Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers

Albanian migration and new transnationalisms

This brief paper introduces the special issue of JEMS on Albanian migration, which collects together revised versions of a selection of papers first presented at a conference held at the University of Sussex in September 2002. The uniqueness and complexity of Albanian migration are first spelled out. Although the main focus is on post-1990 migration, some interesting historical precedents are noted. Attention then turns to the two main contexts of reception, Italy and Greece, where host-society reaction has been characterised above all by stereotypes and the stigmatisation of Albanians. The remainder of the paper introduces each of the subsequent articles under a series of thematic headings – historicity, agency and identity.

Democratisation through Defiance? The Albanian Civil Organisation ‘Self-Determination’ and International Supervision in Kosovo

It has long been suggested that civil society, at least in those cases where its underlying ideas and structures are imported into a given country, may be of limited impact in producing an active citizenry that would counteract authoritarian regimes and allow the building of social capital beyond traditional family structures.1 In Kosovo, as elsewhere in the wider region,2 such an importation has occurred. NGOs have mushroomed after the war in 1999,3 responding to UN democratisation policies and Western donor-driven priorities underpinned by universalist paradigms of civil society. According to critical observations, this process has resulted in the production of a bureaucratic and elitist ‘project culture’ detached from locally rooted concerns, aspirations and identifications.4 According to social anthropologist, Steven Sampson, this imported culture features its own unique structures, activities and jargon, lifting its privileged local employees away from the rest of society.5 Given wider debates within social anthropology about cultural imperialism, local practices of subversion and resistance to universalist importations and political agency of those marginalised by such processes,6 the focus must shift to home-grown initiatives and its cultural resources.

The bequest of Ilegalja: contested memories and moralities in contemporary Kosovo

In this essay I explore the ways in which the internal Albanian politics of memory in Kosovo rely on a longer, lived history of militant self-organisation than the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) war period alone. On the basis of recent ethnographic research, I argue that the memory of prewar militant activism is symbolically codified, ritually formalized, and put on the public stage in Kosovo today. Not only has this process effectively rehabilitated and consolidated the personal, social, and political status of specific former activists, it also has produced a hegemonic morality against which the actions of those in power are judged internally. On the one hand, this process reproduces shared cultural references which idealise ethno-national solidarity, unity and pride and which have served militant mobilisation already before the 1990s. On the other, it provides the arguments through which rival representatives of the former militant underground groups (known as Ilegalja) compete both socially and politically still today. Although this process demarcates some lines of social and political friction within society, it also suggests that international efforts to introduce an identity which breaks with Kosovos past and some of its associated values, face a local system of signification that is historically even deeper entrenched than is usually assumed.

Sacred Journey to a Nation: The Construction of a Shrine in Postwar Kosovo

The site of an infamous Serb massacre of a militant Albanian extended family in March 1998 has become the most prominent sacred shrine in postwar Kosovo attracting thousands of Albanian visitors. Inspired by Smith’s (2003) ‘territorialization of memory’ as a sacred source of national identity and MacCannell’s (1999 [1976]) five-stage model of ‘sight sacralization’, this article traces the site’s sacred memorial topography, its construction process, its social and material reproductions, and adds a sixth stage to the interpretation – the ‘political reproduction’. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the commemorative literature emanating from this shrine and on numerous interviews with core protagonists (including former guerrilla) and visitors, the article explores the ways in which the religious themes of martyrdom and sacrifice, as well as traditionalist ideals of solidarity and militancy, are embodied at the site and give sense to a nationwide celebration of ethno-national resistance, solidarity and independence. Overlooking the hamlet of Prekaz, in the central valley of Drenica where the Kosovo war was fought most intensely, the burned ruins of the Jashari family’s compound stands as a reminder of a tragic event, rich JOURNEYS, VOL. 7 ISSUE 1 a1 J7.1 INSIDE-SB1 11/5/06 8:42 am Page a1