Review article
https://doi.org/10.20901/an.15.08
Zadar Arbanasi: Remembrance, Ethnic and National Identity
Dragutin Babić
; Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, Zagreb, Croatia
Šenol Selimović
; Zadarski list, Zadar, Croatia
Abstract
This article explores the issue of ethnic identity on the example of the Zadar Arbanasi, Catholic Albanians originally from so-called Turkish Albania who settled the area around Zadar during the first half of the 18th century. Though the Arbanasi's ethic identity of has with time dwindled and is turning into "something else", the name and pertaining adjective Arbanasi, Arbaneshe (Arbanasi, arbanaški) are still in use. Based on the interviews conducted using a theoretical framework involving remembrance, memories, assimilation and ethnic identity, this article looks at who the Arbanasi in Zadar and its surroundings are at the beginning of the 21st century, whether their identity is at least somewhat also an ethnic one or if it is just a remembrance of a previous ethnic identity. How did the interviewed members of the Arbanasi community identify themselves in the census? Twenty (20) qualitative semi-structured interviews have been conducted in which the members of this sub-national community explained with much detail how they see historic and current issues that make up their existential and identity reality. An analysis of empirical material using theoretical constructs from the sociology of ethnic relations and ethnic identity and from the cultural approach perspective of political science, have led to the conclusion that the Arbanasi are a subnational identity that is mostly found within the Croatian national core and only occasionally within the Italian one. The results of this research show that the process wherein they were formed as a predominantly Croatian national identity has been coming to an end, especially from since the 1990s onwards.
Keywords
Arbanasi; migrations: ethnic and national identity; politics of identity
Hrčak ID:
216214
URI
Publication date:
24.1.2019.
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