Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social and Spatial Transformations

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

The westward emigration of Albanians, including a substantial number of educated professionals, is the highest rate found among post-socialist eastern European countries. Most have settled in Greece and Italy as undocumented immigrant manual laborers. After a decade of emigration, there are no signs of return migration despite the increasing identification of post-socialist Albania's economic, political, and legal systems with those of the West. Nor have these changes lessened the desire of still-resident Albanians to emigrate. This dissertation research by a cultural anthropologist from the University of California, Irvine, explores the social and spatial transformations involved in these migrations. The project will attempt to understand the decisions of professionals to leave Albania and high-skilled jobs to emigrate and commit to remain abroad, even as undocumented low-skill laborers. Fieldwork in Athens, Greece, and Tirana, Albania, will compare the social worlds of Albanian immigrants and would-be emigrants. Participant observation in key urban nodes, interviewing, photographic documentation, and comparisons using correspondence analysis, are used to assess the proposition that despite immigrants' observable demotion in legal and social status, international labor migration is undertaken and experienced as a social advancement. Rather than taking financial gain as a given, this study examines the desire to work in the West as an identity change that is part of international migration. The research will contribute to theoretical issues in anthropology concerning development as well as further the education of a young scholar. The broader significance of the project includes the utility of the information for managing and serving the rapidly growing global population of international immigrants, and for understanding the generation and maintenance of disparities in global wealth.