Abstract
In December 1990, hundreds of students flooded the streets of the Albanian capital, protesting an almost half-century-long communist rule and demanding for “Albania be like all of Europe.” Since then, the country has been struggling its way toward European integration, but almost a third of the population has tried to make the early 1990s dreams come true by moving elsewhere. This chapter looks at the case of Albanian migration with the aim of exploring and understanding more about the nexus of (in)security and (im)mobility, with a particular focus on the relationship between social protection and migration. First, the interconnection between (in)security and mobility is explored from a human rights perspective by observing developments and inspecting for links between (level of) access to the right to freedom of movement and that for social security in reflecting and shaping migratory patterns. Secondly, primary qualitative data from 33 interviews conducted during fall 2019 to spring 2020 are scrutinized and the case stories of Albanian “old” and “new” migrants in European and North American countries are used to address the main question of how access to formal and informal social protection in origin and destination countries shapes decision-making processes, strategies, and practices of migration, mobility, and “doing family” in transnational settings. Findings show that (im)mobility and social (in)security act as communicating vessels where changes in the level of (in)security might trigger (more) mobility and (im)mobility might be a response to, as well as a catalyst to (more) (in)security.
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The chapter was written with the support of the Junior Core Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University in the academic year 2019–2020
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Dhëmbo, E. (2023). In the Nexus of (In)security and (Im)mobility. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Problems. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68127-2_131-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68127-2_131-1
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