The cultural construction of Italy in Albania and vice versa: migration dynamics, strategies of resistance and politics of mutual self-definition across colonialism and post-colonialism

Abstract

Summary This article analyses the shifting ways in which Italy has been strategically represented in Albania during the different key passages of the latter's relatively recent history as a sovereign independent state. As a parallel narrative, the article also examines the way Albania has been equally strategically represented in Italy before and during the two periods in which Italy has been militarily involved in Albania, and the way this has been consistent with an attempt to elaborate and sustain a politically strategic definition of Italian identity and culture. The history of the asymmetrical relationship between Albania and Italy is deeply embedded in the social, cultural and political environments that are on the two shores of the Adriatic Sea. The cultural construction of Albania in Italy and vice versa of Italy in Albania should be linked to seemingly independent instances of domestic reforms. The dynamics of projective identification or dis-identification stemming from these instances should be seen as intertwined within two parallel processes of mutual definition encompassing both the colonial and the postcolonial relations between and within the two countries.

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