The Greek-Albanian Border and its Impact on Local Populations

Gilles de Rapper (1)

1 IDEMEC - Institut d'ethnologie méditerranéenne, européenne et comparative

The end of the Cold War and the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe brought a deep transformation of borders in the Balkans. The border between Greece and Albania is a good illustration of those transformations. Up to 1991, it was rarely crossed by people and goods, and the diplomatic relations between the two countries were extremely limited. At that time however, a huge migratory movement appeared, from Albania towards Greece, while the relations between the two countries were intensifying, including discussions about two controversial issues: the territorial conflict upon Northern Epirus and, connected to it, the status and rights of the Greek minority in Albania. In this paper, I look at the experience of local border populations and at their participation in the new border dynamics. The content is based on fieldwork conducted since 2001 in the Albanian district of Gjirokastër. The argument is that while the international border is being crossed, and the national boundary between Greeks and Albanians is being negotiated by Albanian migrants who want to become Greek, local boundaries are being reinforced in the border area, leading to a fragmentation of local society.

Les régions du sud de l'Albanie connaissent depuis les années 1990 une forte émigration vers la Grèce voisine. L'observation des pratiques de la migration et des modes de traversée de la frontière permet d'aborder la question de ce que fait la migration et de ce qu'elle révèle de la société de départ. En l'occurrence, la migration fait apparaître une différenciation sociale qui suit et exacerbe des lignes de partage préexistantes, comme c'est le cas entre communautés religieuses, nationales ou territoriales. Cet article présente la région frontalière de Gjirokastër, dans le sud de l'Albanie, comme un lieu d'ambiguïté, pour ensuite s'intéresser à la manière dont les communautés locales pratiquent la frontière et à la façon dont la frontière et ses usages participent à la production de la société locale.

Mots clés: Albania; Greece; Border; Migration; Identity

Mots clés: Albanie; Grèce; frontière; identité

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Gilles de Rapper. The Greek-Albanian Border and its Impact on Local Populations. Cahiers parisiens - Parisian Notebooks, 2007, 3, pp.566-575. ⟨halshs-00293784⟩