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Italophilia meets Albanophobia: paradoxes of asymmetric
assimilation and identity processes amongst Albanian
immigrants in Italy
Journal:
Ethnic and Racial Studies
Manuscript ID:
RERS-2007-0129.R2
Manuscript Type:
Original Manuscript
Keywords:
Albanian migration, Italy, assimilation, integration, Identity,
stigmatisation
URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rers ethnic@surrey.ac.uk
Ethnic and Racial Studies
peer-00513309, version 1 - 1 Sep 2010
Author manuscript, published in "Ethnic and Racial Studies 32, 1 (2008) 117-138"
DOI : 10.1080/01419870802245034
For Peer Review Only
1
Italophilia meets Albanophobia: paradoxes of asymmetric assimilation and
identity processes amongst Albanian immigrants in Italy
Russell King and Nicola Mai
Abstract
This paper discusses what we call the ‘Albanian assimilation paradox’. Since arrival
in 1991, Albanians have become one of the most ‘integrated’ of all non-EU immigrant
groups in Italy, based on their knowledge of Italian, geographical dispersion, balanced
demography, employment progress, and desire to remain in Italy. Yet they are the
nationality most rejected and stigmatised by Italians – stereotyped as criminals,
prostitutes and uncivilised people. Based on 97 interviews with Albanians in three
cities in Italy, we explore the multifaceted dimensions of their patchy assimilation.
Although the hegemonic negative framing of Albanians by Italian media and public
discourse plays a major role, other elements of the picture relate to Albanians’
complexly shifting identities, framed both against and within this discourse (and
hence both resisting and internalising it), and against changing concepts of Albanian
national and diasporic identities derived from ambiguous perceptions of the national
homeland.
Keywords: Albanian migration; Italy; assimilation; integration; stigmatisation;
identity
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Introduction and theoretical reference-points
Two refrains echo through the hundreds of conversations we have had with Albanian
immigrants living in Italy. The first is an overwhelming sadness at the stigmatisation
they have been subjected to by the Italian media and society. Their reactions to
stereotyping as ‘undesirables’ and ‘criminals’ range from extreme anger to resignation
and even to tacit acceptance and internalisation. The second refrain is often framed as
a question: ‘Why won’t they let us be like them?’ This can be seen as an inversion of
the title of Greeley’s (1969) famous essay about immigrants in the United States –
‘Why can’t they be like us?’ By deploying the term ‘asymmetric assimilation’ we
explore in this paper the inclusion/exclusion of Albanian migrants in Italy. Our
neologism is not without historical precedent or analogy, as we shall see shortly. We
propose its application to the Albanian case because of the paradoxical situation
whereby the migrant group which is the most rejected by Italian society is that which,
on several indicators, is also the most ‘similar’ to the host society, and moreover sees
itself as such.
For a long time now, assimilation and integration have been dominant themes
in the study of immigration. Although there are important earlier origins in Europe in
Durkheimian sociology and in the Chicago School in the US, we pick up the
theoretical debate with Milton Gordon’s canonical Assimilation in American Life.
Gordon (1964) made a key division into structural assimilation (engagement in
multiple primary-group relations with the host society, entering into social institutions
and structures), and identificational assimilation (taking on a sense of host-society
‘peoplehood’); Gordon correlates the latter, although not exactly, to cultural
assimilation or acculturation. This division has passed across into the European
literature on integration, which is much more recent (see e.g.Vermeulen and Penninx
2000). Hence European authors commonly make distinctions between structural,
socio-cultural and identificational integration; or between formal participation in
sectors such as education or the employment market, and informal participation in
neighbourhood relations and leisure activities (Engbersen 2003; Heckmann 2005).
Returning to Gordon, we note one of his major propositions: ‘Once structural
assimilation has occurred, either simultaneously with or subsequent to acculturation,
all the other types of assimilation [here Gordon is referring to intermarriage, erosion
of discrimination, absence of power differentials etc.] will naturally follow’ (Gordon
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1964, p. 81, italics in original). According to Gordon, structural assimilation
inevitably produces acculturation, but not the reverse; indeed, for the US, Gordon’s
thesis is that ‘whilst acculturation has been substantially achieved, this is not the case
with regard to the other assimilation variables’ (1964, p. 105).1 Gordon’s concept of
‘acculturation without assimilation’ will be used as a template against which to assess
the Albanian experience in Italy. We will see that it approximates, but is not identical
to, our preferred notion of asymmetric assimilation.
We suggest, by way of signposts into our analysis, three essential differences
between Gordon’s model and our findings. The first is Gordon’s curious omission of
substantive discussion of the labour market, a key component of subsequent
assimilation/integration literature, especially in Europe. Second, Gordon suggests
(1964, p. 81) that acculturation implies the disappearance of prejudice and
discrimination, which is definitely not the situation in our case-study. Third, Gordon’s
account carries little acknowledgement of how different immigrant groups’
aspirations for assimilation might be matched (or not) by the host society’s hegemonic
perceptions of the ‘assimilability’ of different groups.
Gordon’s landmark analysis was of course only a stage in the evolution of the
assimilation debate. Subsequently assimilation become a discredited term (Glazer
1993), although some revival can recently be noted, both in the United States (Alba
and Nee 1997) and in Europe (Brubaker 2001). Key to the concept’s rehabilitation has
been a shift away from the original assumption of ‘straight-line assimilation’ into
‘Anglo-conformity’ (in the US context) to a more nuanced and analytically complex
use of the term. Much attention has been given to alternative models of assimilation,
notably the segmented assimilation of Portes and Zhou (1993), but this line of
analysis focuses on the second generation, less relevant to Albania where the
migration is less than a generation old. Finally, much depends on national models of
immigrant integration and exclusion; within Europe France has been the country
where the assimilationist tradition has been most strongly represented (Brubaker 2001,
pp. 535-7).
In the case of Italy, a recent country of immigration, there is as yet no
overarching model of immigrant incorporation. Policy measures have been ad hoc and
frequently contradictory. There seems to be an acceptance of the economic rationale
of harnessing migrant labour and of the inevitability of immigration in a scenario of
enhanced global mobility; and yet the trend in legislation – from the Legge Martelli
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(1990) through the Turco-Napolitano (1998) to the Bossi-Fini law (2002) – has been
to pay lip-service to integration and instead to keep immigrants as a marginalised,
temporarily-resident fraction of Italian society (Zincone 2006). Italian press and other
media have reinforced this stance by continuously representing immigrants as
outsiders and a threat to the nation. Throughout the 1990s and since, Albanians have
been the lightning-rod for this negative discursive framing of immigration.
In this paper we look at the assimilation-integration trajectory not from the side of
national models or policy but from the perspective of an individual migrant group –
Albanians. Our evidence base is 97 in-depth interviews, taped and transcribed, with
Albanian immigrants in three Italian cities – Rome, Modena and Lecce. These cities
were strategically chosen to represent different socio-economic conditions for
migrants in Italy (respectively the capital and medium-sized cities in the industrialised
North and less-developed South). Interviewees were carefully selected to cover a
cross-section of migrant backgrounds and experiences. Whilst the interview survey is
quite large for a qualitative study, we acknowledge that the statistically non-
representative nature of the sample limits the generalisability of some of our findings.
We now set the scene by briefly describing the chronology and character of the
Albanian migration to Italy.
The Albanian arrival in Italy
Albania represented the most ‘extreme’ of the Eastern bloc’s state socialist regimes:
closed-off and paranoid about the ‘outside world’, ruled by Enver Hoxha, ‘dictator of
the people’, for 40 years. Just as one extreme begets another, Albania’s post-
communist transformation, in the country which was the last domino to fall, was the
most abrupt and turbulent. The sudden lurch from stalinist gulag to capitalist chaos
saw proportionally the biggest emigration from any former Eastern bloc country: by
2005 a quarter of the population was living abroad (Government of Albania 2005).
The first mass departures took place in March 1991: across the Adriatic Sea to
Italy and over the mountains to Greece (King 2003). The 26,000 boat-migrants who
arrived within a few days on the South Italian shore were accepted as refugees, put in
reception camps and eventually dispersed to different parts of Italy. A special
provision of the Martelli Law was passed in order to grant them work and residence
rights. A very different reaction greeted the arrival of another wave of Albanian boat-
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people in August 1991: by this time Albania had a democratically-elected government
and so it was argued that the new arrivals could no longer be treated as refugees
fleeing a repressive regime. Most of them were sent back to Albania. A similar
scenario was replayed in 1997 when a further boat exodus was triggered by the
collapse of several pyramid savings schemes, a financial disaster which bankrupted
maybe half of Albanian households. Once again, the first migrants were accepted, but
then attitudes quickly hardened and later arrivals were blocked or returned.
The arrival of those boats, packed to the gunwales, with migrants perched on
every available surface, and shinning down the ropes to the quayside, has become part
of the iconography of migration, not only in Italy but worldwide. The boat is highly
symbolic of the ‘migrating crowd’, since it gathers together the greatest mass of
migrants in a single confined space, berthing on the shore of ‘fortress Europe’. The
images filled the Italian TV screens and the pages of the print media, not to mention a
controversial Benetton poster and Gianni Amelio’s celebrated film Lamerica (1994).
Such imagery gives a distorted view of Albanian migration. Whilst it is true that
most Albanians have migrated clandestinely – it could not be otherwise given the
refusal of West European governments to accept them as legal migrants – their
journeys have been less visually spectacular. Most came either in high-powered
dinghies across the Strait of Otranto, or via more circuitous routes through Greece and
(ex-)Yugoslavia. Others arrived on ferries or planes, travelling with visitor visas or
false documents, and then ‘overstayed’. Continuous now for 17 years, emigration
seems set to persist; high birth-rates in the recent past ensure a supply of aspiring
emigrants for the next decade or so.
Data on permits to stay (permessi di soggiorno) are the most complete source for
documenting the evolving profile of the Albanian presence in Italy. Table 1 shows
how Albanians quickly became one of the largest immigrant nationalities in Italy over
the short time since 1991. At the end of 2005 they numbered 255,704 and vied with
Romanians (270,850) and Moroccans (235,000) for the ‘top’ position. Albanians were
also prominent in Italy’s three recent regularisations – in 1995 (29,744 Albanians
regularised), 1998 (39,454) and 2002 (55,038) – transforming the community from a
largely undocumented status to a predominantly ‘legal’ one.
[Table 1 near here]
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In trying to understand the significance of Albanian migration to Italy, and the
new ascribed identities that were created (both for Albanians and Italians), the timing
of this intensely mediatised migratory inflow was vital. It came precisely when Italy
itself was in deep crisis. The end of Cold-War communism blew away the anti-
communist cleavage around which the Italian political system had been structured
throughout the postwar era: 45 years of communist rule in Albania had been
paralleled by 45 years of Christian Democracy in Italy, and both collapsed within
months of each other. Moreover, the demise of the Christian Democrats’ inefficient
and morally bankrupt political system was coupled with new and stringent demands
posed by European integration. Italy’s membership of the EU was put to the test in its
questionable ability to comply both with the Maastricht economic parameters and
with the Schengen Treaty (Perlmutter 1998). These events unfolded alongside the
Albanian crisis, which gave Italy an opportunity to exercise ‘responsible’ foreign
policy (leading the military-humanitarian missions in Albania in the early 1990s and
again in 1997) and to regain ‘Schengen credibility’ by acting tough on immigration,
especially along its southern Adriatic border. Thus, a new Italian national identity –
‘efficient’, ‘European’, ‘global’ – emerged in relation to the new constitutive others
appearing on the scene at the time – Albania and the Albanians (Mai 2003).
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Adriatic Sea, ‘emigration fever’
characterised Albania during the 1990s. Leaving the country was seen as the only
route to economic survival and improvement and – especially for younger people – to
expressing their own identity. Ever since 1991, if not well before, much of this
‘disidentification’ with Albania has been projected towards Italy, Albania’s nearest
Western neighbour.2 Mussolini’s colonial ventures in Albania may have something to
do with this – remodelling Tirana and reclaiming the coastal marshlands – but much
more powerful in the ‘italianisation’ of Albania was the beaming of TV channels
towards Albania from the 1970s on. The illegal, hence, secret watching of Italian
television gave Albanians a periscope with which to observe the outside world.
Especially for young people, Italian TV projected lifestyle models which were very
different from those assigned to them by communism. In this way the idea of
migrating abroad (above all to Italy) could be seen as the logical outcome of a wider
process of disembedding of Albanian young people’s identities from the homogenous,
moralised, collectivist-nationalist landscape that prevailed before 1991 (Mai 2002, p.
262). Hoxha’s xenophobia was replaced by a people’s xenophilia targeted particularly
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at Italy as the symbol of Albanians’ aspirational Westernness. What we are arguing
here, in essence, is that Albanians, especially teenagers and young adults, had already
undergone a process of anticipatory assimilation to Italy and its way of life even
before their ‘migratory projects’ became realisable. Moreover, years of watching
Italian television had given most young Albanians a reasonable command of the
Italian language – an invaluable headstart should they end up migrating there.
From ‘guardian angels’ to ‘albanophobia’
The Italian response to the arrival of tens of thousands of Albanians has been a story
in itself. The reaction has been strongly driven by the Italian media, which have a
tradition of stereotyping immigrants: before the arrival of Albanians, Moroccans and
Tunisians were routinely associated with crimes such as drug-dealing and theft
(Campani 2001; ter Wal 2002). But, more than any other group in recent years,
Albanians have been subject to a brutal campaign of stigmatisation and
criminalisation by the Italian media (King and Mai 2002).
At the very beginning, reaction to the Albanians’ landing was sympathetic. In
March 1991 the boat-migrants were welcomed as ‘Adriatic brothers’ escaping the
‘darkness of communism’ (Zinn 1996). During our fieldwork in and around the
arrival-points of the migrants in Apulia, we collected accounts of extraordinary
hospitality by local people towards the new arrivals – not only donations of food,
clothing and furniture, but cases of long-term support and ‘adoption’ of Albanians by
local families who became effectively their ‘guardian angels’ (King and Mai 2004).
Even at this early stage, however, there were also more ambiguous and ultimately
disturbing framings of the arrival. News articles portrayed the Albanians as desperate,
poverty-stricken, abject, child-like. Pictures of them massed on the quaysides or
cooped up in reception centres gave the impression that they were incapable of
helping themselves – whereas in fact they were the victims of the authorities’
dithering. By the time the August 1991 wave arrived, the tone had further changed. A
media discourse which in March had stressed words like ‘exodus’, ‘refugees’,
‘emergency’ and ‘help’ had changed to keywords such as ‘crisis’, ‘clandestine
arrivals’, ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘repatriation’ (Palomba and Righi 1992).
This was but a step on the way to Albanians’ final and comprehensive denigration
as ‘undesirables’ and ‘criminals’, persistently associated in the media with human
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trafficking, drugs, prostitution, burglaries and violent behaviour. As in Greece (cf.
Lazaridis 1996), albanophobia, an all-encompassing and irrational fear of all things
Albanian, became entrenched within the perceptions of the Italian population as a
whole. As Vehbiu and Devole (1996) lament in their devastating critique of Italian
media’s ‘discovery’ and then ‘destruction’ of the Albanians, almost never do the
media report on the real and law-abiding progress made by the vast majority. Instead,
criminalisation became a powerful agent in stereotyping all Albanian migrants.
Interviewees were acutely aware of the media’s framing of Albanians and of the
heavy burden this imposed on all Albanians in their interactions with the host society
– and even with each other. A typical interview extract:
Well, I think that the Italian media have orchestrated a propaganda
campaign against Albanians. They only show the worst of Albania.
Do you think Italians are influenced by this?
Very negatively. I mean the truth is that not all Albanians are
criminals … Even Albanians are afraid of other Albanians … (Male,
age 28, Lecce).
The next interview exchange, with a translator/interpreter at the Lecce law court, is
interesting because it reflects the view of an educated person who is confronted daily
by criminal cases involving Albanians.
How do you think Albanian migrants are treated here?
Very badly … the mass media have given us a very bad press.
Is this an important factor? Does it influence the way Italians
behave towards Albanians?
Yes, very important. Because if something bad happens, the first
thing everybody says is that Albanians did it. And of course they
don’t bother to rectify the information when it turns out that it’s not
true …
Since you have direct knowledge of Albanians’ involvement in
criminality, what do you think of the relationship between the extent
of the phenomenon and how it’s portrayed?
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It’s true, I see Albanians getting involved in drugs, refugee
smuggling and prostitution … But it’s only a small minority of
people, who destroy the work and sacrifice of honest people who are
the overwhelming majority (F, 31, Lecce).
The relentless stereotyping of Albanians as criminals and more generally as rough,
uncivilised people has two further important ramifications. The first is the behaviour
of Italians towards Albanians in various spheres of life such as employment and
housing. Although Albanians have little difficulty obtaining low-status jobs in Italy,
we came across many instances of discrimination in the workplace, including
receiving lower wages than Italians doing the same work. This becomes less common
as time passes and Albanians get legalised and progress to more stable jobs – this
holds for all immigrants who start as undocumented workers in the informal labour
market. More specifically anti-Albanian discrimination arises when Albanians try to
access qualified jobs: there appears to be a glass ceiling. One informant (F, 30,
Modena) related how she had been interviewed for a post as a clerical officer; all had
gone well until the final question. The job contract was on the table and about to be
signed when the nationality question arose. When she said she was Albanian the
contract was withdrawn and ‘another candidate’ was suddenly introduced into the
conversation. They would phone her when the other candidate had been interviewed.
She never received the call.
Instances of more subtle racism towards Albanians derive from their
conversational encounters with Italian colleagues or acquaintances. One example
among many:
When you say you’re Albanian what do people say?
Ah … very good … you don’t look like one!
And how do you respond to that?
Well, usually I say that we don’t have three eyes or four ears, and
start laughing! (F, 22, Lecce).
The second ramification involves Albanians’ internalisation of the stigmatising
discourse, so that it affects their own self-presentation and their behaviour towards
both Italians and other Albanians. Several interviewees seemed to accept that
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Albanians had behaved badly and that the poor reputation of their national group was
partially deserved. One reaction was to socialise mainly with Italians and to avoid
fellow-Albanians who were not part of their kinship or close friendship group.
Those Albanians who commit crimes and have problems with the
law, I think they deserve the treatment they get from society, but the
rest, people like us who are law-abiding and yet are in need of help,
don’t deserve the racism (…) I feel a bit diffident towards Albanians
now … I socialise mainly with Italians. The only Albanians I mix
with are my family (F, 31, Lecce).
The next interview exchange illustrates an even more explicit rejection of ‘the
Albanians’ – prefixed by the definite article as if they were a different nationality
from the interviewee:
Are your friends Italian or Albanian?
I don’t know many Albanians. I stay with my family. I don’t like to
make acquaintances with the Albanians, I don’t like them … they
have done many stupid things (M, 24, Modena).
Another reaction is to deny being Albanian:
Once this lady, a shopkeeper, asked me if I was from Sardinia since
she thought my accent was like the Sardinian one … I replied yes. I
felt bad about that, but it was a kind of natural reaction … (M, 39,
Lecce).
Finally, parents want to ensure that their children are not identified as Albanian
and picked on as a result, so they encourage them to speak Italian all the time at
school and in public spaces such as the street (Zinn 2005). Teenagers we interviewed
who had spent time in school in Italy recalled being isolated, taunted, accused of
having diseases. The leader of an Albanian association in Lecce said:
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The situation we have now is that sometimes our children are
ashamed and hide the fact of being Albanian. Because there has
been abuse of the term ‘Albanian’ (albanese) and as a result
children feel embarrassed about being Albanian … If you go to the
market you hear Italians saying to each other: ‘You are dressed like
an Albanian’ or ‘You look like an Albanian’ [meaning cheap,
shoddy, second-rate]. They [the children] want to be identified as
Italians.
Albanians’ aspirational assimilation: some qualitative and quantitative data
We saw earlier how Albanians, even before they left their country, had been subject to
a yearning to move abroad; and we noted a kind of ‘anticipatory socialisation’ into
Italian culture. Now we build on these findings about Albanians’ identificatory
orientation towards Italy by presenting a range of data to illustrate, more
systematically, Albanians’ partially-successful assimilation into Italian society. What
is also remarkable is that this fast movement along the assimilation-integration
trajectory has been achieved in a short space of time compared to longer-established
immigrants in Italy.
We start with the labour market. There are no employment data to demonstrate
statistically the progress made by Albanians since their arrival in Italy. But most
interviewees, especially those who had been in Italy for many years, described their
work experiences in terms which involved moves towards better jobs, pay and
conditions. Often a major factor in this was the acquisition of ‘papers’. Here are three
testimonies which are typical of many we recorded. We select these because they
represent different types and ages of informants and different scenarios of work
improvement.
I went through some very difficult times at the beginning … I tried
hard to get a job and all I could find was a manual job in a factory,
where I worked for almost four years. After that, I managed to
become a translator. I had always wanted to do this as it was my sort
of ‘natural’ role since I first arrived in Italy, as I was usually the one
who spoke Italian well wherever I went …
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So, what happened in the difficult period? How did you find these
jobs?
I asked everywhere, through ads, friends, even the internet.
Whenever they found out I was Albanian they said they would think
about it and that was it ... nobody ever called me. Except for the job
at the factory, but I got that through an Italian friend. At the same
time, they kept contacting me to work as a translator at the court and
little by little I became one of their main consultants. I attended a
course for cultural mediators organised by the province and now I
freelance, offering cultural mediation, translation and interpreting
services – (laughing) do you want my card? (F, 27, Modena).
I came to Italy in 1991, with the first group of migrants, and got a
permit to stay as a refugee straightaway. My idea had always been
to become self-employed, as that was forbidden in Albania. I
thought it would be easy here … but before I could become an
entrepreneur I worked all over the place … as a gardener, in
construction, as a translator … I came here full of hope, I had a
university degree in Albania, but I had to follow a different path to
get a job in Italy. Anyway it sort of worked out in the end. Now I
own a bar near Stazione Termini and employ a couple of young men,
an Albanian and a Romanian (M, 41, Rome).
Why did you go to evening classes?
Because I used to work during the day, first in a bakery … then as a
builder, mechanic, electrician, shop assistant … I also did bits and
pieces through temping agencies … then I started working in a
training centre, I used to teach people how to use software packages,
repair computers … And now I work as a programmer for a
software company here in Modena. We develop software for big
enterprises such as telecom companies and stuff like that (M, 19,
Modena).
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Several issues arise from these extracts. The first is geographical location: they are
from interviews in Modena and Rome. Throughout our fieldwork in the three areas in
Italy, it became clear that there was a link between improving employment and a
move to the North. The South was the area of arrival and acclimatisation. Here it was
possible to find casual work in the shadow economy – in agriculture or construction –
and live without a permit to stay. But it was definitely not the best part of Italy to
make economic progress: wages are lower and good jobs far fewer and more difficult
to access. A move to Rome or northern Italy corresponded to a better chance, as a
documented migrant, of accessing a more secure, qualified and better-paid job, or
even to become self-employed; although some of this advantage would be negated by
the higher cost of living, especially housing (King and Mai 2004; Schuster 2005).3
A second recurrent theme is the enormous persistence that Albanians have to
show before any real progress is made. Even then many do not fulfil their true
aspirations or reach the level that their skills and training (in Albania) merited, partly
due to non-recognition of Albanian qualifications. We interpose one typical extract
here to make this point:
Well, to tell the truth I was disappointed with the overall experience
of work here in Italy because I have a degree in accountancy and, I
mean, I used to do the administration for a whole cooperative in
Albania and here you will never be given such a possibility …
People say this is because there are a lot of unemployed Italians …
but I think that the fact that they do not recognise foreign diplomas
is a major obstacle … and then they don’t trust you because you are
Albanian, on top of it all (F, 46, Lecce).
The third feature which emerges from these interviews is language. For many
immigrant nationalities arriving in Italy, language is a fundamental barrier to
economic progress and social integration; much less so for Albanians who, as we have
seen, often know some Italian before they arrive. Their language skills are quickly
improved and many are able to ‘hide’ their Albanian origin. Sometimes this can lead
to unforeseen consequences, as the following example illustrates. The speaker is a
hospital worker who has lived both in Lecce and Modena. Her remarks are also an
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indication of the differentiated racisms towards Albanians in Italy – more ‘open’ and
‘insulting’ in the South, more subtle but perhaps deeply ingrained in the North.
Once something happened in the hospital where I am working here
in Modena. A doctor overheard me talking with my mother on the
phone and asked me what language I was speaking. I told him it was
Albanian. He did not say anything at the time but he looked a bit
confused. Then, later, he confessed to me how shocked he felt when
he found out I was Albanian. He couldn’t believe it – he said he
would never have thought I was Albanian from the way I was
working. I felt very insulted, but I knew he did not mean it in a bad
way, knowing what Italian people are told about us all the time (…)
Another time this cleaner insulted me, she called me an Albanian …
you know, an Albanian prostitute. This was back in Lecce. I took
her to the director and made her apologise (F, 34, Modena).
We switch focus now to examine some quantitative data on Albanians in Italy.
These statistics, by and large, reinforce the impression that Albanians are becoming
increasingly integrated within the host society. The first index is geographical
distribution. Albanians are the most ‘dispersed’ of all immigrant nationalities in Italy;
that is to say, they are the group whose spatial distribution is most similar to that of
the Italian population as a whole (Bonifazi 2007, p. 150). Albanians are found in
significant numbers in all Italian regions except Sardinia and are found not only in big
cities but in small towns and rural areas too.
Albanians are also highly mobile within Italy, arriving in Apulia, where of course
some of them stay (in fact Albanians are 38 per cent of all immigrants in that region),
but then fanning out to the rest of Italy. Regional time-series data show that Albanians
tend, more than other immigrants, to move to regions of central-northern Italy which
are economically dynamic and which are most accessible to their region of arrival.
Hence their main regions of diffusion over the past decade stretch up the Adriatic
seaboard to Emilia-Romagna and across to Tuscany (King 2003, pp. 291-3).
The evolving demographic structure of Albanians in Italy is another indicator of
rapid stabilisation and integration. In the early 1990s less than a quarter were females;
by the late 1990s the share was one third; by 2001 the ratio was 40 per cent. These
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gender trend-data show dynamic change towards demographic ‘normalisation’
(Bonifazi and Sabatino 2003, p. 970).
[Table 2 near here]
Table 2 gives further evidence of the rapid family-based settlement of Albanians
in Italy, compared to the aggregate trend of all migrants from poor countries. Key
figures from this table are the doubling of the share of males who are married, the
very high share of Albanian females who are married (nearly three-quarters), and
growth in the number of children. Data on pupil enrolments in the Italian school
system (Table 3) show that over the eight years in question the number of Albanian
pupils has increased more than tenfold, and the share of Albanians amongst the total
foreign pupil population has more than doubled. Albanians are now the largest
foreign-origin group in Italian schools, accounting for 17.7 per cent of all foreign
pupils, well above their share of the overall immigrant population (11.3 per cent).
[Table 3 near here]
A final – albeit problematic – numerical indicator of assimilation is intermarriage
with Italians. Mixed marriages between Italians and foreigners have increased sharply
in the past decade, reaching one in ten of all marriages in 2005 (ISTAT 2007, pp. 340-
3). Four-fifths of these marriages involved an Italian husband; only one fifth an Italian
wife. How do Albanians fit into these patterns? During 2005 1,125 Albanians married
an Italian spouse, accounting for 4.4 per cent of Italian-foreign unions. The 705 cases
where an Albanian wife has an Italian husband are 3.8 per cent of all Italian husband
out-marriages, whereas the 420 marriages between an Albanian husband and an
Italian wife account for 8.6 per cent of Italian wife out-marriages. The data indicate
that, although Albanians are one of the fastest-growing groups to intermarry with
Italians, marriage rates remain low compared to other migrant nationalities –
Romanian women and Moroccan men, for instance. It seems that Albanians have yet
to cross the ultimate assimilation frontier due, we suspect, to a version of the ‘glass
ceiling’ imposed on Albanians by Italian society. Another interpretation of the
relatively low out-marriage rate of Albanians is their own strong family and kinship
bonds which, as noted, tend to structure their migration patterns and lead to endogamy
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rather than exogamy. Albanians’ relatively balanced sex-ratio compared to many
other immigrant nationalities also facilitates intra-marriage, as well as resulting from
it.
Discussion: shifting and opposing identities
Whichever way one looks at Albanian migration to Italy – from the etic gaze of the
social science observer, or the emic perspective of migrants’ own experiences and
feelings – one is confronted by a series of paradoxes and contradictions. Of course,
ambivalence is intrinsic to the migrant condition, but the Albanian case seems to take
these ambiguities to a new plane. Central to our attempt to capture the singularity of
the Albanian migratory experience in Italy is our notion of asymmetric assimilation,
the opposition of Albanians’ italophilia with Italians’ albanophobia. Even these two
constructions are by no means univocal; within each there are a plurality of often
opposing discursive frames. Our purpose now is to draw out some of these binaries
and nuances.
The discussion below is based both on our formal interviews with Albanians and
on our longer-term observations and interactions with this immigrant group in more
informal settings. Once again, we stress that, in the absence of a statistically
representative sample, some of our assertations are to be regarded as hypotheses in
need of further investigation rather than iron-clad statements of fact.
First, Albanians in Italy are under-researched, yet over-represented in the media. It
is not obvious why they have been so little researched. Surely it cannot be because
(Italian) researchers themselves ‘fear’ this group. Maybe it is because Albanians are
regarded as insufficiently ‘visible’ or ‘exotic’ compared to other researched groups,
such as the Moroccans (Salih 2003), Senegalese (Schmidt di Friedberg 1994), Cape
Verdeans (Andall 2000) or Chinese (Campani et al. 1994). The one large-scale study
of Albanians in Italy (Melchionda 2003) does not take the emic perspective that we
favour but relies mainly on key interviews with host-society informants.
A second set of contradictions revolves around how Albanians are viewed by
Italians. As Dorothy Zinn (1996) pithily sums it up, are they ‘Adriatic brethren’ or
‘black sheep’? This discursive dichotomy has oscillated over time, with the latter
undoubtedly dominant. Recently, however, there have been signs of a softening of
anti-Albanian negativity, partly because 9/11 has refocused media and political
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attention on Muslim groups in Italy such as Moroccans and Pakistanis. It is true that
most Albanians are Muslim, but that is not a predominant aspect in their cultural
construction and representation in Italy. Moreover, in our interviews, many Albanian
Muslim migrants strategically downplayed their affiliation to Islam, which tended to
be referred to in terms of family tradition rather than faith, and were prepared to
baptise their children as Catholics as a way to support their children’s assimilation
(Romania 2004, pp. 148-53).4
This last point leads into another complex discussion about Albanians’ own
shifting and oppositional identities. We saw earlier how, around the period that the
communist regime was crumbling in their homeland, and under the influence of
Italian television-watching, Albanians were already projecting their identities towards
Italy in a kind of ‘anticipatory socialisation’. There is a scene in Lamerica where a
truckload of Albanian young men is heading for the coast and a boat-trip to the
‘promised land’. One of them speaks: ‘Now I’m coming to Italy, I’ll find a girl in Bari,
I’ll marry her and have lots of children. I won’t speak Albanian to my children, I want
to speak only Italian, so that the children will forget that I’m Albanian’. As a ‘fantasy
of radical assimilation’ (Duncan 2006) this could hardly be more explicit.
Now, several years after the film and the first exodus, Albanians, including those
who have yet to migrate, are much more ‘migration-savvy’. They have understood
(also from Albania) the Italian media’s negative representation of Albanian migrants
and they have been able to ‘see through’ the failed promises of Italian consumer
capitalism (Mai 2005). Now, in what has come to be called post-post-communist
times (Sampson 1998), and with the benefit of experience, Albanians are formulating
different and more carefully considered life projects, focused on achieving realistic
objectives.
The reappraisal of Albanian identities and ideas about migration takes on both an
individual and a collective form. The contrast between these two scales of social
behaviour and identification is another contradiction in the Albanian migration
experience and can be interpreted, as Iosifides et al. (2007) do for Albanians in
Greece, with reference to different kinds of social capital. In both Italy and Greece,
and also in Switzerland (Dahinden 2005), Albanian immigrants’ social capital appears
to be tightly bounded by kinship, plus very close friends. For many Albanian migrants,
the celebration of a ‘strong’ ethno-national identity seems too similar to the national-
communist rhetoric of their recent past. There also is a weak tendency to form
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associations, trust fellow-nationals, or even to talk to them, beyond the kin circle.
Glazer and Moynihan’s stripped-down definition of an ethnic group as ‘something of
an extended family or clan’ (1970, p. 18) seems particularly apt to describe the
situation of Albanians in Italy. Thus Albanians’ broader-scale ‘bonding’ social capital,
in the form of generalised ethnic solidarity, is very weak. A parallel situation is found
with their ‘bridging’ social capital, which links them to the host society. They often
develop good links with individual Italians – workmates or neighbours – but their use
of institutional structures, even those set up to help them, such as job centres or
charities, is again very low. Our data suggest that, in order to solve their problems of
accessing work, housing or other needs, Albanians do not go to the formal or NGO
structures of Italian society, nor do they utilise ethnic or immigrant associations; they
resolve these issues on their own initiative through Albanian or Italian close friends
and colleagues – a conclusion also supported by Melchionda (2003).
The individualisation or ‘de-collectivisation’ of Albanian identities is
conventionally viewed as a reaction to the communist past. An interviewee:
I think there is a refusal, a rejection of the very idea of belonging to
an association … [In communist times] associating was a way for
the individual to participate in the group, but in the end it was the
contrary … the individual aspect was lost (M, 23, Modena).
We found that the Albanian associations that do exist in Italy were not established in
the early years of arrival, in order to reinforce Albanians’ ethnic identity and help
each other settle down, but were formed in the late 1990s in order to respond to
negative media images by recovering positive elements of identification. This delayed
ethnic mobilisation is described in the American sociological literature as ‘reactive
ethnicity’ and arises out of the ‘confrontation with concerted attitudes of prejudice on
the part of the surrounding population’ (Portes and Rumbaut 1996, pp. 133, 222). In
the words of an Albanian association member in Lecce:
[I became a member] because I care about the image of Albania and
Albanians. I am very proud of being Albanian and I get upset when
I hear people talking nonsense about us. Soon after I got here in
1997 I realised that there was a very strong prejudice against
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Albanians, and I started thinking about a way to challenge this
terrible image … I guess it is a way to help people who are starting
their lives here now, as I had to face many problems because of
prejudice, and I think, if we do nothing, nothing will change (F, 33,
Lecce).
This ‘re-identification’ with Albania has its limits, however. Whilst there has been
some return migration (Labrianidis and Lyberaki 2004), most migrants we
interviewed did not express a realistic desire to go back (except on visits), for a
mixture of economic and personal reasons. They see a more secure future for
themselves and their children in Italy.
Thus, we are left with a panorama of Albanians’ integration into Italy, and their
associated identity characteristics, which is full of paradoxes and asymmetries. On the
one hand we have a discourse of self-proclaimed similarity to Italians. One last quote:
We have taken a lot of things from Italians. After fifty years of
communism we had democracy and the model we saw was the
democracy Italians had because Italy was our neighbour … I believe
we are somehow the same.... A lot of words we have and names we
are giving to our children are sort of Italian. So we have their
influence in different aspects of our lives (F, 35, Modena).
The fact that these similarities are not reciprocated, and in fact are replaced by
narratives of stigmatisation, leads some Albanians to adopt another, more extreme
assimilation strategy: mimesis (Romania 2004). This may be accompanied by an
acceptance and internalisation of the rationales for stigmatisation. Others, instead,
may be led to a reappraisal of their Albanian heritage, either through an embryonic
and delayed growth of ethnic associations, and/or a return gaze to the homeland.
On the other hand, Italians have yet to rid themselves of the criminal-loaded
stereotype they have of Albanians, and of the image they have of Albania as a basket-
case – poor, chaotic and hopeless. One wonders how long it will take, and what it will
take, for the stereotype to dissolve.
How can we explain the unjustifiably stark rejection of Albanians by Italian
society? Much has to do with timing, as noted earlier. Albanians arrived just at the
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time when Italy was itself going through a crisis of national identification which could
only be resolved by projecting elements of that crisis onto a constitutive other. But
this rejective othering of Albanians is set within Italy’s own internally racialised
hierarchy – the fundamental opposition between the cultural construction of North
Italian identity in terms of efficiency, honesty and hard work, and its South Italian
symmetrical other, connoting inefficiency, corruption and laziness. As Italy fought to
create a unified, ‘European’ national identity in the early 1990s, the Albanians
intruded into the picture, replacing the semi-colonial internal other, the southerner,
with a true colonial other, the outsider/insider figure of the Albanian immigrant,
‘perilously close to Italians in physiological terms’, and ‘dangerous’ precisely because
this figure reminded Italians of their own disavowed southern past of poverty,
emigration and brigandage (Mai 2003).
So, floating between their aspirational Italianness, their stigmatised de-italianised
identities, and their uncertain relationship to a fast-changing homeland which gives
them little to latch on to, Albanians take on a kind of subdiasporic identity as
‘Albanians living in Italy’, partially acculturated and largely unassimilated. They are
part of a ‘compact diaspora’ or ‘regional transnational space’ of Albanians residing in
neighbouring Italy and Greece, which nudges up against, while retaining a separate
identity from, the Albanian ‘inner diaspora’ in Kosovo and Macedonia, as well as a
‘diaspora-in-the-making’ which increasingly spreads to other European countries,
North America and even Australia (Mai 2005). Albanians’ sense of common identity,
solidarity and connectedness across these evolving diasporic zones appears to be very
limited, except for family members in other countries. Of course, it takes time for
diasporic identities to be consolidated, and the Albanian migration is still a relatively
recent event. Right now, there is a lot of Albanian diasporic communication taking
place on the internet, and nobody is researching that.
Conclusion
Let us return to some of the theoretical reference-points set out in the introduction and
reflect on their relevance to our Albanian material. Gordon’s notion of ‘acculturation
without assimilation’ seems at first sight to describe the situation rather well.
Albanian immigrants speak at least adequate Italian, see themselves as culturally close
to Italians, and enjoy – at an individual level – good relations with neighbours and
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workmates. But not all of Gordon’s acculturation criteria are met – prejudice and
discrimination are rife and intermarriage is limited. For structural assimilation, too,
the picture is mixed, although the lack of any published data on Albanians’
employment, housing or educational performance of children in schools precludes
definitive conclusions. Our evidence, supported by other qualitative survey research
(Da Molin 2001; Melchionda 2003; Perrone 1998), suggests rapid progress in these
spheres, although Albanians remain short of ‘native’ levels of achievement.
Acquisition of legal status is often the key to progress in the labour market and to
family formation.
The specificity of the case of Albanians in Italy resides in highly asymmetric
perceptions of this group’s assimilation. Of course, it is not uncommon that
immigrants who foresee their own eventual assimilation are rejected by the host
society; and perhaps all assimilations of immigrant-origin groups are asymmetric to
some degree. An interesting historical parallel to be noted here concerns the treatment
of early Italian immigrants in the United States or in Victorian London where similar
discourses of roughness, dirtiness and criminality were widespread (Sponza 1988;
Stella 2002).5 What makes the Albanian case unique, we believe, is the extreme
polarisation of the perceptions held by the host society and the immigrant group; and
the way these opposing perceptions feed off each other. The immigrants start off with
high assimilation aspirations and on some of the standard indicators do achieve much.
However, their rejection by Italians as the most deviant and threatening of
nationalities leads them to a variety of response strategies ranging from mimesis and
identity encryption to reactive ethnicity, instrumentalised as a means of challenging
stereotypes. Whatever one wishes to call the particular integration status of Albanians
in Italy – acculturation without assimilation, asymmetric assimilation, or other terms
such as ‘selective acculturation’ (Portes and Rumbaut 1996, p. 252) or ‘subordinate
inclusion’ (Melchionda 2003, p. 16) – an overriding feature is its dynamic character
and therefore its capacity for rapid change over the next decade or so, when the
second generation comes to maturity.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the AHRC Diasporas, Migration and
Identity Colloquium on ‘Mobility and Identity: the Italian Case’, University of
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Warwick, 15-16 June 2007. We also acknowledge the helpful comments of Mark
Thomson, Zana Vathi and Julie Vullnetari on the draft version, as well as feedback
from the three anonymous referees. Research for this article was funded by the
Leverhulme Trust, grant no. F/00230/D, for which grateful acknowledgement is made.
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1 We must remind ourselves, at this point, of the timing of Gordon’s conclusion, before the arrival of
so-called ‘new immigrants’, largely from non-European countries, post-1965.
2 Greece is also a neighbouring EU country but has always been seen as a less desirable destination for
migration because of the historical antagonism between the two countries. For those living in Tirana
and in the western, coastal regions, Italy was, in fact, closer than Greece which lies far to the south over
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high mountain ranges breached only by two roads. Furthermore, Greek wages are lower than those
attainable in Italy.
3 Cole (1997) and Daly (2001) find similar results for Tunisians and Moroccans in Sicily and northern
Italy.
4 Other historical factors are at play here. Most migrants grew up under communist atheism which
weakened their religious identity. Meanwhile Romanians, whose numbers have increased sharply in the
last couple of years, have taken their place alongside Albanians as the most negatively perceived group
in Italy.
5 Indeed Stella makes the specific link between the Italian emigration experience then and the Albanian
experience in Italy now – the subtitle to his book being ‘When we were the Albanians’.
RUSSELL KING is Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex.
ADDRESS: Department of Geography, University of Sussex,
Brighton, BN1 9SJ, UK. Email: R.King@sussex.ac.uk
NICOLA MAI is Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for the Study of European
Transformations, London Metropolitan University.
ADDRESS: London Metropolitan University, 166-220 Holloway Road, London, N7
8DB, UK. Email: N.Mai@londonmet.ac.uk
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Table 1 Albanians in Italy with permits-to-stay, 1991-2005
Year No. Rank % of total Total
immigrants
1991 26,381 9 3.1 859,571
1995 34,706 7 3.5 991,419
2000 142,066 2 10.2 1,388,153
2005 255,704 2 11.3 2,271,680
Note: Data are for 31 December of each year
Source: King (2003, p. 290); Caritas/Migrantes (2006, p. 116).
Table 2 Demographic indicators of Albanians and all immigrants in Italy, 1992 and
2000 (% data)
Albanians All immigrants
1992 2000 1992 2000
% males married 22.4 44.8 36.9 45.3
% females married 60.0 72.9 42.1 54.8
% immigrants with children 7.1 18.7 7.2 13.3
Note: ‘All immigrants’ means immigrants from ‘countries of strong migratory
pressure’, which includes developing countries and countries of Central and Eastern
Europe, but not other European or developed countries.
Source: Bonifazi and Sabatino (2003, p. 979).
Table 3 Albanian pupils in the Italian school system, 1995-96 – 2003-04 (% refers to
share of all immigrant-origin pupils)
school level 1995-96 2003-04
no. % no. %
nursery 802 7.7 9,735 17.7
primary 2,235 9.3 20,930 18.2
middle 686 7.2 11,538 17.1
secondary 418 6.5 7,762 17.3
total 4,141 8.2 49,965 17.7
Source: Bonifazi and Sabatino (2003, p. 980); Caritas/Migrantes (2004, p.169).
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