Rural property in an age of transnational migration: ethnic divisions in southeastern Albania

Abstract

IntroductionSoutheastern Europe has experienced massive transformations of rural property relations over past two decades. With collapse of socialism, property reforms became top priorities for post-socialist governments and lending institutions (Verdery 2003). For rural areas, reforms implied radical changes in property rights to various kinds of rural resources, including agricultural land and forest (Szelenyi 1998). The legislative changes meant that miUions of rural people set out to renegotiate social relationships governing use of resources and control over those (Hann 2003; Verdery 2003).Yet post-socialist property reforms have been only one factor influencing property relations in Southeastern Europe. As we argue in this paper, migration has emerged as another important transforming factor. In wake of coUapse of socialism and Yugoslav wars, rural people left their villages of origin in numbers unparaUeled since World War II (Bonifazi et al. 2006). Some left permanently, others temporarily, in search of poUtical asylum, employment opportunities or promise of a better future elsewhere. While some moved to cities and towns of their own countries, others crossed state boundaries to Uve abroad. Many have assumed Uves, maintaining various kinds of ties with their vulages of origin at same time as they are incorporated into societies abroad (Nicholson 2002; Sandu 2005; Eastmond 2006). Over time, in vulages of origin as in localities of destination, migration thus caused significant changes in rural populations (Carletto et al. 2006), economies (Horvat 2004), identities (Fox 2003) and - we surmise - property relations.Ethnicity has been noted as one of organizing principles of these (Brubaker 1998). It has figured prominently as a push factor, pushing people of certain ethnic categories out of their home vulages, and as a pull factor, pulling them toward destinations where they are granted privileged access. The flows of refugees fleeing from ethnic cleansing in Ex-Yugoslavia may be an apt example of former (e.g., Hayden 1996). The latter has received attention under rubric migrations of ethnic affinity (Brubaker 1998). It has primarily been associated with return migration of ethnic Germans, Jews, Hungarians or Russians to their putative home countries (Brubaker 1998; Fox 2003; Munz and Obliger 2003). As heterogeneous as these have been, they typically involved a special permeability on part of receiving country. This permeability originated from a common understanding that country had a particular responsibility for ethnic affiliates abroad and found its expression in immigration legislation that considerably eased access for some ethnic categories while excluding others (Brubaker 1998).In this article, we look at effects of migration on property relations in southeastern Albania.1 We use term transnational to call attention to the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multistranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and (Basch et al. 1994:6). This allows us to connect our study to broader research on migration as a social field (Portes et al. 1999; Levitt 2001; Levitt and Jaworsky 2007). Within this field, we are interested in connecting migration with two factors: first, property relations as a particular aspect of political, economic and cultural relations in places of origin (see Portes 2001); and second, influence exerted by immigration laws of settlement countries on social relations in places of origin (see Levitt and Jaworsky 2007). In more concrete terms, we examine changes in property relations in Albanian villages set in relation to different migration practices. In addition, we seek to uncover role of law - highlighted in Turner and Wiber's introduction to this section - by analyzing effects of ethnic categories established in immigration regulations on migration. …