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Published in R. King, N. Mai, S. Schwandner-Sievers (eds.),
The New Albanian Migration 
.Brighton-Portland, Sussex Academic Press (2005), p. 173-194.B
ETTER THAN
M
USLIMS
,
NOT AS GOOD AS
G
REEKS
 Emigration as experienced and imagined by the Albanian Christians of Lunxhëri
Gilles de Rapper 
My first encounter with Albanian emigration happened in 1995-96, when I was doing fieldwork in the border district of Devoll, in south-eastern Albania. I was staying in an Albanian-speaking Christian village, up in the mountains and close to the Greek border. Villagers told me about people from the closest Muslim village, down in the valley: ‘Look atthem, down there. At the time of the cooperative, they used to insult us by calling us“damned Greeks”, “bloody Greeks”. But today they all work in Greece and have Greek names, while we did not go to Greece. Who is Greek then?’ As a matter of fact, peoplefrom the Christian villages – who insist on their Albanian national identity and refuse to becalled Greek – have been moving to the town and even more to the United States, wherethey retain links dating back to the time of the pre-World War II migration known as
kurbet 
. Meanwhile, their Muslim neighbours started in the early 1990s to migrate to Greece, where most of them changed their names and some converted to Orthodoxy.Emigration appeared to be a matter of negotiation of identity not only for those who were living in the host society, but also for the ones living at home, giving new forms toboundaries inside local society. In this chapter, I look at the impact of migration on theconstruction of collective identity in a more complex local society. If the district of Devollis clearly divided between a Muslim majority and a few Christian villages higher up in themountains, the district of Gjirokastër, on which this paper focuses, is divided into severalintermingled groups, based on religion, territory, language and national identity. Each of these groups seems to have its [174] specific migration strategy, using different networks. Ifocus here on the sense of belonging and identity of the people involved in the migration,i.e. the migrants and their families, either in Albania or in Greece.
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Author manuscript, published in "The New Albanian Migration, Russell King, Nicola Mai, Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers (Ed.)(2005) 173-194"
 
B
ETTER THAN
M
USLIMS
,
NOT AS GOOD AS
G
REEKS
 My main fieldwork location is the group of around a dozen villages named Lunxhëri,on the slopes of the mountain range facing the town of Gjirokastër.
1
See Figures 1 and 2for location maps, first of Southern Albania, and second of the area of Lunxhëri. Until the1960s, Lunxhëri was mainly inhabited by Albanian-speaking Orthodox Christians called theLunxhots. By then, and starting during and just after the Second World War, many of themhad left their villages to settle in Gjirokastër and in the towns of central Albania, whereliving conditions and employment opportunities were considered better. They werereplaced, from the end of the 1950s on, by Vlachs, forced by the regime to settle inagricultural cooperatives. Some Muslim families from Kurvelesh, in the mountainous areaof Labëria, also came to Lunxhëri at the same time – in fact, many of them were employedas shepherds in the villages of Lunxhëri even before the [175] Second World War. WhileLunxhëri practiced (as did many other regions) a high level of (territorial) endogamy,marriage alliances started to occur between Christians Lunxhots and members of the Greek minority of the districts of Gjirokastër (Dropull, Pogon) and Sarandë. Such alliances wereboth encouraged by the regime and used by people to facilitate internal mobility and obtaina better status and life-chances. Today, the population of Lunxhëri is perceived as composed of three main groups:
•
 
the Lunxhots, who call themselves ‘ethnic Lunxhots’ or ‘
autoktonë’ 
, and are called‘villagers’ ( 
 fshatarë 
 ) by the others;
•
 
the Vlachs
2
, who call themselves ‘
 çoban’ 
or ‘Greek-Vlachs’ and are still referred toby the Lunxhots as ‘newcomers’ ( 
të ardhur 
 );
•
 
[176] and finally the Muslims, whether they trace their origin in Labëri or claim tobe autochthonous (as is the case for instance in the village of Erind). They refer tothemselves as Muslims or Turks ( 
myslyman, turk
 ). The various terms used in this categorisation will be discussed further below.Its complex ethnic composition and social history make Lunxhëri an interesting casein the study of border communities. This chapter is part of a study of the Greek-Albanianborder in Epirus, from its creation in 1913 to present time, which I started in 2001. I madeshort stays (up to ten days) in every village of Lunxhëri, as well as in Gjirokastër and Greek  villages of Pogon (both in Greece and Albania), and in Tirana, where lots of Lunxhots havemigrated. The material presented here has been collected through interviews withLunxhotes living in Lunxhëri, in Tirana or in Greece, and consists in large part of family histories and genealogies. This enables me to focus on three main topics regarding theimpact of the international border on Lunxhëri:
1
The chapter is based on fieldwork conducted in Lunxhëri and other locations in southern Albania in 2001and 2002, sometimes in collaboration with Pierre Sintès of the
Ecole Française 
in Athens. My research has beenmainly funded by the French CNRS, through the project
La question d’Epire: intégration et développement de la region frontalière gréco-albanaise 
.
2
On the Vlachs in southern Albania, see Kahl (1999), especially Map 6.
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B
ETTER THAN
M
USLIMS
,
NOT AS GOOD AS
G
REEKS
 
•
 
the transformation of migration patterns, both internal and external, following thechanging status of the international border (from openness during the interwar period toclosure during the communist regime and openness again after 1991);
•
 
the marriage alliance patterns, especially intermarriage between Christians andMuslims, and between Albanian-speakers and Greek-speakers;
•
 
the fluid ethnic boundaries between the different groups inhabiting the area. As usual for a male anthropologist in Albania, most of the people I interviewed aremen. By spending my time in families, however, I managed to conduct some interviews with women, or at least to witness, during general conversations, where men and womendisagreed.
 The impact of migration on the construction of identity
It is common-sense to say that the politics of immigration and the reception of migrants by the host society have an impact on the migrants’ individual strategies – such asin the case of changing one’s personal name. It is also acknowledged that emigration has animpact on the economy of the country of origin, mainly through remittances. This chapteraims to illustrate that the impact of migration goes beyond remittances and personalstrategies, and affects also the construction of collective (and individual) identity in thesociety of origin: that is to say that the [177] people who do not leave, or who do notdirectly benefit from remittances, are also affected by migration in the way they perceivethemselves.In that sense, emigration to Greece has rendered more visible some distinctions andlines of division of local Albanian society, for instance between
minoritarë 
, or members of the Greek minority in Albania, and Albanians; or between Orthodox Christians andMuslims. New categories have also emerged – such as ‘Northern Epirotes’
3
– which havebecome central in the way migrants themselves perceive their migratory experience, and which influence some of their decisions. In other words, every migrant, before leaving  Albania, is confronted by these oppositions and categories, when he or she has to think about the means of departure: legally, if documents can be easily obtained; or illegally, if theindividual believes on the contrary that his/her religious affiliation, first name, or place of origin, will make it difficult to obtain the documents. Those categories and lines of division were certainly not unknown in the original society, but some of them had been denied by the communist regime (the case of religious affiliation – although it was still relevant insocial relations) or were not openly mentioned (as in the case of national or linguisticminorities). The notion of 
kurbet 
, already mentioned above, is a good example of how past andpresent migration to a foreign land, both as facts and as representations, shape the social
3
This is a new category, as it could not be used during the communist period.
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