‘Women Here Are Like at the Time of Enver [Hoxha]…’: Socialist and Post-Socialist Gendered Mobilities in Albanian Society

Abstract

Mobility — or the lack thereof — has been one of the defining features of the socialist period in Albania and of the social transformations following the regime’s collapse in the early 1990s.¹ The ban on foreign emigration during the communist era created a sense of deep isolation amongst the population, who literally stormed the country’s borders once the fall of the ‘system’ was considered inevitable. By 2010, around 1.4 million Albanians — equivalent to half the resident population — were estimated to be living abroad, prima-rily in Greece and Italy (World Bank 2011: 54). Within communist Albania internal movements were strictly controlled through a set of laws and regulations. The post-communist response was large-scale internal migration, especially from rural areas towards the capital Tirana and the port city of Durrës. This impressive spatial mobility, both international and internal, has brought about social mobility for some, immobility for others. Meanwhile, everyday mobility has also changed, reflected essentially in the rise of private car ownership from zero during the communist years. At the same time, being stuck immobile in queues for food and consumer goods — typical of shortage economies — has not been eradicated but transformed, for during the post-communist era long queues have been about getting visas at foreign embassies, or waiting to be checked by immigration police at border-crossing points.