Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T18:41:41.889Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The cultural construction of Italy in Albania and vice versa: migration dynamics, strategies of resistance and politics of mutual self-definition across colonialism and post-colonialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

Nicola Mai
Nicola Mai*
Affiliation:
Sussex Centre for Migration Research, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QN UK. Tel: 01273 873394; Fax: 01273 623572. E-mail: n.mai@sussex.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

This article analyses the shifting ways in which Italy has been strategically represented in Albania during the different key passages of the latter's relatively recent history as a sovereign independent state. As a parallel narrative, the article also examines the way Albania has been equally strategically represented in Italy before and during the two periods in which Italy has been militarily involved in Albania, and the way this has been consistent with an attempt to elaborate and sustain a politically strategic definition of Italian identity and culture. The history of the asymmetrical relationship between Albania and Italy is deeply embedded in the social, cultural and political environments that are on the two shores of the Adriatic Sea. The cultural construction of Albania in Italy and vice versa of Italy in Albania should be linked to seemingly independent instances of domestic reforms. The dynamics of projective identification or dis-identification stemming from these instances should be seen as intertwined within two parallel processes of mutual definition encompassing both the colonial and the postcolonial relations between and within the two countries.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , May 2003 , pp. 77 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Morozzo della Rocca, R., 'Roma e Tirana, le “convergenze parallele”, Limes , 2, 2001, p. 213.Google Scholar

2. Taking her cue from Edward Said's seminal work on ‘Orientalism’ (see his Orientalism, Penguin, London, 1978), Maria Teodorova analyses ‘Balkanism’ as a Western European discourse on South-Eastern Europe formed gradually over two centuries and consolidated around the first Balkan wars and the First World War. Whereas the Orientalist discourse presents the West and the Orient as incompatible and oppositional entities, in the Western European imaginary the Balkans are seen as an historical and cultural area between East and West, Europe and Asia; hence ‘Balkanism is a discourse about an imputed ambiguity’. For Teodorova the West's perception of the Balkans is one of ‘an incomplete self … the shadow, the structurally despised alter-ego’. See Teodorova, M., Imagining the Balkans , Oxford University Press, New York, 1997; quotes above, pp. 11, 14–15, 17. Taking my cue in turn from Teodorova's exploration of Balkanism, I introduce here the concept of ‘Albanism’ as an heuristic device for constructing a discourse of Albania as ‘the Balkan in the Balkan’—in other words as an imputed ambiguity inscribed within the already imputed ambiguity posed by the Balkanist discourse.Google Scholar

3. Lubonja, F., ‘Between the Glory of a Virtual World and the Misery of a Real World’, in Schwandner-Sievers, S. and Fischer, B.J. (ed.), Albanian Identities: Myth, Narratives and Politics , Hurst, London, 2002, pp. 91–103.Google Scholar

4. Biberaj, E., Albania and China: A Study of an Unequal Alliance , Westview Press, London and Boulder, 1986, p. 3.Google Scholar

5. Fischer, B., Albania at War 1939–1945 , Hurst, London, 1999, p. 3.Google Scholar

6. Ibid. Google Scholar

7. Lubonja, , ‘Between the Glory of a Virtual World and the Misery of a Real World’, p. 97.Google Scholar

8. For an analysis of the role of the Italian media in the Albanian post-communist transformation and the way this interlinked with migration, see Mai, N., “‘Italy is Beautiful”: The Role of Italian Television in the Albanian Migratory Flow to Italy’, in King, R. and Wood, N. (ed.), Media and Migration: Constructions of Mobility and Difference , Routledge, London, 2001, pp. 95–109.Google Scholar

9. According to UNICEF, Situation Analysis: Children's and Women's Rights in Albania , UNICEF, Tirana, 1998, p. 24.Google Scholar

10. See UNDP, Albania Human Development Report , UNDP, Tirana, 1998, p. 27; also Morozzo della Rocca, R., Albania: le radici della crisi, Guerini, Milan, 1997, p. 100.Google Scholar

11. Speech quoted from La Repubblica , 10 December 1997.Google Scholar

12. I make this observation as a result of two years of fieldwork amongst young Albanians in Tirana and Durrës during 1998–2000.Google Scholar

13. Fischer, , Albania at War , p.5.Google Scholar

14. It is also worth noting the significant role of the Arberesh community in Italian–Albanian relations and in the elaboration of an Albanian nationalist ideology (Francesco Crispi was Arberesh himself). The Arberesh community consists of descendents of Albanians who fled Albania in the face of the Ottoman occupation in the fifteenth century and who settled in a scattering of villages and small towns in Southern Italy and Sicily, some of which preserve the Albanian connection in their place-names (e.g. Piana degli Albanesi in Sicily, Spezzano Albanese in Calabria).Google Scholar

15. See Lorechio, L., Il Pensiero Politico Albanese in Rapporto agli Interessi Italiani , Tipografia Operaia Romana, Rome, 1904; Lorechio, L., Imperialismo latino-italico nell'Oriente Europeo e gli Italo-Albanesi, Cooperativa Tipografica Castaldi, Rome, 1923; Mandalari, O. C., Gli Italiani per l'Indipendenza della Nazione Albanese, Archivio Storiografico dei Reduci di Guerra, Rome, 1936.Google Scholar

16. Cordignano, F., In Albania , Società Italiana Dante Alighieri, Rome, 1940. Also Bondioli, P., Albania: Quinta Sponda d'Italia, CETIM, Milan, 1939; and from an earlier, more ‘scientific’ tradition, Mantegazza, V., Albania, Bologna, 1903.Google Scholar

17. Lubonja, , ‘Between the Glory of a Virtual World and the Misery of a Real World’.Google Scholar

18. For instance, neither Kosovo nor many parts of southern Albania were ever included. See Misha, P., ‘Invention of a Nationalism—Myth and Amnesia’, in Schwander-Sievers, S. and Fischer, B.J. (ed.), Albanian Identities: Myth, Narratives and Politics , Hurst, London, 2002, pp. 33–48.Google Scholar

19. These are the words of the poet Pasha, Vaso, a Catholic who had served the Ottoman Empire. Quoted in Lubonja, ‘Between the Glory of a Virtual World and the Misery of a Real World’, p. 92.Google Scholar

20. Cordignano, , In Albania , p. 7.Google Scholar

21. Bondioli, , Albania: Quinta Sponda d'Italia , p. 195.Google Scholar

22. Ibid. Google Scholar

23. Ambrosini, G., L'Albania nella Comunità Imperiale di Roma , Quaderni dell'Istituto Nazionale Cultura Fascista, Serie Decima, n. 5, Rome, 1940, p. 8.Google Scholar

24. Nani, U., ‘I rapporti con l'Albania da Francesco Crispi ad oggi’, La Terra , Anno XIII, nuova serie, no. 6, 1939, pp. 195–196.Google Scholar

25. Ciano, G., Diario di un Inviato del Duce , Rome, 1940, p. 6.Google Scholar

26. Ambrosini, , L'Albania nella Comunità Imperiale di Roma , p. 61.Google Scholar

27. Ibid. , p. 64.Google Scholar

28. Verdicchio, P., ‘The Preclusion of Postcolonial Discourse in Southern Italy’, in Allen, B. and Russo, M. (ed.), Revisioning Italy: National Identity and Global Culture , University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1997, p. 197.Google Scholar

29. Pandolfi, M., ‘Two Italies: Rhetorical Figures of Failed Nationhood’, in Schneider, J. (ed.), Italy's ‘Southern Question’: Orientalism in One Country , Berg, Oxford, 1998, pp. 285–289; quotes in this paragraph, p. 287.Google Scholar

30. Goglia, L. and Grassi, F., Il Colonialismo Italiano da Adua all'Impero , Laterza, Bari, 1981, p. 10.Google Scholar

31. Maria Monti, G., L'Espansione Mediterranea del Mezzogiorno d'Italia e della Sicilia , Zanichelli, Bologna, 1942, p. 5.Google Scholar

32. See King, R., Fielding, A. and Black, R., ‘The International Migration Turnaround in Southern Europe’, in King, R. and Black, R. (ed.), Southern Europe and the New Immigrations , Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, 1997, pp. 1–25.Google Scholar

33. For details on numbers, nationalities, regional distribution, labour market characteristics etc. see King, R. and Andall, J., ‘The Geography and Economic Sociology of Recent Immigration to Italy’, Modern Italy , 4, 2, 1999, pp. 135–158.Google Scholar

34. According to Maher, V., ‘Immigration and Social Identities’, in Forgacs, D. and Lumley, R. (ed.), Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction , Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, pp. 160–177, p. 160.Google Scholar

35. Stoppiello, S., ‘Nomi e immagini dell’ “altro”. Un analisi multidimensionale della stampa', Studi Emigrazione , 135, 1999, pp. 417–442.Google Scholar

36. Cotesta, V., ‘Mass media, conflitti etnici e immigrazione’, Studi Emigrazione , 135, 1999, pp. 387–394, p. 393.Google Scholar

37. For a review of data and estimates of the Albanian migratory presence in Italy, see King, R. and Mai, N., ‘Of Myths and Mirrors: Interpretations of Albanian Migration to Italy’, Studi Emigrazione , 143, 2002, pp. 161–199.Google Scholar

38. This discursive shift is commented on in several papers: for instance Dell'Agnese, E., ‘Profughi politici e rifugiati “economici” in Italia: il doppio esodo albanese del 1991’, in Gentileschi, M. L. and King, R. (ed.), Questioni di Popolazione in Europa: una prospettiva geografica , Pàtron, Bologna, 1996, pp. 69–81; Zinn, D. L., ‘Adriatic Brethren or Black Sheep? Migration in Italy and the Albanian Crisis’, European Urban and Regional Studies, 3, 3, 1996, pp. 241–249.Google Scholar

39. See SWG, ‘Immigrati e criminalità: cosa pensano gli italiani’, online at <http://www.swg.it/ricorda/immig_criminalita.html>..>Google Scholar

40. Shöpflin, G., ‘The Functions of Myth and a Taxonomy of Myth’, in Hosking, G. and Shöpflin, G. (ed.), Myths and Nationhood , Hurst, London, 1997, pp. 19–35, p. 19.Google Scholar

41. In Hall, S. and Du Gay, P. (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity , Sage, London, 1996, p. 4.Google Scholar

42. Ibid. Google Scholar

43. Ibid. , p. 5.Google Scholar

44. Vehbiu, A. and Devole, R., La Scoperta dell'Albania. Gli Albanesi secondo i mass media , Paoline, Milan, 1996, p. 9.Google Scholar

45. See Caracciolo, L., Terra Incognita. Le Radici Geopolitici della Crisi Italiana , Laterza, Bari, 2001, p. 29.Google Scholar

46. Maher, , ‘Immigration and Social Identities’, p. 168.Google Scholar

47. See Morley, D. and Robins, K., ‘No Place Like Heimat: Images of Home(land) in European Culture’, in Carter, E. (ed.), Space and Place: Theories of Identity and Location , Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1993, pp. 3–32, p. 19.Google Scholar

48. Grotstein, J., Splitting and Projective Identification , Jason Aronson, New York, 1981.Google Scholar

49. Maher, , ‘Immigration and Social Identities’, p. 175.Google Scholar

50. Salecl, R., ‘National Identity and Socialist Moral Majority’, in Carter, E. (ed.), Space and Place: Theories of Identity and Location , Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1993, pp. 101–109, p. 105.Google Scholar

51. Allen, and Russo, , Revisioning Italy , p. 5; emphasis in this quote is my own.Google Scholar

52. Sniderman, P., Peri, P., De Figuereido Rui, J. and Piazza, T., The Outsider: Prejudice and Politics in Italy , Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001, p. 85.Google Scholar

53. Verdicchio, , ‘The Preclusion of Postcolonial Discourse in Southern Italy’, pp. 191, 194.Google Scholar

54. Castles, S., ‘How Nation-States Respond to Immigration and Ethnic Diversity’, New Community , 21, 3, 1995, pp. 293–308, p. 294.Google Scholar