Xhirot verore të mbrëmjes në Rrëshen, në optikën e një etnologu gjerman.

Andreas Hemming përfaqësohet në një Konferencë Ndërkombëtare me temën: Vëzhgim nga xhirot në Rrëshen. Marrin pjesë Kryetari i Bashkisë z. Gjon Dedaj dhe Drejtori i muzeut z. Pjetër Marku.

 Prej disa muajsh në qytetin e Rrëshenit përveç shumë amerikanëve apo të huajve të tjerë, banon edhe një shtetas gjerman. Andreas Hemming prej disa muajsh studion në fushën e etnografisë të zonës së Mirditës. Teksa bisedon me të, kupton mirë se Mirdita për të ka qënë një mundësi e mirë për tu njohur me një pasuri të konsiderueshme në fushën e etnografisë. Duke qënë se Muzeu Historik i Rrëshenit ka qënë një institucion bashkëpunues me gjermanin Hemming, vetë ky i fundit ka dhënë një ndihmë të konsiderueshme për këtë institucion i cili është në fazën e ringritjes së tij. Në mënyrë krejt vullnetare Hemming, ka mundur që të sigurojë një projekt për digitalizimin e muzeut, projekt i cili është në fazën përfundimtare të emplementimit të tij. Por ajo çfar ka rënë më shumë në sy tek gjermani Hemming, kanë qënë xhirot verore të Rrëshenit, ku falë mbërritjes edhe të emigrantëve, qyteti në mbrëmje mbush shëtitoren kryesore “atë Gjergj Fishta” si në ndonjë ditë feste. Një eveniment i tillë është i përnatshëm në ndryshim me shumë qytete të tjera të vëndit. Pikërisht ky eveniment ka tërhequr vëmendjen e etnologut gjerman, Hemming, i cili ka qënë i ftuar në konferencën ndërkomëbrare për emigracionin. Tema e mbajtur nga Andreas Hemming ka ngjallur interesimin dhe vëmendjen e të pranishmëve, shumë prej të cilëve megjithëse me kombësi të ndryshme, kanë shprehur dëshirën për të vizituar qytetin e Rrëshenit.

Konferenca.

 Konferenca Ndërkombëtare u zhvillua në Hotel Adriatik në Durrës në datat 26 – 27 shtator, nën organizimin e Qëndrës për Studimin e Emigracionit në Sussex (Angli) dhe Qendra për Studime Ekonomike dhe Sociale me qëndër në Tiranë. Tema e kësaj konference ka qënë “Emigracioni dhe Zhvillimi në Shqipëri dhe Ballkanin Perendimor". Gjysma e kumtesave ju kushtuan Analizës Ekonomike në aspekte të Ndryshme, emigracioni dhe pagesat e tyre në Shqiperi. Sipas Bankës Botërore, afërsisht 800,000 shqiptarë banojnë dhe punojnë në vënde të huaja. Referuar kësaj banke, ata sjellin pranë familjeve të tyre afersisht 950 milion dollarë c‘do vit.

Ndërsa pjesa tjetër e diskutimeve kishte të bënte me aspkete të tjera sociale që prodhon emigracioni në familjet e tyre në Shqipëri. Cilat janë pasojat e emigracionit në familie? Cilat janë  pasojat emocionale tek emigrantët? Si zgjidhin emigrantet problemet me prindërit e vjeter ose të sëmure? Cilat janë  efektet e pagesave të emigrantëve në familje?, etj. Pjesmarrës në këtë konferencë me statusin e të ftuarit special, kanë qënë edhe kryetari i Bashkisë z. Gjon Dedaj dhe Drejtori i Muzeut z. Pjetër Marku.

Ndërsa kumtesa e Andreas Hemming titullohej Shprehja e identitetit të emigrantet. Vezhgimet ne xhiro ne Rreshen. Këtu bëhej një analizë e  e xhirove të verës, si  emigrantet që vijnë në Rrëshen në Gusht, takimet në xhiro si simbol i statusit të emigrantëve.

 Andreas Hemming ështe etnolog dhe bashkpunetor në Universitetin “Martin Luther” në Halles-Wittenbergs (Gjermani). Aktualisht ai punon në Shqipëri me një projekt për studimin e identitetit bashkohor  shqiptar, financuar nga Fondacioni Fritz Thyssen.  

A. Ndoja 

Tema e mbajtur nga Andreas Hemming në version të gjuhës angleze:

  Migrant identity on display. Observations on the Xhiro in Rreshen (Mirdita)1 

Andreas Hemming

19.IX.2008

Introduction

 The main street in Rreshen is called Rr. Gjergj Fishta. From the beginning of May to the end of  September the mayor of Rreshen closes a good part of the Rr. Gjergj Fishta to motorised traffic every evening. From six to ten o‘clock the street is reserved for the xhiro. The children come out to skip and play ball on the main square. Two resourceful families have each bought a popcorn maker and sell popcorn. Another woman sets up her ironing board as a makeshift table and sells sunflowers seeds, crisps, lollypops and so on. When the corn ripens other locals set up their grills and sell roasted corn on the cob. In September, a few people come to the xhiro and lay out school supplies for sale. Until June the locals are still on their own walking up and down the street; they are more or less alone on the main square or drinking coffee in the 9 cafes that line the 450 m stretch of road. But in the course of July the face of the xhiro changes -the faces change. By July the local students studying in Tirana, Shkoder or abroad (in total no more than 400) return home for the summer. This change is still not overly remarkable. With the beginning of August -almost on the day -Rreshen, like the rest of Albania, is subject to an invasion of sorts. The emigrants return and assume control of the xhiro and occupy the cafes. Many locals disappear, hiding out until September. This can be seen most clearly in the cars that are parked prominently within sight of the xhiro. Italian, and Greek licence plates appear in increasing numbers on the scene. A few German and the odd set of British, Dutch, Belgian or French licence plates can also be found from time to time.

Around 9:45, when the pedestrian traffic is winding down and the people slowly begin to think about going home to eat, the first of the younger men -the bachelors in their 20s -go to their cars, move the traffic cones and begin driving - racing would probably be the better term -up and down the street, always sure that the music is loud and that the revs are up in front of the Dolphin and Everest bars, those bars where the younger crowd that needs to impressed hang out.

 1 Extract of a paper held at the conference: Migration and Development in Albania and the Western

Balkans: Remittances, Return and Development. Durres, Albania 26-27 September 2008

Prominent displays of success in emigration and the status paradox of migration

With that I come to what I really want to discuss in this paper. The point of the xhiro and people‘s participation in it is the public display that it represents. One of the points of the xhiro is to see and be seen. People notice who is walking with whom, who is chatting with whom, who stops for a coffee with whom and where. This is as true for the local politicians demonstrating political alliances as much as for the young kids who giggle every time a specific boy or girl walks by. And later in the evening this is true on another level for the kids and their cars. But this paper is about the emigrants and their prominent displays of their status as emigrants. They are in town for only a few weeks and -of course -want to see people they have not seen in a year or more. But they also want to -they must, an imperative I will get to later as well, -demonstrate their status as migrants, as successful migrants.

Rreshen and the xhiro in Rreshen are in that sense merely an illustration for a discussion of events - of processes -taking place all over Albania in August. In the following I will be asking more questions than providing answers, I will be making more suppositions than providing evidence. The central question is to what degree a concept that a friend and colleague -Boris Nieswand -has developed in his dissertation to explain the specific situation of Ghanaian migrants to Germany can be applied successfully to the situation of Albanian emigrants between their homes abroad and their Albanian homeland.

 Boris Nieswand has called his concept the status paradox of migration and defined it as „a transnational dynamic of simultaneous status inclusion into two nation-states in which the gain in status in the country of origin is achieved by a simultaneous loss of status in the receiving country“. What this means in layman‘s terms is that the status paradox of migration is the situation in which migrants, who often represent the lower wrungs on the social ladder in their host countries -they are poorly paid doing jobs as labourers, they work as service staff in restaurants and hotels and so on, which is also work that is often incommensurate with their own level of education or skill -represent the successful ideal at home.

 The status paradox of migration

 But before we get ahead of ourselves let us define terms. We can begin with status. Social status is a form of social identity based on an individual‘s socio-economic position in a specific social field. Social status is based in contemporary society primarily but not exclusively on income, occupation and education (often called the „meritocratic triad“ or „objective factors“). And social status has to be both claimed -it has to be demonstrated, performed -and it has to be acknowledged. It is a negotiated social ascription. This process of negotiation takes place indirectly by means of signs that are decoded -one does not walk around town with one‘s paycheck or one‘s doctoral degree in one‘s pocket, but one dresses commensurate to ones paycheck or to ones position as a bank manager. Irving Goffman (1959) called this performance of status „impression management.“

Elsewhere the term conspicuous consumption has been used for a similar phenomenon. This all has an air of (conscious and unconscious) intentionality.

The term paradox originally denoting a statement contrary to accepted opinion. Today it has the meaning of a contradiction, an inconsistency or incongruity. And here it denotes an inconsistency in social status.

 And migration -the act of moving from one locale the another, temporarily or permanently -is the context in which the inconsistence in social status, a social status that is claimed and one that is attributed, takes place, namely in the disparity between the social fields of the country of destination and the country of origin.

For the remainder of the paper I will discuss the social status of migrants in Albania based on the little literature I have with me in the field and conversations with migrants both in Rreshen and elsewhere in the last few months.

 To reiterate quickly, the history of Albanian migration began (or resumed to be precise) in 1991. From one year to the next 250 000 Albanians fled the country. That number grew in the course of the 1990s and has stablised at around 800 000 individuals today.

 Table 1. Albanian emigration 1991-19982

 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998

Greece 121 218 241 208 263 312 379 470

Italy 78 88 90 95 98 110 136 162

Other 44 45 48 50 52 53 55 58

Total 243 351 381 353 413 476 571 690

From: Kule et al. 1999

The impetus to migrate was initially likely to have been a simple desire to get out of what could only be described as a prison. This quickly shifted and economic reasons became predominant. Kule reports only 7.1% of informants saying that they emigrated for political, social or religious reasons while 86.6% did it for the money. Kule et al. also found out that „The majority of emigrants

 2 The numbers do not add up in the original either.

 who went abroad were illegal in the destination country, and slightly more than half had part-time, rather than full-time, jobs. About two-thirds of these were in unskilled jobs, and emigrants worked in a variety of sectors, with some concentration in services, construction and agriculture. (...) The picture that emerges from the survey, of Albanians having to take low-skill, low-paid jobs and worrying about being deported, may not appear very appealing. Nevertheless, when interviewees were asked whether their overall experience of emigration was positive, negative, or neutral, a majority declared that it has been positive, with less than 10 per cent reporting an overall negative experience.“

 While the migrants I have spoken to match this profile in terms of the sectors where they were or are today employed, my own experience in Rreshen is somewhat different in terms of how people understood the experience. Of those that have returned permanently, few had much positive to say about Greece or Italy and complained about being treated badly, of being cheated, of racism and so on. They had invested their earnings in houses and business and were in most cases not very happy to reiterate their experiences in detail. These people are examples of successful migrants, those who have used the money earned abroad to establish a middle-class existence at home. The are one of the benchmarks against which contemporary migrants are measured.

The people at issue here are those individuals who are still in migration and who for the time being are still up in the air about returning permanently or staying abroad. More and more of them are deciding to stay abroad permanently. While this might not have been the idea when they first emigrated, priorities change when parents pass away, when non-Albanian partners come into the picture or when decisions have to be made about children going to school or when children complain that they are being made fun of during summer vacation, because they cannot speak Albanian properly. For the time being though, many of these migrants return each summer to Albania to visit their families and to show their status as successful migrants.

 Prominent displays of success

 What are the criteria of success in migration? What are the indicators of social status? In Albania today, the perception of migrants has a lot to do with expectations and stereotypes of what life is like abroad. This has a lot to do with stereotypes of the respective countries of emigration. If one were to establish a ranking of Western countries, Greece would most likely be at the bottom of the scale with Italy, Germany, Benelux and Great Britain above it, probably in that order, and with the United States being the most favourable country to emigrate to. This ranking is based on the perceived standard of living and the expected wages one might earn in these countries. For the

German case, both are much inflated as I assume it is for Benelux, Great Britain and the United

 States as well.

 This leads to the question of how migrants negotiate the difference between reality and

expectations, how they show that they are successful according to (often naive or utopian) local standards. Drinking a coffee with several emigrants, I got the impression that they were often less than thrilled to be in Rreshen, that they experienced „coming home“ more as an obligation than as anything else. They were as monosyllabic about life in Italy or Greece as those migrants that had returned home for good.

 Success is demonstrated, beside the regular remittances and investments in property or a house, in the presentation of material goods, cars, clothes, jewelry and so on, in a certain generosity towards others, paying for coffees and so on and in presents that go beyond regular remittances. The question that comes to mind is to what degree do people overspend, go into debt even, to represent a prosperity abroad that they do not have?

 Returning home for „vacation“ is hard work. Not only is the trip a difficult journey. The media reported regularly about tired and frustrated migrants at the borders complaining about inadequate migration policies or other problems. The migrants are also confronted with what I‘ve dubbed here a status paradox of migration, namely that their status in Albania, both attributed and claimed, even if not quite voluntarily is incommensurate with their status abroad. They are living two lives. That is hard, emotionally and psychologically demanding work.

V.O - Andreas Hemming is currently doing fieldwork in Albania financed by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. He is employed in a project comparing the medial aspects of identity construction in Albania at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg.