Albanian-speaking transnational populations in Switzerland: continuities and shifts

Abstract

For more than four decades, Switzerland has been a primary destination for the Albanian-speaking immigrants originating in Kosovo, Macedonia, southern Serbia and Montenegro. Throughout this time, migrants have continued to retain strong transnational links with their areas of origin, which until the end of the 1990s meant important economic and financial support, but also political mobilization. Today, however, the diaspora is increasingly focused on integration in Switzerland, a process which seems to be characterized by a redefinition of migrants’ transnational relations at the crossroad between the culture of the country of origin and that of destination.

Keywords:

• transnationalism
• Albanian-speaking diaspora
• Switzerland
• immigration
• integration
• identity
• development and remittances

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Julie Vullnetari and Russell King for their useful comments on earlier versions of the paper.

Notes

1. To understand the structural factors that led to this underdevelopment, see Roux (1992). Albanian-speaking migrants from FY living in Switzerland are the subject of my analysis in this article and they are interchangeably referred to as the ‘Albanian-speaking diaspora’, ‘Albanians in Switzerland’, ‘Albanian immigrants’ and ‘Albanian-speaking community in Switzerland’. This article does not deal with migration from the Republic of Albania, although inevitably some macro-statistics on migrants’ numbers in Switzerland may include them; in any case, their numbers are negligible (see Dahinden 2005).

2. Marta Cola and Manuel Mauri Brusa were the partners from the University of Lugano, as part of the project ‘The construction of identities between media use and diasporic traits: The Kosovar migrants in Switzerland’, commissioned by the Swiss National Research Fund, Project 2010–2012 (see Cola, Iseni, and Brusa 2012).

3. The boundary between economic and other types of migration is not always clear. In fact, the economic category can mask another type. For instance, political factors may be the source of underdevelopment and socio-economic insecurity of a region or population, and therefore, a major cause of migration.

4. This consisted of a permit which allowed the holder to work in Switzerland for nine months in a year; for the other three months, the person was obliged to leave the country.

5. They could do this once they obtained an annual residence permit, which was issued after several seasonal stays.

6. The ‘three-circle’ model proposed by the Federal Council in its 1991 report on the policy towards foreigners and refugees set criteria for recruitment of the foreign labour force based on considerations of geography and culture, politics and national economy. The inner circle (or the first circle, namely states of the EU and EFTA) allows for the free movement of persons. In the middle circle (or the second circle, including the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with the potential subsequent addition of the states of Central and Eastern Europe), a limited number of foreign persons can be recruited. In the outer circle (or third circle, i.e. the ‘rest of the world’), there is normally no recruitment possible, except in a few specific cases of highly qualified specialists. This policy was officially abandoned in 1998. On this topic see Leuenberger and Maillard (1999) and Burri-Sharani et al. (2010).

7. Swiss Federal Office for Migration database, http://www.bfm.admin.ch/content/bfm/fr/home/dokumentation/zahlen_und_fakten/asylstatistik/jahresstatistiken.html (accessed February 14, 2013) [in German]. After the end of the Kosovo conflict and the beginning of the administration of the country by the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, most of these asylum seekers were repatriated to Kosovo and have benefited from assistance programmes supported by the Swiss authorities in order to reintegrate them there.

8. ‘In & Out’ www.albinfo.ch, transmitted to the Radio-Television of Kosovo, http://www.albinfo.ch/inout/intervist%C3%AB-ekskluzive-me-micheline-calmy-rey-44749, 11.11.2011 (accessed August 1, 2012) [in Albanian].

9. Financial help and solidarity were not limited to close relatives, but included the extended family and distant cousins as well.

10. These estimates should be higher due to the transfer of money through informal channels. See Ivaylo Markov’s paper in this special issue for a detailed study of the impact of remittances on Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian communities.

11. Initially, cells were based in the political movement in Germany. However, after the murder there of the Gervalla brothers as well as of Kadri Zeka in 1982 by the Yugoslav intelligence services, the epicentre of Albanian diasporic political activism gradually moved from Germany to Switzerland.

12. Conducted in March–June 2011 as part of the project mentioned in Note 2.

13. Drawing on my participant observation, as well as focus group discussions conducted in 2006 and 2009, and in-depth qualitative interviews of 2011. Most participants were Albanians from Kosovo.

14. Several populist and xenophobic campaigns of the Democratic Union of the Centre have targeted people originating from Kosovo and living in Switzerland. The last stage in 2011 put in a sentence that was explicitly aimed at Kosovars through the generalization of individual cases of violence.

15. The Swiss national team often counts four or five players of Albanian origin in its midst. Some of the most renowned are Xherdan Shaqiri, Granit Xhaka, Admir Mehmedi, Valon Behrami and Blerim Xhemajli. Shaqiri was recently awarded the ‘medal’ of Albanian diaspora in Switzerland for his contribution towards integration and improving the image of the Albanian diaspora there.