A (home)land with a sea: the leisure and tourism in the Western Balkans of Kosovan migrants and their children living in London

Abstract

This paper focuses on the trips to the homeland and the embedded tourist practices of Kosovan migrants in the Western Balkans. Drawing from the diasporic tourism literature, it emphasises the role of (material) space and place in these movements and tourist practices. Findings show that return trips to Kosovo involved for the participants leisure mobilities in the context of Albania and other Albanian-speaking areas in the Balkans. The paper concludes by questioning the strong connection in the existing literature between diasporic tourism and ethnicity, arguing that the former is also affected by material space – in the Kosovan case, more specifically, the sea – as an aspect of migrants’ experiences. Migration, leisure mobilities and tourism in the case of Kosovan migrants and the (West) Balkans region, at least, appear to have their historical, temporal and spatial specificities.

Keywords:

• diasporic tourism
• leisure
• material space
• time
• transnational and translocal ties
• Kosovan migrants

Notes

Kosovan in this paper refers to Kosovan-Albanian migrants for the sake of reading fluidity.

1. Mitrovica is a city in Northern Kosovo, which was divided upon the end of the conflict in Kosovo.

2. Flamurtari is the sports club of Vlora, a large town in the South-Western Albania [see map]. The quote refers to the football club in particular.