Albanian Settlements and the Italio-Albanian in Southern Italy (II) : A Case Study in the Province of Cosenza

This paper constitutes the second part of the author's study on the so-called Albanian settlements in Southern Italy, the previous one being a case study in the province of Palermo. More than half of the Albanian settlements in Southern Italy are distributed in the province of Cosenza; the author first examines the distribution of Albanian settlements in this province in relation with the settlement history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the marginal physical conditions of the settlement sites. The author has conducted field surveys in thirteen Albanian settlements and the larger part of the paper is dedicated to considerations of the cultural and socioeconomic situations of these settlements. The Italo-Albanians are generally considered an ethnic minority in Italy, but their character and their social and cultural situation and their sense of identity differ somewhat from those of other ethnic minorities; they are not discriminated against in any way, and they acquired their sense of identity at the end of the eighteenth century, much before the rise of Albanian nationalism in the Balkan peninsula. For them, the Italian or letinj are not the "other"; their sense of an Italo-Albanian identity was especially strong when Italian nationalism was more emphatic, such as the period of Risorgimento. The bases of their ethnic identity are rather complicated; in many Albanian settlements, they use the Albanian dialect in daily life, while in some of their villages the Albanian dialect has been lost for several decades though the villagers still remain Catholics who continue to maintain Greco- Byzantine rites. In yet other villages, they celebrate Latin rites, maintaining the Albanian dialect. In big cities such as Palermo and Rome we can find certain Italo- Albanians who hold onto their Italo-Albanian identity following Latin rites and without speaking the Albanian dialect. Because of the hilly and mountainous locations of Albanian settlements in the province of Cosenza, actual economic conditions are gen .