On the Liminal State and Its Entanglements with Mass Migration and Rural Areas in Albania
This article asks whether there is a relationship between state abandonment and mass migration. The question directs attention to the ways in which the state manifests itself in everyday life and to its role among the diverse causes of migration. The Opar region in Southeast Albania provides an empirical setting marked by mass migration: approximately 94% of the population recorded there in 1990 has migrated. It is a mountainous rural area with underdeveloped infrastructure. Evidence presented here focuses on local government reforms, the lack of investment in roads and infrastructure, and cultural heritage. To further understand how the state manifests itself at both the national and local levels, this article employs the concept of the liminal state, proposed here as a new theoretical concept that seeks to expand our understanding of the relationship between the state and migration during the post-socialist transition. The theoretical assumption underpinning this analysis is that the liminal state, once its mission-oriented function and ethos are undermined by failure, broken promises, and repeated tricksterisation, becomes an exclusionary entity that sustains migration and discourages the return of those who have already migrated.
Nebi Bardhoshi
Nebi Bardhoshi is a senior researcher at the Institute of Anthropology in Tirana, Albania. His research focuses on legal and political anthropology, state–society relations, and social transformations in socialist and post-socialist Albania and Southeast Europe. His theoretical work examines the interconnections between liminality, understood as both an analytical concept and a social condition, theories of gift exchange, and legal pluralism.