‘We are New-born Muslims’: Reconstructing Religious Identity among Albanian Migrants in Italy

What is it about?

This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with members of the Union of Albanian Muslims in Italy (UAMI) to examine the identity reconfiguration processes of Albanian Muslim migrants to Italy since the late 1990s. Following Albania’s communist regime, Albanian Muslims were forced to renegotiate their identity in relation to national culture and its secular and religious legacies in a new socio-political and religious context. The analysis illustrates how being both migrants and minorities shaped processes of identification and strategies adopted by UAMI members to articulate a specifically Albanian Muslim presence in Italy. A space of cultural and religious mediation, UAMI constructs belonging based on shared religious imaginaries and national specificity within a field already structured by non-Albanian Islamic organisations. The paper underscores the role of religious community organisations in enabling forms of collective identification in which cultural and cultic factors intertwine in complex ways in diasporic and minority contexts.

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