and Yeni yil ağaç - Symbols of the myth of Christmas in schools of the Muslim minority

138

Aristidis Sgatzos 14. Challenging the Bektashi tradition in the Greek Thrace: Anthropological and historical encounters

144

Fotini Tsibiridou & Giorgos Mavrommatis 15. “Nahni wa xfendik” (We and the Others): Negotiation of multiple identities in the Maronite Community of Cyprus

161

Maria Koumarianou 16. On Muslims, Turks and migrants: perceptions of Islam in Greece and the challenge of migration

177

Venetia Evergeti & Panos Hatziprokopiou 17. A Muslim Saint or a Conqueror: Myths and the Religious Other 189 Evgenia Troeva 18. Being Albanian in Greece or elsewhere: negotiation of the (national) self in a migratory context

197

Ifigenia Kokkali 19. Markers of self-identity and the image of the Other in the context of labour mobility in Western Macedonia

210

Petko Hristov 20. The immigrant self-perception, social status and the myths influence. A comparison study of the Albanian immigrant in Greece and Italy

221

Zenelaga Brunilda, Kërpaçi Kalie & Sotirofski Kseanela 21. Paradoxes of ‘‘Otherness’’ in Greek Asylum Practice 234 Eftihia Voutira 22. “Brothers” becoming “Others”. The Greeks of Albania in Greece after 1990

245

Vassilis Nitsiakos

23. Balkan cinema in Thessaloniki International Film Festival 251 Dimitris Kerkinos 24. When the Dreams Come True (Bollywood Music and Dance in Bulgaria)

256

Ivanka Vlaeva 25. ‘‘The Making of Balkan Wars’’ Virtually Articulating a Critique of Balkan Mythologies

266

Anna Apostolidou 26. “İlk ve en önemli çevreci”: Environmentalism and Secularism in 278

contemporary Istanbul Aimilia Voulvouli 27. Singing or crying: dealing with the fear of ethnic, national, and engendered otherness in Macedonia, Greece

285

Marica Rombou-Levidi 28. Non-European ‘‘Others’’? A study on the stereotypical representations of Eastern Turks by citizens of Istanbul

296

Nikitas Palantzas 29. The “national body”: Language and sexuality in the Balkan national narrative

305

Costas Canakis 30. The Balkan case of “otherness” in the political discourse 319 Ana Chupeska Annex The Program of the Conference 323

MYTHS OF THE OTHER IN THE BALKANS · 221

20. The immigrant self perception, social status and the myths influence. A comparison study of the Albanian immigrant in Greece and Italy

Zenelaga Brunilda, Kërpaçi Kalie & Sotirofski Kseanela, State University of Albania “Aleksandër Moisiu” Durrës

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract This article aims to analyze the social construction of Albanian immigrant self image in two main destination countries: Greece and Italy. Our intention is to identify and understand at the same time the way the Albanian immigrant perpetuates himself through his everyday interaction and experience within the Greek and Italian societies. In other words, we intend to analyze the way the Albanian immigrant develops his identity and his self image, reacting to the social stereotypes created by immigrant myths in the host countries, comparing the case of the Albanian immigrant in Greece with the one in Italy. This article also tries to put into evidence the reactions of Albanian immigrant towards stigma. Key words: Albanian immigrant, stigma, self-perception, myths, Greek society, Italian society 1. Introduction During the communist regime, Albania was extremely isolated and the phenomenon of migration was out of discussion. This phenomenon became a special issue after the collapse of the communist regime in the 1990’s. Among the reasons of this emigration propensity are different political events, economic and social issues. By the end of 1990, in anticipation of radical political change, Albanians rebelled against the restrictive legislation on expatriation imposed by the regime (UNDP, 2000, p.36.)

Thousands people applied to the foreign embassies in Tirana in order to leave and a large share of the expatriates received political asylum in Western Europe countries. A massive flow of Albanian migrants to western developed countries started on July 1990 when about almost 5000 people entered the Italian, German and French embassies in Tirana seeking for political asylum. At the end of 1990, 20000 Albanians left the country to pass the Greek border (Papanagos & Sanfey, 2001: 500-504)

In March 1991, during the first democratic elections in Albania, due to political chaos and economic collapse, 25000 Albanians seized different kinds of boats and headed to the ports of Southern Italy (King, 2003: 287). The period 1991-92 is described as the most difficult period for the Albanian people due to the increase of the unemployment. So between, 1991-92 300,000 Albanians left the country, (Carletto et al. 2006) seeking refuge and working especially in their neighbor countries, Greece and Italy, more easily to be accessed because of their geographical proximity.

This is the premise of a massive migratory process that in ten years affected 500,000-600,000 persons (about 15% of the population, 40 % of which in the age of 19-40) and nearly each family (Council of the European Union, 2000, p.12)


Since the beginning, Italy and Greece stood out as privileged destinations, but the areas of origin for emigration to either country were different: whereas emigration towards Italy came mostly from the central region of the country, emigration towards Greece had its main source in the Southern border region, inhabited by a significant minority of Orthodox Greeks. Albanians, leaving behind a well-known eastern traditional world, were faced with a western unknown modern conceptualization which was objective to them. Arriving at Greece and Italy with a modern way of thinking and living, Albanians tried to make this new world meaningful to them, through their daily contact with the local people. Due to their inevitable interaction, an image of Albanian immigrant was constructed. So in the current research our primary concern is to highlight the stereotype of Albanian immigrant through his experience in these two respective countries. So, we present some qualitative findings regarding the way the Albanian immigrant see himself while living in Greece and Italy and how this self-image changes with the passing of time and how it affects his daily life. In this article we try to compare analytically the Albanian stereotype based on immigrant’s living experiences in these two countries. The article is divided into the following sections: a brief review of Albanian migration in Greece and Italy, the methodological framework, the description of Albanian stereotype in the respective countries, the impact of this stereotype in immigrants’ daily life and the conclusions. 2. A brief description of Albanian migration to Greece and Italy 2.1. Albanian migration to Greece Greece and Italy are considered as the two most reachable countries for the Albanian migrants because of their geographic proximity with Albania. To Iosifides and King (1998), the massive movement of Albanians towards Greece in 1990 is linked to the geopolitical changes in the socialist countries of the Eastern Europe after 1989. The fall of the communist regime caused the free internal and international movement of Albanians (Iosifides & King, 1998:207). Fakiolas (2000) notes that despite the political and social push factors, the economic ones played a great role in constraining Albanian people leaving their country and immigrating to Greece. He goes on by saying that “the wages earned in Greece are about four-to-six times higher than those that might be earned at home in Albania.” (Fakiolas, 2000: 67).

According to the National Statistical Service of Greece (ESYE) in 2001, there were 797,091 foreign residents in Greece. Of those, 750,000 were citizens from states not belonging to EU.

It should be stressed the fact that the migrants in Greece come mostly from neighboring countries. The largest group of Greece’s foreign population is composed by Albanians followed by the Bulgarians, the second largest group (Triandafyllidou, Maroufof & Nikolova, 2009: 13, 17). Albanians constitute more than the half of the migrant population in Greece. According to Labrianidis & Hatziprokopiou (2005) the total number of Albanians in Greece is 450,000-550,000. Based on the LFS reports about the foreign population without social insurance (1999-2002), Kanellopoulos, Gregou & Petralias (2006), note that 60% of the legal immigrants and 64% of the irregular ones are Albanians. Looking at the existing research studies on economic incorporation of Albanian migrants in the Greek labor market, (Balwdin- Edwards 2004; Hatziprokopiou 2003; Iosifides and King 1998), the majority of Albanian males are employed mainly in construction, then in agriculture, industry and tourism, while the majority of women mainly in domestic services and a very small number of them in tourism, agriculture and industry (Balwdin- Edwards 2004; Hatziprokopiou 2003; Iosifides and King 1998). But the research of Albanians in Thessaloniki conducted in


2000 by Labrianidis and Lyberaki (2001) explains temporally better the Albanian employment in Greece. The Albanians in their sample tended to move out of unskilled farm work, and rapidly into construction, small firm employment, technician’s work, and transport services. This was due to their increased ability in the Greek language and a better understanding of employment possibilities (Baldin-Edwards, 2004: 52).

2.2. Albanian migration in Italy Albanian migration in Italy started in 1990, when 6 persons invaded the territory of the Italian embassy in Tirana160, and gave a start to a big popular revolt against the communist regime. The ‘embassy migrants’ are widely accepted as the first sign of the mass Albanian emigration which was to follow. The migration from Albania to the nearby Italy continued for all the 90s and can be divided in three main flows.

The first period is considered the one during 1991-1992 due to the political crisis of communist regime. In March 1991 Italy accepted a first group of 23,000 Albanian migrants; in August another group of 20,000 people was treated in the opposite way and repatriated without exceptions (Pastore, 1998, p.12).

The second period of arrival started on 1997 e continued till 2000, due to the economical crisis which followed the failure of the pyramid schemes.

The immigrants of the last period after 2000, are known as the “new arrivals”, which are mainly composed by university students and young women working in domestic assistance. According to Caritas/Migrantes Dossier Statistico 2008, until 31 of December 2007 the number of the Albanian documented immigrants was 420.402 (Caritas/Migrantes, 2008) From Italian ISTAT the number of the Albanina immigrants in Italy in the begiining of 2011 is 482.627 (ISTAT, 2011).

3. Methodology This article presents the results of 32 in-depth interviews with immigrants that have been conducted during the period March-December 2010. From these interviews 17 were conducted in Greece and 15 in Italy. The migrants interviewed in these two correspondent countries lived in Athens (Greece) and Firenze (Italy) as big cities with a great number of Albanian immigrants.

The whole sample was stratified by some variables: gender, age, time of arrival, level of education, labor condition and social contact. We used the snowball sampling method trying to select people of different socio-economic and educational backgrounds. The interviews were ranging, following a semi-structured format but giving full allowance for discussion on any issues judged to be important to the interviewees. All interviews were in Albanian. Many migrants didn’t like to be tape-recorded while interviewing them so we wrote down the main points of our conversation with them. The other interview narratives have been registered and then taped. While analyzing the interviews, we choose some words of immigrants to illustrate our findings. It is crucial to mention that the findings from our interviews

160 Four sisters and two brothers of the Popa family from Durrës dressed themselves to look like foreigners and speaking to the Albanian guard at the embassy compound in Italian, they posed as Italian tourists. Once inside the Italian embassy grounds, they claimed asylum and threatened to poison themselves if they were handed over to the Sigurimi (the feared Albanian security police). The Italians accommodated them inside the embassy, but this brought serious friction between them and the Albanian authorities of the time. The embassy was besieged by Albanian armed special forces for several weeks. It was only in May 1990 that the Albanian authorities gave permission for them to be flown to Italy. (Qesari 2000: 160).


with the immigrants cannot represent the experience of all the Albanians living in Greece and Italy because of the small sample of our study in these two respective countries. 4. Are you sure….!? You can’t be an Albanian! 4.1 “Us and Them”. The case of Greece Albanians are described as the most disliked immigrant group in Greece. A number of negative stereotypes are attached to them. Greek citizens by developing a perception of immigrants that promotes a national identity, that is about “Us and Them”, create boundaries which distinguish the in-group, the national community, from that outside, the foreigners (Triandafyllidou, 2000:188). The interviewees in our research reported that in the beginning Albanians were perceived by the Greek society as strangers with the meaning that Simmel (1972) used for the people who live in a society with characteristics uncommon to the latter. So the Greeks considered the Albanians as foreigners due to the lack of common characteristics such as nationality, religion and language. Albania was an isolated country for fifty years and Greeks didn’t have the opportunity to learn more about its neighbor country in the other years. The only thing they knew was that Albania was a totalitarian and poor country. So when they came into contact with the Albanian migrants they showed great interest in learning more about the way of living in Albania and were willing to help them. Sometimes, they made were very strange and funny questions to the immigrants. In the beginning the Greeks were very friendly to us. They didn’t know anything about us. They asked us very strange questions such as: do you have milk? Do you have electricity? Do you have butter? Do you have TV. These sorts of questions made me understand that they knew nothing about us and our country. Well it is very funny this thing that I am going to tell to you. My friends and I laugh a lot when we mention it. One day an Albanian woman, friend of my friend was sitting at the stairs of the house where she was working and saw the sun and said: what a lovely day today! The sun is shining… The old women, the owner of the house asked her: Do you have sun in Albania? And the Albanian answered: no we don’t have but know our parliament asked your parliament to give us a piece from your sun and now we have a sun as well as you...

Our reporters think that for a very short period, suddenly everything changed, epithets such as criminals, dangerous, uneducated, illegal and wild were attached to their previous image as a foreigner. They describe this period as a nightmare within their most desirable “American dream”. Psimenos (1995) in his study with Albanian immigrants living in Athens notes that two Albanian ghettos have been created in the centre of Athens. Albanians in their first stage of settlement in Athens lived in places where Greek state was absent. They lived in specific squares, in underground, in railway stations and in abandoned houses, places or old hotels. Greek citizens began avoiding these areas as they were linked to crime and poverty. In 1998, criminality rate in Greece was increased and Albanian immigrants, according to public opinion, was one of the factors caused it. Greek society reacted with serious protests and violence against Albanian immigrants expressing their dislike for this immigrant community (Fakiolas, 1999: 220). Then the Albanian was characterized as a criminal, without education…yes in this way they saw us…One day I heard a woman saying to her little daughter: Paidi mou (my baby) eat because the Albanian will eat you…..;Well, we were unwanted inside


the Greek society and they saw as a threaten to them….;In a village the locals didn’t allow the Albanians enter at the coffee shops or clubs….

What can I say? I was at the second year of my undergraduate studies in Athens and I went to a woman professor to ask her about the course paper. She understood that I was a foreigner and asked me where I was from. I answered from Albania and she reacted like a bee pinched her. She saw me and said to me that my people were wild and continued by saying that professors from the University of Tirana had invited her to visit Albania but she didn’t go because she was afraid that someone could cut her head off there…. What could I say to her? I didn’t expect a professor saying such words...

According to the interviewed immigrants, media, the political debates between the Greek and the Albanian government, and the regular arrests of Albanian people at the central squares, in the bus or even in their house contributed in the construction of this negative stereotype. They think that the figure of the Albanian migrant as criminal was especially fueled by Greek media. Paulou (2001) in his study about the racist wording against immigrants used by media in Thessalonica explained that media had the tendency to present Albanians, without having an evidence, as the main suspects for the rise of criminality in the country.

Then everything was changed…after 1992-3 we became criminals to them. They opened their doors to us and then shut them in front of our face. Many “skoupa161” operations were carried out by the Greek police. It was logical for the Greek people to shut their doors to us. They saw police arresting Albanians in the midday or early in the morning in the bus or on the streets while they were going to or coming back from work. So what other image would they create for the Albanians under these circumstances….? when something bad happened like a robbery in a bank, the televisions always said that the author of the crime perhaps was an Albanian…always without having any proof about the ethnicity of the author….

Every day, I followed the news on television and listen so many times accusations not based on real facts against Albanians…

When something was not going well between the two governments the Greek police was acting immediately against us… with arrests and deportation…

Often, Greek citizens blame immigrants for all the bad things happening to their society. Many unquestioned assumptions are made for the immigrants in Greece and especially for the Albanians. The interviewed immigrants refer to these assumptions as myths because according to them, these assumptions don’t content any slice of truth. Albanians take our jobs and drive down wages..; they don’t invest here but send their money to their people in Albania…; at the end they will take even our flag…; they are the reason of crimes here… 161 The word skoupa in Greek refers to the police operations arresting immigrants at squares and streets.


One day I made a joke to my Greek coworkers saying that even the earthquake happened in the 1999, was caused by the Albanians. It was a period that everything bad happened to the Greeks was caused by the Albanians.; When we came here we did jobs that Greeks didn’t prefer to do… so how did we steal their jobs….

Our interviewees gave emphasis to the fact that very often, Greek people react with a great surprise while meeting by chance an Albanian who is educated, good looking and well dressed. I was in a taxi and the taxi driver began to talk to me and at the end he asked me about my origin. I answered from Albania. He stopped the taxi and turned back to see me better and said: Are you sure that you are an Albanian? You can’t be and Albanian?.... I laughed and asked him that how did an Albanian look? He answered: ..with wild characteristics and amorfotos (illiterate) …..and I was dressed with too expensive clothes!... Our neighbor, in the beginning, didn’t believe us when we told him that we were Albanians. He said that we were a very cute and nice couple…!

Empirical studies confirm that close social contact affects the development of close, stable, cooperative and long-term social relations and thus reduces prejudice and discriminatory behavior and practices (Allport 1954; Chryssochoou 2004). Based on their personal experiences, Albanian immigrants come to the conclusion that close social contact with Greeks for a long time reduces prejudice and discrimination. They added that Greeks’ opinion about them improves especially when they come into close contact with Albanians. Greek citizens admit the fact that there are exceptions, not all the Albanians are “criminals” and wild people. John (Gianis), you are a good fellow but the other Albanians are not… My owner of the house where I stay one day said to me that I was a very good person and I was not like my compatriots…

Nowadays, the interviewees report that Greek citizens’ attention is not entirely focused any more on them but on the new waves of immigrants coming from Pakistan162 who are seen not only by the Greeks but even by the Albanians as an uncivilized community. So the stigmatized Albanian is now stigmatizing other immigrant groups in Greece, more inferior than him. It is a strategy, according to Gerhard Falk (2001) that stigmatized persons usually use. They think that Albanian immigrant community is the most integrated immigrant group in Greece. They see themselves within the Greek society as hard workers, giving emphasis to their children’s education and improving their living and working conditions. Now we are all right… Many Albanians have bought houses here, have a stable good work, their children are integrated here…we see these Pakistani people in Attica, Metaksurgio and they sleep 10 men in a room…; They (the Pakistani people) gather

162 The interviewees are unable to make the difference among the people coming from Middle East countries and therefore place them in one category and call all of them Pakistani people.


at Saint Panteleimonas163 and make that place very dirty…; The Albanians look at their job and try to give the best education to their children. 4.2. “L’albanese” in Italy Italy is a country that sent most emigrants abroad among all European countries (more than 26 million since official records began in 1876; (King and Andall 1999: 135) and the one that has been most identified as a key destination for the new migration into Southern European countries. During the 1970s, like many countries in Southern Europe (Spain, Greece and Portugal), Italy experienced a “migration turnaround” from emigration to immigration (King et al. 1997). Italy became an important destination for people from African and Asian countries and, after 1989, from Eastern European countries too. On the other hand over the post-war period Italy experienced a large-scale of interregional migration. Between 1951 and 1971, 2 million Southern Italians migrated to the North of the country (King and Andall 1999: 135).

The positionality of Southern Italy and of Southern Italians within the process of construction of Italian national identity is very important here. Northern Italians' prejudice against Southern Italians was (and still is) very strong. The growing intolerance against foreign migrants were consistent with a crisis in Italian citizens' relation with their state. In fact, during the 1990s the traditional post-1945 cultural construction of 'Italianness' came into crisis, while at the same time a new version began to emerge according to the symbolic polarisations shaping Italy's national identity since its very beginning: North/South, Europe/Africa, Christian/non-Christian, developed/backward. It is in this context that foreign migrants became Italy's 'constitutive other' against which a more EU-compatible articulation of Italianness was produced (Mai, 2005). Renata Salecl in her analysis of the rise of nationalism in former Yugoslavia, showed that the hatred of the 'other' which psychologically sustains nationalism is nothing but the outcome of a process of projection onto the other of an aspect of the 'same' which is considered unbearable and unacceptable (Salecl 1993: 105).

Italian media's representation of foreign migrants in Italy can be seen as having both responded to and engendered anxieties, fostering an interpretation of the migratory phenomenon in terms of 'social alarm' (Maher 1996: 160).

As Nicola Mai described in his article “ The Albanian diaspora-in-the-making: media, migration and social exclusion", the use of the term “Albanese” in Italy refered to the way Albanian migrants in the 1990s became the new symbolic embodiment of non-Italianness. So, “l’albanese” in Italy became “the stranger”, not in the sense as the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather as the person who comes today and stays tomorrow. But his position in this group is determined, essentially, by the fact that he has not belonged to it from the beginning, that he imports qualities into it, which do not and cannot stem from the group itself. In the relationship to him, distance means that he (l’albanese), who is close by, is far, and strangeness means that he (l’albanese), who also is far, is actually near (Wolf, 1950).

Albanians have been the most heavily stereotyped group in the context of the wider representation of migration-related events in Italy, with particular reference to

163 Saint Panteleimonas square is at the center of Athens. Before, this square was a shelter for Albanian and other immigrants and now it is transformed in a shelter for the immigrants coming from Middle East countries.


their involvement in the trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and in thefts and burglaries of a particularly ferocious nature.

Very much like in the Greek case, the Italian response to the immigration of Albanians during the 1990s was also driven by the media, and was very negative (King and Mai 2002). Whilst the first arrivals of the ‘Adriatic brethren’ (Zinn 1996) in March 1991 were greeted with generally positive media reports, where undertones of patronising these ‘pitiful, backward and helpless’ people were nevertheless not lacking, the reception changed very soon after that.

According to Mai, the visual and narrative scripts through which Albanian migration was represented by Italian media can be grouped according to three main sets of narratives: tales of moral depravation with reference to Albanian migrants' involvement in crime; discourses of demonisation of atheism or essentialisation of religious difference (Islam); and discourses of backwardness, exoticism and isolation (Mai, 2005).

Independent of their age, gender, educational level, type of work, all respondents showed their experiences to the prejudices they suffered being immigrants in Italy, at least in the beginning of their migratory experience.

At the beginning it was very difficult to show to the others the proper nationality, because if I showed I was un Albanian, I would see a change on his (expression of the) face, so, in many cases I hided my nationality lying. When somebody asked me, I said I’m from Montenegro, from Poland etc. To be an Albanian in Italy since some year ago, but even today in many cases, means to be a potential criminal, a burglar or something like that…

Many respondents showed the features associated with being an Albanian as a

state of being ‘uncivilised’. They underlined, in their own terms, how this mythical construction was a powerful agent of discrimination, infiltrating every aspect of social interaction. Many interviewees reported that, when they showed their Albanian nationality, Italians have been told by that ‘you can’t be an Albanian’.

As King and Mai showed in their article “Albanian Immigrants in Lecce and Modena: Narratives of Rejection, Survival and Integration” on 2004, from many experiences of Albanian migrants’ social identities it clearly emerges how, in its current use, the term ‘albanese’ (‘Albanian’ in Italian) has lost its original denotative function and is now used as an insult which Italian people employ to define themselves and others, according to unspoken, but interiorised hierarchies of Italianness (King & Mai, 2004).

Nowadays the situation has changed a little bit. As many immigrants described, looking that many Albanian immigrants have more than 10 years living and working at the same place, Italian have had the chance to know better how Albanians are, and the influence of myths and stereotypes is diminished.

At the beginning it was difficult to have an Italian friend. They (Italians) stayed far away from us Albanians. This because we had a very bad fame. Now is a little bit different. My friend Carlo is one of my best friends. I invited him to my brother’s wedding ceremony in Albania and he invited me to his son baptizing. I mean we call each-other “family friends”. I have 16 years living in Firenze and I think I’m good arranged here. I have very good relations with the Italians I know.


5. Reaction of Albanian immigrants towards stigma 5.1. The case of Greece Social bonding and extended family structures have played an important role for the Albanian migrants’ survival in Greece. These two factors provide Albanians with a sense of community, an increase of social capital, alleviation from economic and health problems, and easier access to employment (Iosifides and King, 1998: 218). While we were analyzing the interviews, we noticed that family has a very significant role for the Albanian immigrants. In the beginning, the majority of Albanian migrants immigrated to Greece were men. After they were settled there, they tried to reunion with their family. This served to them as a channel for a smooth integration into the Greek country. At the beginning, I was alone here (he is referring for Athens city) without my wife and children... I was with my brothers. We worked a lot and sometimes 14 hours a day and were very tired. The neighbors didn’t speak to us. When my wife with the children came the neighbors started to show interest towards us and helped us a lot especially with the children.

By passing the time, the Albanians are becoming more integrated into the Greek society. They live in two worlds, the world of compatriots in Albania or Greece and the world of Greeks where they work, study and divert. This kind of integration corresponds with that of distance integration in the typology of Peter Rose, (1981). Albanians tend to have contact with their people in Albania. The advances in technology provide them with information about political and socioeconomic issues in their country and also affect positively their relations with relatives and friends living there. I have the Alb digital, because I want to know about the political and economical changes in my country ; In Albania, I have my parents, my relative, my friend. I feel there as in my home. Here I don’t feel so good. I will stay only for my children because they came here in a very young age and it is very difficult for them to return and live there….; I speak with my parents or friends in Facebook or Skype..; We came here only to gather some money and then to return back to our home.; My children now speak every day with their grandparents on Skype or on telephone. 5.2. The case of Italy Differently from the populations coming from Africa and Asia to Italy, Albanians never constitute ethnic concentration as China town or Little Italy, but try to “spread” themselves equally on all the territory. As a consequence, they often live in buildings with only Italian co-tenants. This tendency creates more opportunities for the Albanian immigrants to have contacts with the locals.

As the above interviews showed, in the beginning of their migratory experience, young people, in particular, adopted a strategy of 'hiding' their Albanian identity in order to meet potential Italian partners and friends. So, the burden of prejudice is felt to be much stronger at the beginning of the migratory experience because of the lack of solid interpersonal relations that prevents Albanian migrants from negotiating their individual identities away from hegemonic stereotypes addressing them as part of a stigmatised group.

According to Vincenzo Romania (2003) Albanians perceive the diffusion of a strong stereotype which diminishes and stigmatizes their identity and then they


perform mimesis (passing for Italian).. According to him, Albanians do not react to the stereotype in a passive way, reducing expectations about the future; but react actively, hiding their identity in the public space and accessing the same resources of locals, in this particular situations. As Romania analyzes, Italian public opinion reacted to the flows of migrants of 90s, with a process of hetero -racisation of Albanians (Taguieff P.A., 1988.) Then a stigma was produced, and passing, as Goffman (1968) affirmed, constituted a way to avoid the bad consequences of representing a discredited identity in public space.

According to Romania dialectal adaptation of Italian, can be considered, another tool for mimesis.

Using the dialect on the Italian speaking, makes me feel nearer the family where I work. I work as a badante (cleaning leady) in a family here in Florence and sometimes hearing me to speak “l’italiano alla fiorentina” makes people in this family happier and enable us to have a better communication and as a result a better relation. Antonio, the 12 years old son in this family, tells me that I don’t seem at all as an Albanian, because my dialectic Italian is perfect.

As King and Mai (2005) showed, behind the readiness with which many

Albanian migrants seemed to partially interiorize (self-)discrimination lie broader sociocultural and historical factors:

Firstly, the complex way in which Albanian national culture had been articulated and appropriated by the communist state, and Albanians’ reaction against anything associated with that communist past, means that it has been particularly difficult for Albanians to find positive elements of identification to contrast the stigmatisation at a collective level. In other words, both their past (in Albania) and their collective image in the present (in Italy) are rejected; and no real alternatives are offered.

Secondly, in the post-communist context the search for a democratic alternative to communism has been based on a rejection of collectivism and a parallel process of thorough individualization of Albanian identities.

And yet, despite media stereotyping as undesirables and criminals, and despite being, in public opinion polls, the least preferred immigrant group, Albanians have achieved considerable success in integrating into Italy (King and Mai, 2004).

The data gathered during this study showed that Albanians prefer to live in little towns than in the city. This is an indirect indicator of integration. Living outside the city, in fact, allows them to have access to a cheaper housing and to integration without the need of helping structures that can be found in the city.

The reaction of Albanians to their stigmatisation has been internalisation by some, and taking action against the widespread prejudice by others. Similar to Greece, this was a reason for setting up migrant organisations, which in recent years have proliferated in numbers and activities. Chiodi and Devole (2005) have carried out a more systematic study into these issues. They argue that the majority of organisations originates in the late 1990s, which coincides with the time Albanian migration to Italy started to mature after successive regularisation programmes and some years of experience in the Italian society. Most organisations are present and active in the North of Italy; similar to the Greek case, the social network of family and friends is their core. Fearing cultural uprooting, these organisations also provide for the socialisation of the second generation, where Albanian language classes take an important place.


As many interviews showed, the process of stigmatisation of the immigrant in Italy seemed to be displaced from Albanians to the new arrivales, Rumanians. The arrival of Rumunians in Italy because of the membership of Rumania in European Union, created a new projection of the stigma and Albanians felt less stigmatisated and more accepted in Italian society and as a result, more integrated.

Although nowdays the stigmatisation and the presion of prejudice towards the Albanian immigrants in Italy seems to be reduced and the mimesis tendencies as a reaction toward this stigmatisation seem to be modulate, however there isn’t yet a positive self perception among this group of immigrants in Italy.

6. Conclusions During the 1970s, like many countries in Southern Europe, Italy and Greece experienced a “migration turnaround” from emigration to immigration (King et al. 1997). The Albanian massive migration has been considered an important phenomenon in the beginning of the 1990s.

As the interviews of this study showed, in the beginning Albanians were perceived by Greek and Italian society as strangers and foreigners due to the lack of common characteristics such as nationality, religion and language. Albania was an isolated country for fifty years and Greeks as well as Italians didn’t have the opportunity to learn more about its neighbor country. The only thing they knew was that Albania was a totalitarian and poor country. So when they came into contact with the Albanian migrants they showed great interest in learning more about the way of living in Albania and were willing to help them.

But for a very short period, suddenly everything changed; epithets such as criminals, dangerous, uneducated, illegal and wild were attached to their previous image as a foreigner.

Very much like in the Greek case, the Italian response to the immigration of Albanians during the 1990s was also driven by the media, and was very negative.

In the beginning of their migratory experience, Albanian migrants in Greece and Italy adopted a strategy of 'hiding' their Albanian identity in order to meet potential Greek and Italian partners and friends. So, the burden of prejudice is felt to be much stronger at the beginning of the migratory experience because of the lack of solid interpersonal relations that prevents Albanian migrants from negotiating their individual identities away from hegemonic stereotypes addressing them as part of a stigmatised group. Also Albanian migrants seemed to partially interiorize (self-)discrimination in both cases because of some sociocultural and historical factors. In the Greek case we see that more Albanian migrants tried to change their names and religion than in the Italian case. In both cases they used this strategy as a way of survival in a new society where the level of prejudices and discrimination was considerable. According to the interviewed people, this situation can be explained with the reaction of the Albanian immigrants toward the strong and conservative religion traditions of Greek society and with their reaction toward less conservative religion traditions of Italian society.

Nowadays, the interviewees report that Greek and Italian citizens’ attention is not entirely focused any more on them but on the new waves of immigrants coming from Pakistan (in Greek case) and from Romania (in the Italian case). So the stigmatized Albanian is projecting his prejudices to the other immigrant groups, considering them as more inferior than him. It is a strategy, according to Gerhard Falk (2001) that stigmatized persons usually use. They think that Albanian immigrant community is the most integrated immigrant group in Greece and in Italy as well.


They see themselves within the Greek and Italian society as hard workers, giving emphasis to their children’s education and improving their living and working conditions.

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