Return Visits of the Young Albanian Second Generation in Europe: Contrasting Themes and Comparative Host-Country Perspectives

Abstract

Research on the links of the second generation to their parental homeland, and return visits in particular, is largely lacking. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 75 Albanian teenagers in London, Thessaloniki and Florence, this paper brings a multi-sited perspective on attitudes towards and experiences of homeland visits. Contrasts are drawn between positive themes emerging from the narratives, which are about belonging, family and nature in Albania, and negative impressions which relate to poverty and traditionalism, and a developing sense of boredom as teenagers get older. We then relate some of these contrasting experiences to differences in social integration in the three different host-society contexts. The conclusion elaborates the uniqueness and significance of this case, both in terms of this being the first exploration of the transnational orientations of one of Europe’s newest second generations, and in relation to the home-country context of a liberalising ex-communist country still in a state of economic backwardness.

Key Words:

• Second generation
• return visits
• Albanian immigrants
• extended family
• social integration
• transnational social fields

Acknowledgements

Research for this paper was supported by a Marie Curie Doctoral Fellowship awarded to the Sussex Centre for Migration Research as part of the TIES (‘The Integration of the European Second Generation’) Research Training Network coordinated by Patrick Simon at INED, Paris. Zana Vathi was the holder of this Fellowship with Russell King as the Senior Partner. Grateful thanks are due to the many organisations and individuals who helped in the fieldwork, not least the interviewees themselves.

Notes

1. All field interviews were carried out by the first-named author, as well as the first analysis and interpretation of the data. The second author was responsible for the initial outline of the research project and for drafting the revised version of the paper.

2. The inability of migrants and their parents to visit each other, and thus for grandparents to see their grandchildren, has been a great source of anguish for the older generation ‘left behind’ in Albania (King & Vullnetari, 2006). Even after migrants became regularised, it was often not possible for relatives to get visas to visit them abroad. This situation changed in November 2010 when Albanians (along with Bosnians and Serbs) were granted visa-free travel to the EU.

3. One indication of the greater attraction of settling down in Italy is that many of the Albanians surveyed there by King and Mai (2008) had been migrants in Greece beforehand. They onward-migrated to Italy, they said, because of better wages and economic prospects, greater chances of getting regularised, and a lower level of anti-Albanian xenophobia.