-
By:
Shaban Maxharraj
- August 21, 2026 08:46
- Share to:
“Tracing the dynamics of migration in the Balkans through historical-anthropological research on the family” is the title of the lecture by researcher Robert Pichler at the International Seminar on Albanian Language, Literature and Culture. As a case study, there are two settlements in what is today North Macedonia, Krushevo and Veleshtë. This time, he focused in more detail on Krushevo. He has extensively analyzed migration, the connection with the homeland and the troubles that this concept of life brings.
The Austrian historian and anthropologist, Robert Pichler, has not stopped only at archives and cabinet work since the early 90s, but has visited the Balkans crosswise and crosswise. In fact, at the very beginning of the 90s he was in northern Albania to see how traditions were preserved during the hermetic closure during the communist era. But this time, within the framework of the Seminar on Albanian Language, Literature and Culture, he has come up with another study. “Tracing the dynamics of migration in the Balkans through historical-anthropological research on the family” is the title of his lecture held on Thursday. As a case study, there are two settlements in what is today North Macedonia, Krushevo and Veleshtë. This time, he focused in more detail on Krushevo.
Study challenges
From the beginning, he said that in this case his interest was historical research on family and kinship, as well as migration to get out of labor migration in transnational families. According to the researcher who deals with the Balkans at the Institute for the Study of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Balkan Region within the Austrian Academy of Sciences, historical research on the family offers important insights for understanding migration. Historical anthropology also offers a productive approach to connecting these perspectives.
“It combines: Historical perspectives on long-term social change and anthropological perspectives on everyday practices and lived experience,” he said. His main goal, he said, is to make the findings and concepts of historical research on the family useful for migration studies. His study in this case collects data on developments since 1960. According to him, in Southeast Europe, the study is not easy due to limited resources and language barriers. He said that the mountainous terrain has influenced the patterns of state penetration and local autonomy, while governance has been done by households, kinship groups and customary law.
The line that makes the difference
also
Prilep, 1900: Muslim Albanians merge into Turks, Christians into Slavs and Greeks
"The family economy and kinship connect everyday life with property, work, authority and belonging," he said. He then explained what is known as the "Hajnal Line". This is a concept by the British historian, John Hajnal, from 1965. The line divides Europe between east and west, starting in Trieste and continuing to St. Petersburg. And the data disclosed by Robert Pichler show that west of the line, marriages are later, the percentage of unmarried people ranges from 20 to 30 percent among women. The economy is family, but there is a greater presence of people who are not related, including servants and those in the life cycle.
"While in the east and southeast of the line we have earlier marriages, marriage is almost universal, the family economy is more complex and multi-generational and it consists mainly of relatives. In Western Europe, he explained, inheritance was indivisible, where usually one heir inherits the farm and the other children have to leave. Whereas, according to him, in Southeastern Europe, there was division between family members and co-ownership of property among male heirs.
“Boys can stay in their parents’ household while women leave to join their husband’s household,” he said. In Western Europe, marriage is later because resources are needed to create an independent household, while in Eastern Europe, marriage is more closely integrated into the kinship-based household.
"In Western Europe, children who did not inherit entered the service
outside the parental household, while in Southeast Europe young people remained more strongly integrated into family economies, based on kinship, where the family was the unit of work, property and socialization," he said.
Age and gender as authority
When it comes to authority and what the succession dictated in the Southeast European household, age and gender played a big role.
Thus, the oldest men were the highest authority, while the younger generations simply respected and obeyed them. In Western Europe, according to him, the farm passed to the descendants, often on the occasion of the son's marriage, authority passed to the middle generation, the older generation retained the right of support and maintenance, and three generations could live together, but with a different authority structure.
According to the researcher, historical research on the family in migration studies is important because kinship remained insufficiently theoretically addressed and research on migration often relied on general concepts of the family, ethnocentric assumptions, and legal and administrative definitions.
"There was insufficient attention to culturally and historically diverse forms of kinship ties, obligations, care, reciprocity and belonging," he said.
also
When the Albanians enriched Zara
While delving deeper into the topic and region, he said that family and kinship remained central to the uneven socialist transformation.
“Socialist modernization did not affect all regions equally. In economically marginalized and predominantly rural regions, kinship remained central to social security, economic cooperation, and access to resources. Limited access to formal institutions and employment strengthened reliance on family networks. Kinship, therefore, was not simply a remnant of ‘tradition’, but remained functional in social and economic terms and adapted to new circumstances,” said one of the scientific authorities who has been the author of many studies for three decades. As another reason why family and kinship remained central, he listed restrictive migration regimes, where the borders particularly affected migrants from economically and politically marginalized regions of the Western Balkans. According to him, access to migration increasingly depended on informal networks of trust, reciprocity, and kinship, and on family ties that could facilitate access to information, housing, employment, and migration routes. According to him, cross-border marriages also became an important route to legal mobility and, for some people, one of the few available routes to Western Europe.
Relations across borders
“Transnationalism is a new perspective on migration,” said Robert Pichler. According to him, the transnational perspective highlights multiple and enduring relationships across borders where transnational social fields emerge and exchanges take place within these fields. And according to him, when family and kinship are again at the center, then we are dealing with a social infrastructure of transnational connections, networks of support, care and obligation, channels for the circulation of resources and information, and spaces where transnational family life is negotiated and reproduced. While speaking about the case of settlement, Krushevo in North Macedonia said that it is a long-term model of labor migration.
“Labor migration in the region has a long history, extending far beyond socialist Yugoslavia. Migrants usually invested their earnings in homes in their homeland. Building houses and buying land were the main forms of investment and migration, so it was often oriented towards returning and reproducing family life in their homeland,” he said. According to him, socialist labor migration since the 60s was an important continuation of the kurbet, mainly with first-generation males and initially conceived as temporary migration as it was
migration organized by the state, but facilitated through family and kinship.
“The old model was transformed under socialist and post-socialist migration. Houses became bigger, taller and more spectacular with modernization, comfort and social prestige. Then with new architectural models that replaced the old forms. American-style houses were built, Central European residential buildings with greater transparency and visibility. For migrants, building a house continued to express a connection to the place, belonging and an imagined return”, he said. In terms of family solidarity, he said that this phenomenon also creates obligations. But transnational family relationships provide security, support and access to resources.
Tensions in transnational family ties
"But they also create moral obligations, expectations and pressures. Migrants can be expected to invest in their country of origin, to marry "properly", often within the same ethno-cultural environment, to support and care for parents and grandparents, to maintain regular contact, to visit and to participate in family life", he said. But, according to Robert Pichler, these expectations can create financial, emotional and social pressures and they can also generate tensions between individual aspirations and collective family expectations. Finally, he said that he has heard that these tensions are already being observed and that this family bond is no longer what it used to be. He gave the example of a businessman in Vienna, who enjoys the trappings of wealth there. He said that he had been to his villa, but the grandparents from the Balkans stayed in the premises by the pool, but the grandchildren had no affinity to chat with them.
also
Brian Joseph: Albanian, one of the key languages for language contact in the Balkans
"It's a shame I didn't take a picture. But I have that image in my mind," he said of the phenomenon he has now observed and which could be the focus of future studies. He described this "cold" as if it were a pain.
After Robert Pichler's lecture, a roundtable discussion was held on "The Goddess on the Throne," followed by two sessions of various presentations. Language courses at three levels are held daily.
