Looking for Europe on the Borders of Albania

This presentation is an attempt to understand the impact of changes in the borderland between Greece and Albania after 1991 on the way its inhabitants envision “Europe”. It relates the recent success of some “ideas” about the ancient past of the area with the state of social relations between Albanians and Greeks as experienced by local inhabitants of the borderland. In the first part of the presentation, the borderland appears as a place where economic inequality and political domination are experienced in everyday life. From this starting point the paper addresses the issue of Europe as a metaphor and local knowledge, through the example of what can be called the ‘return of the Pelasgians' as ancestors of modern Albanians. The argument is that the vitality of the Pelasgic theory since the mid ‘90s is closely connected to the new situation created across the border and to the marginality and exclusion from Europe experienced by local social actors. This theory can be seen as both a product and a producer of ambiguity in the borderland and as a response to new social relations across the border. This presentation is thus an attempt to assess the role of social relations in “imagination” and the production of “ideas”