Jelena Tošić
Search for other papers by Jelena Tošić in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Travelling genealogies
Tracing relatedness and diversity in the Albanian–Montenegrin borderland

The chapter shows how the ‘moving’ post-socialist border between Albania and Montenegro inspired new ways of narrating families’ border-crossing past. This border, sealed for fifty years, was suddenly penetrable. Today, goods and people can travel across; families can be reunited. Energy has been invested in rediscovering and acknowledging old family ties. The chapter describes how locals are busy mapping – often, ex post facto – elaborate family genealogies, extending far into the past, in which forefathers who migrated across borders are enthusiastically included. This re-working of ancestral memory creates a (new) multi-layered past which, in turn, facilitates concrete future strategies. The kinship ties thus discovered (or invented) are invested with affect; any kin is welcome. This provides an excellent tool in the maintenance and extension of cross-border contact and patronage networks, an essential step towards future welfare. Recovered pasts through elaborated genealogies of border-crossing kin challenge and subvert polity borders and ethnic, national and religious divides.

  • Collapse
  • Expand

All of MUP's digital content including Open Access books and journals is now available on manchesterhive.

 

Migrating borders and moving times

Temporality and the crossing of borders in Europe

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 0 0 0
Full Text Views 683 42 23
PDF Downloads 607 96 4