2 - Conflictual Memories and Migration Between Greece and Albania

Summary

Albanian migration to Greece was the subject of my first research in this region in 1999. Extension of this work was important for addressing the transformations taking place in Greek society in the 1990s and 2000s. By the time I started this research in 1999, the main migratory wave of the early 1990s, which followed straight after the fall of the Iron Curtain, had passed and the second had arisen as a consequence of the violent outbreaks in Albania after the collapse of the pyramid schemes in 1997. By the early 2000s, migration seemed to have stabilised and appeared increasingly to have become a permanent settlement of whole families, even if the representations forged during the previous period were still present. The scale of this phenomenon and the great rapidity with which it took place were enough to explain the quasi-stupor that still prevailed in the country and the sensation of deluge which its inhabitants had felt in wake of the Albanian migratory wave. Such a feeling was well summed up by the daily newspaper Elefteros Typos’ headline of 31 December 1990: ‘Η Αƛβανία μϵτακόμισϵ στην Εƛƛάδα’ (Albania moves to Greece). However, seen at first hand, the effects of this migration were that some original trends appeared which led to the emergence of new discourses and practices that could be described as transnational. Nevertheless, these practices could not be considered as completely unprecedented in Greece insofar as they seemed to rely on elements of a past shared by the inhabitants of both countries or on their remobilisation in certain forms.

Migration seen from above

Initially, in order to understand its impact, this flow had to be reinstated within the context of the veritable migratory revolution which had affected Greece in the early 1990s, a period during which the country had become one of the most sought-after migratory destinations in Europe. During this decade, this migratory phenomenon increased dramatically, as the figures from the 2001 census highlighted. Among the very many immigrants who arrived in the 1990s, the Albanians formed by far the largest group, with nearly 440,000 immigrants registered in Greece. They accounted for 57 per cent of all foreigners and settled throughout the whole of Greece.