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Teachers matter. They make a difference in the life of the individual and the society at large. Hence, their education and training has always been at the centre of any government's education policy. This paper focuses on teacher education in Albania. The narrative describes and analyzes the main milestones in teacher education during the four historical periods of Albania: the National Awakening, Independence, Totalitarianism and Post-totalitarianism. The main thrust of the paper is to examine how the historical, political and socio-cultural factors interrelate to influence on teacher education and pedagogy at certain points in time of Albania's history. The paper reveals the way the western educational ideas that emerged and evolved during the pre World War II period were suppressed during totalitarianism, but were reasserted when Albania transitioned to democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects an effort to consider the history of Albanian education within the context of the country's history. In it, the origin and evolution of Albanian education are described in connection with the country's social and political standing. It is divided into sections, each corresponding to a major historical period in the formation of the Albanian state and intertwined with major reforms in education: education during the Albanian National Renaissance (1830s–1912); education after the Declaration of Independence (1912–1928); education under King Zog (1930s); the 1946 education reform; the 1960s reform, which involved reorganising the system of education for long-term success; and education after the decline of communism in the 1990s and beyond. The paper chronicles how the dawn of the educational system, its organisation and its curriculum were designed to prepare "period-specific" citizens. It is concluded that the roots of the Albanian national education system took hold during the Albanian Renaissance as a necessity of national survival and that the system's development through time is intertwined with the country's constitutional standing, echoing the secret workings of national life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the performance of prefabricated reinforced concrete (RC) buildings, known as large-panel buildings (LPE), that were affected by the November 26, 2019 Durrës, Albania earthquake (M 6.4). This was a common typology for multi-family housing in urban areas of Albania and neighbouring countries, e.g. ex-Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgaria, in the period from 1960 to 1990. The paper outlines the key structural and seismic features of LPE buildings in Albania and presents observations from a field survey of selected buildings at eight different localities within the earthquake-affected area. A new post-earthquake damage classification for LPE buildings has been proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Albania has been one of the key origin and transit Eastern European countries to traffic with persons. More than 5000 Albanian women have been victims of trafficking in the past decade. The Albanian Government's judiciary has been inefficient, corrupt, and the pressure on the judiciary continues to be a serious problem. The purpose of this paper is to examine Albanian legislation by drawing parallels between Albanian and international legislation in trafficking with persons. More specifically, this paper addresses the problem and the legal context, problems with current enforcement of legislation in Albania, and the role of civil society in combating human trafficking. The prevailing forms of human trafficking in Albania, criminalization and rights of victims, and connotations when victims are female, foreign and/or minors are also noted. The paper concludes by making recommendations from the Albanian Strategic Framework with a focus in human trafficking victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Copenhagen criteria for EU accession are the essential preconditions that candidate countries must satisfy to be deemed eligible for membership. In line with the strand of the literature that focuses on candidate countries' convergence with the EU, the paper examines whether converge with the EU in terms of the Copenhagen political criteria can be established empirically for candidate and potential-candidate countries. Currently, the candidate country status is granted to Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey. Bosnia–Herzegovina and Kosovo are recognized by the EU as potential candidate countries. In addition to the candidate and potential candidate countries, we include in the convergence tests the six countries of the Eastern Partnership EU policy: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine. Using unit root tests, convergence is examined in terms of two indices drawn from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project: the Liberal democracy and the Civil liberties indices. The findings reported herein, are not uniform and on the whole offer only scant evidence in favour of the convergence hypothesis. For some of the candidate and potential candidate countries convergence is established, while for others the results do not point to such a process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration triggers significant developments in gender norms and identities. Cultural and spatial dislocation influences the ways people renegotiate their gender schemas and shifts the performances of masculinity and/or femininity. Scholars have mainly focused on its impact on women, overlooking its importance in shaping men’s identity. This paper focuses on rural migrant men moving to the city. It explores the strategies they use to renegotiate traditional performances of masculinities in the context of their spatial dislocation and wider socioeconomic developments and urbanization in a suburb of Tirana, Albania. Using an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic narrative approach, this paper reveals that traditional performances of masculinities confronted with modernization are shifting and being reshaped in the new urban environment where generational differences and the emancipation of women are now apparent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper looks at the effectiveness of the policy of non-discrimination towards minorities in the preservation of minority cultural heritage, constructing a case study within Albania. After defining the key terms used, this paper examines the legal framework of non-discrimination towards minorities in its historical development and looks into the state of preservation of minority cultural heritage on the ground throughout the 2010s combining extensive field-work with interviews with key representatives of ethnic minorities in Albania. The poor state of preservation of minority cultural heritage is mostly attributed to under-financing and the insufficient policy of non-discrimination. As I demonstrate, in the case of minorities with a kin-state in the region, most notably Greece, as well as the heritage claimed by neighbouring states, primarily Turkey, the policy of non-discrimination and the practice of under-financing paves the way for external involvement in the protection of cultural heritage, in pursuit of international political agendas. The paper concludes that more needs to be done for the protection of minority cultural heritage in Albania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tirana National Theatre was demolished on 17 May 2020. For the previous eighty years and up to that moment, it had maintained its public and societal function, documenting the changes of twentieth-century Albanian history. The Theatre was inaugurated in 1938, during the Italian Protectorate, as part of the Italian-Albanian Circolo Scanderbeg, a multifunctional complex conceived for entertainment as well as for Fascist propaganda. The construction, by the Italian company PATER, used a prefabricated system that well-exemplified the new building technologies and material research developed under the Fascist autarchy restrictions. This paper deals with the construction history of this building approaching questions around fabrics which significance is neglected in favour of new developments. Even if time-specific, architecture is often characterized by a lifespan that is longer if compared to its original construction purpose. Hence, despite the denial of any possible conservation or reuse, the Theatre's cultural resilience and architectural, historic, and societal significance will continue to reverberate in the void created by its demolition. Unpretentiously, this paper honours the memory of a disappeared twentieth-century architecture, which ambiguous protection history was overcome by a much more sincere guardianship by the civil society and conservation community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances our understanding of policy formulation, exploring how the particular institutional dynamics between the transnational and national levels of enterprise policy-making affect policy choices made by governments and consequently their outcomes. The paper argues that policy development occurs within a framework of dominating assumptions on enterprise, influential academic/policy communities and lesson-drawing from other countries’ experiences, which have led to a privileging of the transnational when making policy choices. Empirically, the paper draws on a post-socialist country case – Albania, and uses interviews with policy actors and documentary data from national governments and international organizations. The paper explores the dynamics involved, and the actors that shape, policy formulation and makes two contributions to the literature. First, it provides a conceptual framework on how to analyse policy formulation, extending recent work on the link between policy formulation and the intended outcomes of policies. Second, it offers a more nuanced conceptualization of enterprise policy formulation, arguing that policy formulation reflects the changing configurations of ideas, policy tools and resources, and actors involved in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In his famous poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Lord Byron represents Albania as an exotic and Oriental place, and as a suitable 'stage' for the 'performance' of adventurous travel. In this paper, I explore the various ways in which literary tourists following 'in the footsteps of Lord Byron' in Albania reproduce and/or challenge and change 'imagined geographies' of that country. This is carried out through discourse analysis of their written accounts of their travels. The texts analysed include published travelogues, newspaper travel articles and travel blogs written by those who have travelled through southern Albania 'in the footsteps of Byron'. I argue that these tourists do not, in general, simply reproduce Byron influenced 'imagined geographies' of Albania in their travel writings but rather represent Albania as they find it, often highlighting the big differences between the Albania of Byron's day and the Albania of today. And I also argue that, while some tourists find that the encroachment of modernity into the lands described by Byron disrupts their ability to perform 'Byronic travel', others find it quite possible to maintain a 'Byronic' spirit of travel in the Albania of today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In communist Albania in the early seventies a controversial novel appeared from the hand of leading writer, Ismail Kadare. The dictator, Enver Hoxha appeared in an idealized role in the context of the break with Khrushchev's post-Stalinist Soviet Union in 1961. However this was no mere panegyric. Kadare's idealized image of Hoxha was motivated by the intention of educating the dictator, to remind him of the figure he had once (almost) been. In this paper I explain the logic behind Kadare's risky attempt to instruct the dictator by means of the manipulation of his public image. Kadare carried out a strategy of literary mirroring of the persona of the leader back onto himself in a way that was unparalleled in the European socialist environment, where literary portraits of leaders were routinely modelled on Stalinist eulogy. The paper thus engages with aspects of the mobilization of political symbolism, and specifically with the attempt of a leading writer in the late Stalinist environment of Albania to influence the communist leadership through manipulation of the literary image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the Europeanization of the foreign policies of the Western Balkans states, using the examples of the Montenegrin and Albanian alignment with the EU sanctions against Russia. Using the Process-tracing method we discover that the role-playing mechanism in the case of Montenegro and socialization in Albania's case are behind the alignment in sanctions. Despite the EU's potential leverage, the external incentive model (EIM) is almost completely absent. This is rather unexpected given EIM's prevalence in other policy areas. This suggests that the EU might be treating the foreign policy area differently to other enlargement chapters, reflecting the special position of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) as an intergovernmental policy with no adaptational pressure at the EU level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The protagonist of Kadare's novel Broken April, set in the North Albanian Plateau, is required to kill his brother's murderer according to the rules of the Kanun, a customary code of law according to which blood must be avenged, sometimes leading to generations of vendetta. In this context, the paper discusses the themes of hospitality and the blood feud in the novel, both of which play an important role in the Kanun, from the perspective of Derrida's concepts of unconditional hospitality and autoimmunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic, and its impact on the economy tested the capacity of current macroeconomic models to forecast economic developments in turbulent times. In this article, we develop a linear macrofinancial model for Albania and examine whether it can predict the developments of key macroeconomic and financial variables during 2020–2021. To address increased uncertainty in the forecasts, we construct uncertainty bands with quantile regressions. The results indicate that, in general, a linear model is flexible enough to analyze non-linear events and may thus be used in abnormal times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse US policy towards Albania during the cold war, as a case that illustrates Washington’s approach towards individual Communist countries in Eastern Europe in the light of the grand contest between the antagonist superpowers. This analysis is based almost exclusively on published US archival documents related to Albania from 1945 to 1980. This analysis underlines that in the American perception, the geopolitical importance of each Communist country was intrinsically linked with its position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Albania was no exception, despite the rigid Communist dogma it vigorously pursued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Return migration has been traditionally conceptualised within a framework of 'homecomings', emphasising primordial ethnicity at the expense of micro-level and cognitive aspects of migrants' belongingness. Drawing on the narratives of Albanian-origin children and young people who moved (back) to Albania with their families from crisis-ridden Greece, this paper explores their experiences of otherness in the presumed homeland, and puts emphasis on their agency in the context of return migration. Memory emerges as an important aspect of agency in the process of what we term 'the transnational mirroring of otherness'. Brought up in Greece, the Albanian-origin children are othered upon return because of their perceived 'Greekness' among the locals and limited ability to speak Albanian. Beyond establishing and maintaining transnational ties and identities, participants show initiative in positioning themselves against shifting transnational identification frameworks, as they contemplate a spatially mobile future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable studies of the univoltine, common field-cricket Gryllus campestris Linnaeus, 1758, known from sunny oligotrophic grasslands and heathlands of the western Palaearctic, were previously made, but none of them has shown the characteristics of its burrows. This paper presents a neoichnological study based on a group of G. campestris that lives in and around a pasture glade in Dajti Mountain, east of the Tirana District in Albania. It includes direct observations of the burrows in the field and their casts made by means of white Portland cement. Burrows of nymphs of G. campestris were observed to be tubular, sun-facing and have only one, funnel-like entrance, simple termination and no branches. This study is the first one showing morphological features of the burrows and the burrowing activity of the common field-cricket, being a contribution to ichnology of soils. Preservation of the burrows is possible by their filling, for instance by sand during flooding. The burrows do not fit to any existing ichnotaxa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the role of cultural bias (preference for what is culturally more akin) in the entrepreneurial choice regarding different types of social networks in the context of urban mixed embeddedness. We test empirically the presence and aftermaths of this cultural bias, drawing on evidence from a natural experiment with regard to Albanian ethnic entrepreneurs in the city of Milan, Italy. Namely, these entrepreneurs are exposed to the same mixed urban embeddedness and, when we control for firm characteristics, the only discriminating component explaining their success is their choice of social network. We focus on the choice over three types of social networks, classified according to varying degrees of cultural distance between the network and the entrepreneur: (a) the indigenous population, (b) the local Albanian diaspora, and (c) fellow citizens residing in the country of origin, Albania (i.e., transnational networking). We employ a novel method for reverse engineering of preferences for networking by using a Kaplan-Meier estimator and a propensity-score matching technique. We find that strategic network liaisons with locals is actually the most beneficial social network for ethnic firm performance. However, it is social networking within the culturally closer local Albanian diaspora that is the most common behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social work profession in Albania is relatively young and social services in the country continue to develop. But over the past three decades, Albania has experienced significant growth and transformation in its social work education programmes. Nevertheless, there is very little published work on the Albanian social work education system and its implementation on the ground. Currently, the main sources of social work graduates are three Schools of Social Work in Tirana, Shkodra, and Elbasan. Programmes at the bachelor's and master's level all incorporate policy, research, and practice education. The social work curriculum, originally transplanted from the United States, has gone through reforms following the Bologna process and continues to be revised to meet local needs. Drawing from a multi-country study of the social service workforce in southeast Europe, this paper presents baseline data on social work education in Albania. 62 participants were interviewed using semi-structured interviews, case stories, and focus group discussions with consensus-building exercises. The findings highlight both the opportunities and challenges of this relatively young profession in Albania. Besides increasing understandings of social work education in Albania, this research adds to emerging regional and global themes in the development of social work education and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By combining a genealogical and ethnographic approach, this paper aims to explore temporal and mobility-related dimensions of the moral ‘self-essentialization’ in the north Albanian city of Shkodra. The image of the Shkodrani as ‘calm people’ – prominent in narratives, urban myths, life-stories, family histories or interpretations of everyday interactions – served both as an explanation of the ‘inherent’ peacefulness and inclusiveness of the inhabitants of Shkodra and as a marker of ‘urbanity’. Intrigued precisely by its a-historical ‘aura’, I will suggest that a very fruitful way of analytically disentangling ‘calmness’ is to view it through the temporal prism of the prevailing mode of migrant incorporation in Shkodra – not according to ethnicity or religion, but rather along lines of what I will refer to as ‘vernacular mobility’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Legislation on architectural heritage protection in Albania follows the political and historical events of the country. In this paper, I will outline how 'cultural monument' concept evolves within the main Albanian legislative timeline in the cultural heritage protection field. The discussion will highlight how cultural monuments significance, from the early concept of 'National Monuments' at the dawn of the new Albanian State, to 'Cultural Monuments' conceived as people common heritage, have always had, and still have, a pivotal role in the Albanian cultural debate. Purged from the regime ideology, those notions reflect the concept of monument intended as the main outstanding material testimony of an artefact or a constructive culture or of its formal and technical evolution which cannot be preserved through passive constraints. Finally, following the years after the regime collapse (1992), the recent updating of the national law on cultural heritage protection has been a priority for the country and the debate is still open. Thus, the 2000s legislative framework, evolved since the post-communist period until present, should be considered in the light of the transition from the notion of cultural monuments to that one of cultural heritage paying attention to cultural values recognition process and significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hospitals in most of the countries in transition face the challenge to raise efficiency in a rapidly evolving health sector. In this framework, the Albanian Ministry of Health has outsourced the sterilization and operating theatre support(SOTS) services of all the public hospitals. The aim of this article is to evaluate the impact of the outsourcing of SOTS services on the productivity of the surgical services. A case study analysis was conducted in the Country's largest hospital. Surgical activity data of all the surgical services were analyzed. Furthermore, interviews with key stakeholders were conducted in order to enable a more detailed exploration of the results. Compared with the previous twelve months, a relevant increase in the total number of surgical interventions performed by the hospital was registered in the twelve months after the introduction of the new organizational model (+14%); this significant increase occurred in almost all the surgical services. Results of the interviews highlighted several organizational-, supply capacity-, and confidence-related determinants behind the productivity gains. These findings have significant implications for poorly performant—but increasingly competitive and evolving—hospital sectors of countries in transition, in which the outsourcing of SOTS services may represent a key tool for enhancing the productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) was signed in 2006, Albanian exports to CEFTA member countries have increased four-fold. Applying a trade growth decomposition methodology, we show that Albanian firms that did not export to CEFTA countries before the agreement account for a large share of this export growth. Exports also increased among goods that were the least traded before the agreement. Estimating a gravity equation, we find that the CEFTA increased Albanian exports between 34% and 144%, depending on how the previous bilateral agreements with CEFTA countries are accounted for. Additional regression analyses conclude that the CEFTA fostered exports through the reduction of tariffs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the public spending performance and efficiency of South East European (SSE) countries for the period 2010–2019, ranking Slovenia as the best performer and Greece as the worst. The article provides evidence-based policy recommendations for countries to improve their performance with the same inputs, as well as to decrease inputs to achieve same performance. The authors used data envelopment analysis to provide an insight into how the effectiveness and efficiency of the education and public infrastructure sectors might be improved. Input and output efficiency of the public sectors of South East European (SEE) countries was assessed through the non-parametric production frontier–data envelopment analysis (DEA). The same technique was also employed to assess the education and infrastructure sectors' efficiency. The assessment indicates significant inter-country differences in both performance and efficiency. The results suggest that the best performer in SEE countries was Slovenia, while Albania was the most efficient. There were even more education and infrastructure sector specific efficiency variations, indicating performance improvement potentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of scholarly work underscores that the relationship between women's political representation and quality of government is stronger in democracies than in authoritarian regimes. The relationship, however, is less clear in regimes that are neither fully-fledged democratic nor authoritarian. I investigate the gender gap in representatives' efforts to push for improvements in the quality of government in the local councils of Albania following the implementation of gender quotas in 2015. Using the transcripts of council meetings, I identify the kind of practices that councilors challenge when holding local government officials to account, and I compare women with men. The study shows that councilors contest practices that concern law enforcement, impartiality, and transparency. Women, compared to men, are more likely to contest practices that concern transparency. The greatest gender gap is observed in councils where the implementation of gender quotas has disrupted male dominance, numerically speaking, the most. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1937, Muḥammad al-Ḥajwī, a prominent Muslim scholar and an avid reformer of Moroccan state and society, received a request for a legal advice from Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm Repīshtī, a distinguished Muslim cleric in Shkodra, Albania. Apparently, the Albanian king, Aḥmad Zog, had required all state employees and public-school students to wear a European hat (burnayṭa). Repīshtī urged al-Ḥajwī to provide him with an explicit answer to the question: Is it permissible for civil servants and students to wear the burnayṭa? Al-Ḥajwī answered in the affirmative. This article analyzes his response. I dmeemonstrate that his legal advice takes the form of a long and extensive fatwā, focusing on the legality of Muslim imitation of non-Muslims (tashabbuh bi'l-kuffār). In it, al-Ḥajwī advocated a reconciliation of the Muslim umma with Western modernity. His message established an explicit distinction between beneficial and detrimental Muslim appropriation of European objects. Thus, I argue that in his fatwā, al-Ḥajwī provided more than a straightforward authorisation for Muslim Albanians to wear the burnayṭa. Indeed, he outlined a blueprint for harnessing Western powerful modernity as a way to ultimately bolster the community of believers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates gender gaps in access to land ownership and land inheritance in Albanian rural areas by combining a large-scale survey and five in-depth focus groups discussions. The article considers three sets of variables: place-based characteristics; family characteristics; and individual characteristics. Results find that rural societies lack awareness around legal property rights, undermine the confidence of women in myriad ways, and continue to rely on customary laws. Current inequalities are placed in the context of Albania's entrenched patriarchal system. Culture and tradition are as important as, if not more important than, legal frameworks surrounding land ownership and inheritance. The findings bring intersectionality issues into high relief: where patriarchy is combined with poverty, gender inequality is exacerbated. Findings call for a more holistic approach that combines efforts to improve legal literacy, raise awareness among all genders, and alleviate poverty for boosting women's inclusion in the economy. HIGHLIGHTS In Albania, patriarchal customary laws disfavor women when it comes to property ownership, inheritance, and decision making. Women in rural societies, in particular, rely on custom and have low awareness of their legal property rights. Women who are more informed about formal laws view themselves as more equal to men. Where patriarchy is combined with poverty, gender inequality is exacerbated. Education and legal literacy are key to overcoming entrenched patriarchy and fostering women's empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the case of Albania to explore the effects of communist legacies on support for democracy and voting behavior. Using survey data, we show that those who are more critical of democracy tend to be of the older generation and reside in rural areas. These critics of democracy are also more likely to vote for Albania's communist successor party. We argue that these trends are a result of communist legacy and continually undermine the new regime's capacities to develop effective representation. In conclusion, we also show how communist legacy more generally undermines the development of robust political competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a micro-analysis of land market development after two decades of Albanian transition. We use data from a survey conducted in four Albanian villages during May 2013. The results indicate that land markets are highly rigid with almost no structural changes occurring over the last two decades. Sale markets are almost non-existent owing to formal and informal regulations and prevalence of subsistence farming in rural Albania. Thestatus quoestablished by the 1991 land reform determines the present ownership structure. Rental markets are more sizable but, owing to property rights insecurity and monitoring problems of absentee landowners, the vast majority of rental arrangements are between family relatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discrepancies between return policies and return practices are multiple and notions of temporariness are inherent within this dichotomy. This article will examine the role of temporariness within return migration including the imagining of return, decision-making for return, return visits, and return and reintegration experiences. The role of temporariness will be demonstrated through the experiences of three different types of return migrants: assisted voluntary returnees (AVR) in Albania, participants of an IOM temporary return programme for knowledge transfer in Afghanistan and returning domestic workers and female professionals experiences of temporariness in return in Ethiopia. Returnees in Albania experience 'imposed temporariness' through the AVR programme, which limits their stay in the intended destination country; participants in the return programme experience 'regulated temporariness' as the duration of their return is regulated by the programme and cannot exceed three months, and the professional returnees to Ethiopia experience 'flexible temporariness' as they have the freedom to circulate between Ethiopia and their country of new citizenship. Finally, the domestic worker returnees to Ethiopia cross-sect these categories depending on the nature of their return. This article will assess the different roles of temporariness in policy and practice across the experiences of these return migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution studies comparatively three Southern European countries (Italy, Spain, and Greece) and three Southeastern European countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bulgaria). Looking beyond historical path-dependencies, we investigate recent developments in terms of state-religion relations. Starting with a thick description of the historical legacies and post-1989 developments, we focus on issues of the last decade, such as the rise of populism and nationalism, the path to EU accession for Bosnia and Albania, the economic and Eurozone crisis of the 2010s, and the refugee emergency of 2015. Our aim is to assess how these have shaped state-religion relations and to categorise the six countries within the typology proposed in the introductory contribution to this collection. Our findings suggest that moderate secularism and liberal neutralism prevail in all six countries. There are, however, important variations in terms of the relevance of majoritarian nationalism in some of them, as the state defines the prevailing religion and has strong historical and institutional ties with that religion. The contribution elaborates on these specificities and concludes with some questions on the importance of the notion of dominant vs qualifying norms and on the role of current challenges in shaping further state-religion relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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During the so-called 'refugee and migration crisis' of 2015–2016 and the opening of the Balkan route between Turkey and the EU, Albania played a marginal role. Instead, the mass emigration from Albania which had been continuous since the early 1990s, mainly directed towards Greece and Italy, suddenly developed a new outlet: the movement of tens of thousands of poor asylum-seekers to Germany. Considered through the dual lens of border studies and mobility studies, this movement evidences the small time-spaces of possibility that open up as asylum-seekers grasp opportunities yet at the same time struggle against constraints. As a form of migration, this was a short-term temporal event, with nearly all applicants failing to gain asylum and subsequently returning to Albania. Nevertheless, most of the returned asylum-seekers spoke warmly of their experience of being abroad, referring to the generosity of the German government and the good schooling opportunities for their children. Some asylum-seekers whom we interviewed were able to access employment, albeit precarious, and accumulated financial and social capital, which gave them options for the future. Once returned to Albania, most wanted to try their luck in Germany again, seeing little future for themselves and their families in Albania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using annual data for the period 2000–2018, the study employed an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) methodology to examine the long-run cointegrating relations between service subsectors and economic growth in Albania. Results are presented both for the short run and long run. Findings indicate that the transport sector, communication and financial services have a positive impact on economic growth. However, the manufacturing sector has a negative impact. This confirms Baumol's theory on cost disease but does not corroborate Kaldor's theory. Furthermore, agriculture and industry stimulate the Albanian economy whilst expenditure on health have a limited impact. In addition, the Granger causality test indicates a bidirectional causality from transport, communication and financial services to GDP per capita. Lastly, our models are robust to all the conventional battery of tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contributors to the education-as-enlightenment approach maintain that education helps to create less prejudicial individuals. This conclusion, emanating mainly from data collected in western democracies that apply multicultural education might not apply to countries where education's primary goal is the establishment of a sense of national unity and belonging. On the one hand, nationalist education could reduce prejudices against groups not targeted by the ethnonationalist narrative – e.g. through positive comments about them or by not mentioning them at all. On the other hand, education might produce more prejudice towards groups targeted as the hostile Other through a nation-building narrative. We test this argument with a simple random sample of a cellphone public opinion survey collected in Albania in 2015. By framing our analysis inside the intergroup contact theory, we build two sets of models, the first explaining respondents' prejudice levels towards Greeks and the second explaining respondents' prejudice levels towards homosexuals. We found that more education predicted respondents' higher prejudice levels towards Greeks, a group targeted by the Albanian ethnonationalist narrative as the hostile Other, whereas it did not significantly affect prejudices towards homosexuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reveals the issues that SOE operatives faced in Albania by exploring Anthony Quayle's 1945 spy novel Eight hours from England, which was based on Quayle's experiences as a secret agent in Albania. It details SOE's inability to achieve effective relations with communist and anti-communist resistance networks which, while claiming to be fighting the Axis occupiers, were more interested in fighting each other. Also, this article will demonstrate the psychological toll that this mission had on Quayle as he changed from being enthusiastic for success to expressing an abhorrence for his Albanian allies after countless setbacks and betrayals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sea bream and sea bass cage farming is slowly following salmon's track, namely the transformation of the product into a commodity. Despite this trend, the credibility of production data is still questionable. In the current work, a simple and handy ex-situ tool to estimate the annual production capacity of a fish cage farm is proposed based on cage dimensions. By applying a "rule of thumb" of low, moderate, and high stocking density scenarios (i.e. 5, 5.5, and 6 kg m−3) οn farms located in NW Greece and Albania, and verified by sales data, it was possible to estimate with confidence the real annual production capacity of a farm and of the entire sector. Accordingly, productivity/performance indices related to cage and leased surface area, productivity and employees, were calculated. Overall, the proposed tool (and its derivative indices) could be used to obtain more realistic aquaculture production statistics and to assist managerial decisions on farm level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ethnographic research from Albania, I examine Romani and Balkan Egyptian women's health inequities. While it has been well documented that Romani people, who constitute Europe's largest socioracial minority group, experience racism and marginalization, how these forms of social exclusion shape health outcomes in the Balkans remains limited. I argue that racism is a root cause of social and health inequities, and that Romani and Egyptian women experience unique bodily fatigue marked by extreme zor ("difficulty," "constraint"). An examination of zor can potentially provide an understanding of how racism and marginalization are embodied over time [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The west's prototype covert action of the Cold War against Albania, codenamed BGFIEND/Valuable, is often characterized as a failure of the rollback policy against the Soviet bloc. This article argues that, from late 1949, the CIA and MI6 did not attempt to overthrow Enver Hoxha's communist regime as historians have assumed, but to subvert and harass it primarily through psychological – not paramilitary – warfare. On one hand, western intelligence enjoyed some modest propaganda achievements, and valuable organizational and tradecraft experience was acquired for future operations. Nevertheless, BGFIEND/Valuable also faced innumerable challenges and setbacks, illustrating the difficulty of waging subversive psychological warfare against a hostile authoritarian state in the early Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on west-east planning policy transfers in Europe – the movement of ideas, principles, priorities, and processes related to the development, implementation and evaluation of planning policy. It examines the case of Albania, where various activities to promote the transfer of policy have taken place over the last quarter century. Since the end of communism in 1990, foreign consultants have been involved in providing advice on a range of policy issues, including urban and regional planning. Drawing on a survey of consultants with direct experience of providing policy advice in Albania, the article explores the impact of west-east planning policy transfer and the key barriers it has faced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this contribution is to identify how gender and feminist studies have positioned themselves within the higher education system in post-socialist Albania. In Albania, the post-socialist context was featured by a negative connotation of the left-wing perspective hindering the development of critical and feminist thinking in academia. There is a lack of feminist debate, and hostile prejudices against feminists stick well, particularly in the absence of a thorough debate about feminism. Gender and women's studies are present mainly in the public university system in association with the Social Sciences Faculty. The only complete program on gender studies is situated within the Department of Social Work and Social Policy, as a Master program in Gender and Development. Gender or feminist studies are mostly taught as "optional" courses often just for the sake of having them present in the program. In this contribution, we aim at briefly presenting some of the main developments, gaps and challenges regarding gender and feminist studies in the Albanian higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community policing is considered by the leadership of the Albanian police as central to delivering democratic policing in the country. It has been enshrined in the national and local police strategies that call for a close cooperation between police, local authorities and non-governmental organisations in identifying and addressing local policing needs. The implementation of such initiative is an attempt to refocus police reform in Albania towards guaranteeing respect for human rights, which, in turn, influences the relationship between police and the citizens as a cornerstone of democracy. However, there is a gap between the planned reforms and their implementation on the ground. It is also not clear to what extent community policing programmes in Albania tally with local conditions. The experience so far indicates that community policing reform initiatives in Albania, often conceptualised and overseen by Western experts, have been more about exporting an ideology than a change of practice. Whilst the concept can be seen as a useful vehicle to improve police--public relations and encourage police's adherence to human rights, community policing in Albania has been shown to have had little effect on reducing crime rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International media accounts of the spectacular collapse of the pyramid firms in Albania in 1997 centre on the story of Maksude Kadëna, the head of the notorious firm, Sude. These accounts depict Kadëna as a 'gypsy fortune teller who claimed to look into a crystal ball'. In this article, I return to these various accounts of Sude/Kadëna as a way to explore ethnographically the broader set of cosmologies and repertoires of credit and speculation that informed the decisions and strategies of participation in these firms. I suggest that the activities of the firms were, on the one hand, an extension of practices and ideas about the free market during the communist regime and, on the other hand, a manifestation of postsocialist cosmologies or risk and speculation and repertoires of credit and investment that extended well beyond the firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on the relatively recent phenomenon of Albanian migrants returning to Albania is limited and focuses on the reasons for return, the characteristics of the return migrants, and on employment in general. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 25 returnees in Tirana, the study explores primarily, but not exclusively, the impact of the ongoing Greek debt crisis on the decision of Albanian migrants to return to Albania. More specifically, it analyses the reasons that motivated them to leave Greece; the barriers they faced while trying to reintegrate into Albanian society, which has undergone vast changes during the time of their absence; the way these barriers influence their future intentions; and, finally, the role of the Albanian government in their reintegration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the relationship between acculturation, ethnic identity, and psychological well-being of the Albanian-American immigrant community in United States. A total of 139 Albanian-American immigrants aged 21-35 years old participated in the study. In order to utilize the data, participants filled out four different surveys, including a demographic questionnaire, the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM), the Vancouver Index of Acculturation (VIA), and Ryff's Psychological Well-Being scale. A correlational design relying on cross-sectional survey data and multiple regression analysis was used to study the correlations between acculturation, ethnic identity, and psychological well-being. The results showed that ethnic identity, acculturation, and psychological well-being were positively correlated to each other. In addition, the results showed that both ethnic identity and acculturation affected the psychological well-being of Albanian-American immigrants in the United States. This relationship was further moderated by gender and length of residency in the United States and mediated through graduate school education. The results of this study will help clinicians, social workers, and policy makers that work with immigrants to better understand the psychological consequences of immigration due to acculturation and ethnic identity factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the shape organized women’s activism took in Albania after the fall of the communist regime. It also analyses how gender and feminist studies have positioned themselves within the higher education system, the relationship between media and feminism and the new alternative spaces of women’s activism and feminist resistance to gendered power relations. The analysis follows the longue durée of the fraught relationship of debates around feminism during and after the fall of Communism starting with the communist top-down ‘women’s emancipation model’ as well as the lack of bottom-up women’s activism, the post-1991 neo-liberal frame and the generalized post-1991 stigma about ‘emancipation’, ‘equality’ or ‘feminism’, along with the need to resist post-1991 hierarchical gender regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A technical study was conducted on a group of copper alloy artifacts excavated from the burial tumulus of Lofkënd (fourteenth–ninth century BCE) to identify the alloy compositions and methods of manufacture. The surface corrosion was also examined in order to understand the diagenetic processes affecting the preservation of the finds and their condition. Portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, metallographic examination, and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) analysis were used to characterize the alloy composition and identify the corrosion products present. XRD analysis showed the presence of brochantite (Cu4SO4(OH)6) on five of the metallic artifacts. Brochantite is not commonly reported on archaeological bronzes from terrestrial sites, but is more readily found on copper alloy objects exposed to sulfur pollutants in the air or soil. The possible conditions that could have led to the formation of this corrosion on the bronzes from Lofkënd are discussed in the context of the particular burial environment found at the tumulus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the central decades of the Cold War, China was Albania’s only ally. The aim of this article is to analyse how the Chinese Cultural Revolution affected Sino-Albanian relations. This article argues that the events in China threatened to undermine the Sino-Albanian alliance, because Albania did not endorse most of the Cultural Revolution’s policies, but supported it only for the sake of relations with China and the benefits received from this alliance. In a time when the Cultural Revolution caused enormous difficulties to the Chinese economy, Albania nonetheless received an increasing amount of aid. Based on recently released archives, this case study sheds light on this underexplored Cold War alliance and adds to our understanding of how the Cultural Revolution had implications beyond China’s borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family businesses represent one of the oldest forms of business organizations. Family businesses are an important source for generating jobs generation after generation in most countries, including transition ones. The main focus of this article is on succession in the family business, which is seen as the biggest challenge faced by companies in the long run. Succession in general terms can be defined as a replacement or transfer of the management and control of the business from generation to generation. The purpose of this article is to share findings related to succession in family businesses in Albania. In order to gain a better picture of the current situation, problems and perspectives facing families with respect to succession a survey was conducted. The questionnaire was distributed physically and through e-mail. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This analysis considers the impact of the demonstrations that occurred in Kosovo in spring 1981. They shocked Federal Yugoslavia and re-opened the Kosovo question as an issue in European and international diplomacy. They simultaneously intensified and consolidated the Albanian national movement in Kosovo, although activists held differing views as to the best solution to the problem. Another result of the demonstrations was a deterioration in Albano–Yugoslav relations over territorial and nationalist issues. The “Kosovo Spring” placed Albania in conflict with Yugoslavia, which declared a state of emergency in Kosovo on 2 April 1981 and suppressed the demonstrations by force. The events in Kosovo had the effect of redefining the whole Albanian question. The maturity of the Albanian response led international opinion to take Albania more seriously. For its part, Albania was impelled to evaluate more highly the response of Western countries to events in Kosovo and initiate a more realistic approach to the West—albeit tentatively—despite the persistence of deep ideological differences. The demonstrations of 1981 had a substantial effect on Albanian state policy regarding Kosovo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]