An exploratory analysis of the experiences, motivations and expectations of albanian migrants in Portugal through the prism of human security

• Autor(a) principal: Pereira, Inês Soares
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/27812
• topic: Albania; Migration; Human security; Albânia,; Migração; Segurança humana

Since the end of the Cold War and the fall of the communist regime in Albania, migration has become a key issue for the country. In 2019, it was estimated that more than 1.2 million Albanians were living abroad, accounting for almost one fifth of its working force. As a result, emigrant remittances represent almost 20% of the country’s GDP. Against that backdrop, this thesis sets out to explore the experiences, motivations and expectations of Albanian migrants living in Portugal. While there is a growing number of works that focus on immigrant communities in Portugal, up until now none of them has focused on this topic. The thesis starts by putting this subject within a broader context and laying out the social, political and economic factors contributing to the several waves of Albanian migration that followed the end of the communist regime. Following from that, the argument will analyse the literature studying the dynamics of Albanian migration to countries such as Italy, Greece, and the United Kingdom. In the second chapter, it will explore the literature on Portugal as a host country for migrants regarding by briefly exploring the cases of migrants coming from Eastern European countries. The third chapter outlines the core assumptions of human security, the theoretical framework adopted to conduct this study, and explains the methodological choices that supported the collection, analysis and interpretation of primary data, that relied on the method of semi-structured interviews. Finally, the thesis discusses the experiences, motivations and expectations of four Albanian migrants living in Portugal. In doing so, the thesis hopes to make a modest contribution to current debates about migrant integration in Portugal and highlight the importance of engaging with smaller migrant communities in Portugal that are often overlooked by the literature.