{"id":3907,"date":"2020-07-06T08:00:24","date_gmt":"2020-07-06T07:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swissmig.wordpress.com\/?p=3907"},"modified":"2020-07-06T08:00:24","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T07:00:24","slug":"memories-of-the-liberation-of-kosovo-among-albanian-speaking-activists-in-switzerland-narrating-transnational-belonging-to-the-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swissmig.unine.ch\/?p=3907","title":{"rendered":"Memories of the “liberation of Kosovo” among Albanian-speaking activists in Switzerland : : narrating transnational belonging to the nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author(s) : Romaine Farquet<\/h3>\n

Source : https:\/\/libra.unine.ch\/handle\/123456789\/2778<\/a><\/h3>\n

Abstract: <\/strong><\/p>\n

“The Albanian-speaking population living in Switzerland mobilised massively on behalf of the national cause in Kosovo in the 1990s. After the end of the conflict, that saw the departure of the Serbian forces from Kosovo (1999), some of the Albanian-speaking activists from Switzerland returned to their homeland. Many others remained in Switzerland, where they largely diminished or terminated their homeland engagement. Since the end of the war, very little attention has been paid to these former champions of the national cause in Switzerland. Furthermore, there is also very little literature on the memories of the mobilisation in Switzerland and the related discourses of belonging to the \u201cAlbanian nation\u201d. The situation differs in Kosovo where several researchers have analysed the memorialisation of the recent past. This dissertation explores the narratives of homeland engagement related by Albanian-speaking former activists who engaged on behalf of the national cause in Kosovo from Switzerland in the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, it scrutinises how they narrate national belonging in their memories of the quieter post-war years (after 1999). As such, this study falls within the field of research on nationhood and ethnicity that examines how people negotiate and reproduce nationhood away from extreme situations of nationalist movements and warfare. Furthermore, this research analyses the narratives with a transnational perspective as it focuses on how the interviewees mobilise and negotiate different discourses of national belonging embedded in the different social spaces they inhabit at the local, national, transnational and international levels. This research mainly relies on oral history interviews conducted with former Albanian- speaking activists who were active on behalf of Kosovo in Switzerland in the 1980s and 1990s. Of the fifty former activists who participated in this research, seven were interviewed in Kosovo and the rest in Switzerland, where most of the research participants still reside on a fixed or irregular basis. The interviewees told me about their trajectory as activists on behalf of the national cause, their vision of Albanianness and their position in the evolving \u201cAlbanian nation\u201d. The thesis is chiefly composed of three articles. They highlight the trajectories of the former activists from the years of engagement in the 1980s and 1990s to the search for a new status during the post-war period. While the thesis accounts for the negative image of the Albanian-speaking population in Switzerland, it also shows how they feel excluded and forgotten in post-war Kosovo. Moreover, the research demonstrates how the former activists use narratives of homeland engagement to reconfigure the symbolic categories and boundaries that delimit the \u201cAlbanian nation\u201d and seek to enhance their own position. The thesis thus underlines the evolution of the narratives of belonging as an adaptation of the transnational situation of the activists, from the period of \u201chot\u201d nationalism during the years of engagement to the milder forms after the end of the war.”<\/p>\n

“La population albanophone vivant en Suisse s’est massivement mobilis\u00e9e pour la cause nationale au Kosovo dans les ann\u00e9es 1990. Apr\u00e8s la fin du conflit, qui a vu le d\u00e9part des forces serbes du Kosovo en 1999, certain.es des militant.es albanophones de Suisse sont retourn\u00e9.es dans leur patrie. Beaucoup d’autres sont rest\u00e9.es en Suisse, o\u00f9 ils\/elles ont largement diminu\u00e9, voire m\u00eame mis fin \u00e0 leur engagement dans leur patrie. Depuis la fin de la guerre, tr\u00e8s peu d’attention a \u00e9t\u00e9 accord\u00e9e \u00e0 ces ancien.nes militant.es de la cause nationale en Suisse. De plus, il existe tr\u00e8s peu de litt\u00e9rature sur les souvenirs de la mobilisation en Suisse ainsi que sur les discours d’appartenance \u00e0 la “nation albanaise” qui s’y rapportent. La situation est diff\u00e9rente au Kosovo, o\u00f9 plusieurs chercheur.ses ont analys\u00e9 la comm\u00e9moration du pass\u00e9 r\u00e9cent. Cette th\u00e8se explore les r\u00e9cits de l’engagement de la patrie racont\u00e9s par d’ancien.nes militant.es albanophones qui se sont engag\u00e9.es au nom de la cause nationale au Kosovo depuis la Suisse dans les ann\u00e9es 1980 et 1990. En particulier, elle examine comment ces personnes racontent l’appartenance nationale dans leurs m\u00e9moires des ann\u00e9es plus calmes de l’apr\u00e8s-guerre (apr\u00e8s 1999). Ainsi, cette \u00e9tude s’inscrit dans le domaine de la recherche sur la nation et l’ethnicit\u00e9 qui examine comment les individus n\u00e9gocient et reproduisent l\u2019id\u00e9e de la nation loin des situations extr\u00eames des mouvements nationalistes et de la guerre. De plus, cette recherche analyse les r\u00e9cits dans une perspective transnationale. Elle se concentre sur la fa\u00e7on dont les personnes interview\u00e9es se mobilisent et n\u00e9gocient diff\u00e9rents discours d’appartenance nationale ancr\u00e9s dans les diff\u00e9rents espaces sociaux qu’elles habitent aux niveaux local, national, transnational et international. Cette recherche s’appuie principalement sur des entretiens d’histoire orale men\u00e9s avec d’ancien.nes activitses albanophones qui ont \u00e9t\u00e9 actif.ves au nom du Kosovo en Suisse dans les ann\u00e9es 1980 et 1990. Sur les cinquante ancien.nes militant.es qui ont particip\u00e9 \u00e0 cette recherche, sept ont \u00e9t\u00e9 interview\u00e9.es au Kosovo et les autres en Suisse, o\u00f9 la plupart des participant.es \u00e0 la recherche r\u00e9sident encore de fa\u00e7on fixe ou irr\u00e9guli\u00e8re. Les personnes interrog\u00e9es m\u2019ont racont\u00e9 leur trajectoire en tant que militant.es de la cause nationale, leur vision de l’albanit\u00e9 ainsi que leur position dans la “nation albanaise” en transformation. La th\u00e8se est principalement compos\u00e9e de trois articles. Ils mettent en lumi\u00e8re les trajectoires des ancien.nes militant.es depuis les ann\u00e9es d’engagement dans les ann\u00e9es 1980 et 1990 jusqu’\u00e0 la recherche d’un nouveau statut dans l’apr\u00e8s-guerre. Si la th\u00e8se aborde l’image n\u00e9gative de la population albanophone en Suisse, elle montre aussi comment ses membres se sentent exclu.es et oubli\u00e9.es dans le Kosovo de l’apr\u00e8s-guerre. De plus, la recherche d\u00e9montre comment les ancien.nes activistes utilisent les r\u00e9cits de l’engagement de la patrie pour reconfigurer les cat\u00e9gories symboliques et les fronti\u00e8res qui d\u00e9limitent la “nation albanaise”. Ainsi, ces ancien.nes militant.es cherchent \u00e0 am\u00e9liorer leur propre position actuelle. La th\u00e8se souligne l’\u00e9volution des r\u00e9cits d’appartenance comme adaptation \u00e0 la situation transnationale des militant.es, de la p\u00e9riode du nationalisme “chaud” pendant les ann\u00e9es d’engagement, aux formes plus douces apr\u00e8s la fin de la guerre.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author(s) : Romaine Farquet Source : https:\/\/libra.unine.ch\/handle\/123456789\/2778 Abstract:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[167],"tags":[582,336,281,136,152,589,9,121,259,87,154,193,138,174,206,124,347,677],"class_list":["post-3907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethnicity-languages-religion-arts","tag-582","tag-albanians","tag-belonging","tag-diasporas","tag-discourse","tag-doctoral-thesis","tag-english-language","tag-ethnic-minorities","tag-ethnicity","tag-history","tag-interviews","tag-kosovo","tag-migration-motives","tag-nationalism","tag-political-activities","tag-protest-movements","tag-testimonies","tag-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swissmig.unine.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swissmig.unine.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swissmig.unine.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swissmig.unine.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swissmig.unine.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/swissmig.unine.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swissmig.unine.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swissmig.unine.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swissmig.unine.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}