Memory, place and agency: transnational mirroring of otherness among young Albanian ‘returnees’

ABSTRACT

Return migration has been traditionally conceptualised within a framework of ‘homecomings’, emphasising primordial ethnicity at the expense of micro-level and cognitive aspects of migrants’ belongingness. Drawing on the narratives of Albanian-origin children and young people who moved (back) to Albania with their families from crisis-ridden Greece, this paper explores their experiences of otherness in the presumed homeland, and puts emphasis on their agency in the context of return migration. Memory emerges as an important aspect of agency in the process of what we term ‘the transnational mirroring of otherness’. Brought up in Greece, the Albanian-origin children are othered upon return because of their perceived ‘Greekness’ among the locals and limited ability to speak Albanian. Beyond establishing and maintaining transnational ties and identities, participants show initiative in positioning themselves against shifting transnational identification frameworks, as they contemplate a spatially mobile future.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational return migration
• otherness
• memory
• place
• children and young people
• Albania

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Although experiences vary by individual family, many Albanian parents in Greece discouraged their children from speaking Albanian in order to hasten their integration and lessen the chance of their stigmatisation as ‘Albanian’. By the same token, despite their Muslim heritage, most parents baptised their children into the Orthodox Church.

2 Such an ethno-nationalist conception of belonging is also dominant in Greek schools, where national-day parades involve the top pupils designated as carriers of the Greek flag. This has provoked controversy and protest in Greece whenever the best student is an Albanian national; see Kapllani and Mai (2005).

3 This last remark might suggest affinity to the notion of ‘third-culture kids’ but, as noted already, the historical construction of the TCK phenomenon derives from a different set of more privileged international mobility contexts, based on cultural and development contrasts.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Edge Hill University Research Excellence Fund 2013.