Culture, Civilization, and Demarcation at the Northwest Borders of Greece

Abstract

The collapse of the Communist regime in Albania after 1990 led to overt tensions between Greece and Albania as a result, on the one hand, of massive illegal Albanian immigration to Greece and, on the other, new questions concerning the status and security of the Greek minority in southern Albania. During the 20th century, nation‐construction across the Greek‐Albanian border involved the reciprocal differentiation of heterogeneous populations into bipolar Greek and Albanian nationalities. In this article, I consider the public rhetoric and diplomatic processes involved in distinguishing Greek and Albanian populations. I suggest that through attention to border history, segmentary models of cultural identity can be usefully married to the theory of nationalism at the scale of the state. The Greek‐Albanian case demonstrates both the centra lily of the border to the legitimation of the state and the marginality of actual border populations who persistently generate conditions of social heterogeneity. [Greece, Albania, nationalism, ethnicity, border, stereotype]

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