In this chapter, I explore the experiences of female migrants who migrated to undertake undergraduate or graduate studies rather than specifically for economic or work reasons. I analyse a group of female student migrants who returned to Tirana after their international migratory trajectories. Unlike the other group of international migrants introduced in Chap. 5 all the women in this group migrated with regular student visas and documents, and their destination countries are not limited to Greece and Italy but encompass a wider area.

The seven women featured in this chapter come from various cities in Albania but all ended up living in Tirana upon completing their studies abroad. Again, I refer to them as having migrated on their own, or without the physical presence of their families. Among these seven women, only one was married; none of the others were in committed relationships or cohabiting at the time the fieldwork was conducted. This group is composed of the following women:

  • Artemisa is 30 years old and from the city of Vlorë. She has a younger brother, who is also a student migrant, in the United States. In 2000, she migrated to Germany, where she studied Political Science, obtaining a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. After that, she found a job as a research assistant at her alma mater. She obtained legal residency but returned to Albania in 2008. Instead of moving back to Vlore, her city of origin, she settled in Tirana, where in 2012 she worked as jousnalist at a television station and as an adjunct lecturer. In 2012, she lived on her own in a rented studio in Komuna e Parisit, before moving back to Germany in 2014.

  • Beti is 31 years old and from the city of Durrës. Originally from Dibër, her family migrated to Durrës during the early 1990s. She has an older sister, who is married and lives in Durrës. In 1999, Beti migrated to Italy, where she studied Communications, receiving a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. She then moved to France, where she earned a doctorate in communication studies. In 2010, she returned to Albania but, like the other young women introduced in this chapter, to Tirana rather than her hometown of Durrës. In 2012, she worked as a university lecturer.Footnote 1 She first shared an apartment with a friend and later found a small one bedroom in Don Bosko, where she lived on her own in 2012.

  • Fiona is 28 years old and from the town of Kukës. Fiona has two younger sisters; one lives with their parents in Kukës, while the other works in Prishtina, Kosovo. In 2002, Fiona migrated to Romania, where she studied Language and Political Studies at the undergraduate level. After 3 years of studies, Fiona moved to the United Kingdom and graduated with a degree in Political Economy. In 2010, after returning to Tirana, she worked as a university lecturer and consultant and lived on her own in a small rented apartment in Don Bosko.

  • Egesta is 35 years old and from the town of Lezhë. Egesta has two younger sisters; the elder is married and lives in Vlora, her husband’s city of origin, while the youngest lives with their parents in Lezhë. In 1995, Egesta left for Italy, where she studied and graduated with a degree in Psychology. Upon graduating, she first worked for a travel agency and later for a centre providing support to migrants, as a psychologist and social worker. She is a legal resident of Italy. In 2005, she returned to Tirana. In 2012, she worked for a television station and as a consultant for various projects while living on her own in a rented studio apartment in Komuna e Parisit.

  • Monika is 28 years old and from the city of Fier. She is an only child. In 2003, Monika moved to Tirana to pursue a bachelor’s in Political Science. After 2 years of undergraduate studies, she left for Italy to study Political Economics. In 2009, she returned to Tirana. In 2012, Monika was working for an NGO and living in a rented studio apartment in Don Bosko.

  • Lindita is 28 years old and from the city of Vlorë. She has an older brother who is married and lives in Greece. In 2009, she left for Sweden, where she obtained a master’s in Business Administration. Her scholarship required that she return to Albania upon graduating. In 2011, she relocated to Tirana, and as of 2012, she was employed by an NGO and pursuing various other temporary projects. Lindita lived in a shared apartment with two young women in Komuna e Parisit.

  • Elida is 38 years old, is from the town of Dibër, and is an only child. She is the only married woman in this group and has a young daughter. In 1994, Elida first moved to Tirana with her partner to pursue her studies. Afterwards, in 2007, she moved to Italy on her own to obtain a doctoral degree in Public Policy. She returned to Tirana in 2010. In 2012, Elida was working as a university lecturer and lived with her husband, daughter, and parents in an owned apartment in Komuna e Parisit.

7.1 Pre-Migration Phase—Between Individual Desires and Family Support

Student migration in post-communist Albania began in the early 1990s.Footnote 2 Of the women in this chapter, Egesta was the first to migrate, in 1995, and Lindita the last to do so, in 2009. In this section, I explore their reasons for choosing to study abroad and the actors involved in the preparatory phase of the student migration project.

7.1.1 Migration Driven by a Diverse Set of Motivations

Although student migrants move for an obvious reason – to further their education – their narratives point to a wide range of motivations. Let us examine in more detail why these young women migrated abroad.

Artemisa: There were many reasons why I wanted to study in a European country, whether in Italy, Germany or France. First, I sought a good education and, later, a prestigious job.

Artemisa had not thoroughly thought out her plan for migrating abroad to get her education, but she knew that she wanted to study abroad, no matter where. Investing in a better education in order to have better job opportunities was the first reason mentioned by her. Especially since 1991, a foreign university diploma has been perceived as an added value for finding a job back in Albania or abroad. Monika, too, says that finding a ‘good job’ abroad was what pushed her to apply persistently to study in other countries. She says that she initially migrated from Fier to study Political Science in Tirana. There, she continued to send applications to foreign universities, and after 2 years, she managed to leave for Italy. Elida and Lindita have similar stories despite their different circumstances. Elida, the only married woman in this group, left for Italy to do a three-year doctoral programme that would qualify her for a better-paid job ‘in the private universities that were just about to be established’ in Tirana. Lindita, too, says that she went to Sweden for a two-year master’s degree to become familiar with public institutions and to have a wider range of better employment opportunities upon return by virtue of holding a well-regarded master’s degree.

Although education as a passport to a better job is chief among the reasons pushing women to migrate, other reasons also come to the fore. The words of Artemisa and Fiona point to a second one.

Artemisa: I wanted to gain more experience, to see how it was to live for a while in a developed country, to live alone and be free and independent. I wanted this because living by myself for some years would help me come back stronger to Albania

Fiona: I had this strong desire to go abroad, and at the same time, I wanted to succeed in my endeavours [studies and work]. I thought that the only way to grow was to study abroad. At the same time, I wanted to leave the life of Kukës behind. It was just school and home and school and home. I knew I would go crazy were I unable to leave Kukës. ... When I left, it was mainly because of the mentality… as I wanted to leave Kukes and live a different life. … It is so difficult for a young girl to live in a small city such as Kukës where everyone knows each other, and everyone has eyes on you all the time. … It’s like living inside the Big Brother … I needed to go somewhere else where I could be freer.

Migrating to study abroad is an escape from the lives they are leading in their cities of origin and from the constraining gender roles and surveillance of their hometowns. Living abroad is perceived as a gateway to the promised land of freedom and independence. Migration appears to embody the pursuit of anonymity and autonomy byputting physical distance between the migrant and her community, especially small cities where young women are subject to stricter social control.

Thirdly, education may also be an explicit strategy in the service of migration in those situations where women wanted to migrate in and of itself, and education provided the best gateway to do so. Artemisa says:

Moving abroad for studies was a safer way. You could get a visa and leave Albania like an average person, not through speed boats, and I know very well what that means as I come from Vlora.

Egesta echoes a similar sentimet:

I wanted to leave Albania. Many people were going in different ways and, to be honest, I wanted to leave; it was like an obsession. … But I was an excellent student, had perfect grades in high school, and sought to use them as a way to leave Albania and not go illegally. My parents would have never agreed to let me migrate by illegal means. I am just saying [laughs]. Studying abroad was the only option I was considering during that period.

Crossing borders through legalised ways (student visas) supplies a further motivation for young women student migrants. Although we saw in the earlier chapters that young women also migrate through illegalised practices, there is a clear and dominant gender division across the different migration paths in that women generally pursue legalised pathways. In the context of constraining migration regimes, student migration serves as a valuable way for young women to leave Albania through legalised practices. As mentioned, complete data on Albanian student migration are still lacking, but existing research (Trimcev et al., 2005) shows that Albania has sent more female students and professionals abroad than male ones. Furthermore, Zenelaga and Sotirofski (2011, 5) report that during the 2007–2008 academic year, 4659 of the Albanian students in Italy were men, and 6756 women. Finally, Egesta’s quotation recognizes the parents’ role in the possibility (or lack thereof) of migrating abroad.

7.1.2 Making Migration Possible—Relying on ‘Parental Support

In this section, we turn our attention to the parents’ role in these women’s migration, which is significant and manifold. Similar to the findings discussed in Chap. 6, the interviews in this chapter show that parents aim to offer their children better educational opportunities than what are available in Albania. In most cases, therefore, the young women and their parents make the decision together on a basis of mutual consent. Egesta says:

I had made up my mind that I was going to study abroad, and if I failed in my undergraduate studies, I would try again to go overseas for a master’s degree. My parents wanted me to study abroad too.

First, parents are visibly involved in the pre-migration motivation phase. Parents want their daughters to study abroad so they can secure better jobs and achieve upward social mobility. Children’s education is a significant value for Albanian families, regardless of the parents’ education level (Danaj et al., 2005). Beti, for example, says that her parents moved from Dibër to Durrës in the early 1990s to give her ‘better opportunities for study and work. Thus, they wanted to send me abroad for my studies at any cost’. For Beti’s parents, Durrës, a bigger, coastal, central city, offered more opportunities for migration abroad compared to their native town of Dibër.

Second, parents also play a central role in facilitating the migration project through financial support, mostly – though not exclusively – by covering the costs of moving abroad. Not all student migrants receive scholarships and, in many cases, their parents’ savings finance their studies, at least long enough to get them settled. Egesta says:

My parents gave me some money for the first few months, some of their savings. … I had no scholarship because I enrolled individually, not through any scholarship programme.

Beti also relied on her family’s financial support during her first year of study, as they suplemented the partial scholarship she received from the Italian government. Similarly, Fiona recounts that her parents assisted her financially to supplement the partial scholarship she received from Romanian government programmes. Artemisa also says that her parents helped her financially during her first months in Germany until she found a job and could cover her own expenses. Similarly, in researching Chinese student migration, Kajanus (2014) emphasises how parents often use their life savings to finance their daughters’ education.

Thirdly, as in Chaps. 5 and 6, here too the family acts as a shield protecting a daughter migrating alone from family and community gossip. Egesta describes this role when discussing the support her family gave her to migrate abroad:

Another problem was that back in 1995, few girls, especially from small cities, were leaving the country alone. I can imagine some possibly embarrassing moments for my parents. I mean it has been a difficult situation for them in many ways. That is why I consider this a great sacrifice from my family. … They have had to endure some gossip from the neighbours and also from the family, the usual things you know: how could you send your daughter alone? She will be doing what she wants now, etc.

Once again, the parents’ role is revealed to be manifold. They emotionally motivate and support their daughters to migrate abroad for their studies and help them escape social pressures in their place of origin.

The fourth type of parental support emerges in the case of Elida, who had to leave her husband and daughter in Tirana to move to Italy for a three-year PhD programme. As mentioned, Elida says that she migrated to find a better-paid job upon returning to Albania. She explains:

I had already discussed this with Genti (Elida’s husband). … But we had to find a solution for our daughter. It would be too much for Genti to take care of her alone during all this time. I asked my parents to move to Tirana, as at that moment my father was retired and my mother unemployed. So, they could take care of the daughter and the house. … My father was mostly doing grocery shopping. That had also been his speciality back in Diber [laughs].

The decision to migrate abroad for studying depends upon the transference of Elida’s caregiver role not to her husband but to her parents, particularly to ‘her mother. This case shows another configuration of the parents’ role and family solidarity in supporting a daughter’s migration by assuming her caregiver role. Amid ‘resistance to sharing care at home’ (Hochschild, 2000, 141) between husband and wife, it was the support provided by Elida’s parents that allowed her to migrate. In most cases, this very transference of the caregiver role to grandparents enables mothers to migrate, as also observed by Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila (1997) and Olwig (1999). Grandparents’ (mostly grandmothers’) care for grandchildren facilitates the migration not only of single mothers but also of married ones like Elida. Parents free their daughters from their caregiver role so that they can migrate, as research on highly educated Turkish and Chinese migrants has also revealed (Erel, 2009, Kajanus, 2014). The case of Elida also highlights the fact that student migrants are not only students but also daughters and wives. Their decisions and negotiations about their migration project, therefore, reflect these other roles, as also underscored by King and Raghuram (2013) and Oluwaseun (2016).

The parents’ role appears to be quite crucial for the migration of these young women. However, social network support is not limited to parents alone, but also extends to friends, relatives and other acquaintances, and is evident throughout the various phases of the migration project, as elaborated in the next section. Parents do not physically accompany their daughters on the move to the destination countries (unlike, say, in the case of the young women moving to Tirana in Chap. 6). Still, kinship and friendship networks act as substitutes for parents, taking charge of these student migrants’ initial reception in their destination country.

7.1.3 Organising One’s Migration: Relying on the Support of Social Networks

Boyd (1989) states that in many cases, the destination country is chosen based on the social networks migrants have available. That holds true for most of the women discussed in this chapter, as Artemisa illustrates:

I left Albania in 2000 for Germany. I had finished my high school studies in Vlorë and was applying to study in Italy. It was by chance that a cousin of ours who had migrated to Germany at the beginning of the 1990s told us that he could help me go to Germany instead of Italy. … He found all the necessary information about registering for a language course and everything… It made everything more comfortable than going somewhere else.

Fiona and Egesta also stress the significance of social networks in the destination country. Egesta explicitly states ‘I went to Italy as the cousins I had there helped me with the documents at the university’. Fiona says that she went to Romania first as her family had some relatives there, and they helped her tackle the initial bureaucracy issues. Vullnetari (2007) describes Albanian migration as a process of chain migration in which people migrate to regions and countries where they have relatives or friendship networks. These cases further illustrate this pattern of Albanian migration: female student migrants often follow a chain migration pattern moving to countries where they already have established social networks, whether relatives or friends.

Elida, too, says she chose Italy as she had some relatives there who could assist her. However, she adds:

Italy was the best option as it is so close to Albania, I could quickly fly home if needed. I am not sure I could have borne it to be far from Albania, you know. Your mind mostly stays at home, on my daughter, so being in Italy would be more bearable.

Elida is the only woman to mention the proximity of her family in Albania as a criterion for her migration destination. The other women in this chapter do not report similar reasons. Elida’s prioritising proximity appears to be related to her role as mother and caregiver. Often, women choose to migrate to nearby countries so as to not be very far from their families, to return home more quickly and to combine their reproductive and their productive roles better.

In other cases, the destination depends on the availability of scholarships, along with the availability of social networks. Monika states that the Italian government granted her a partial scholarship after she applied with the support of a friend already living in Italy as a student migrant. Lindita is the only woman who says that she migrated to Sweden after she was accepted to a master’s of business administration programme and granted a full scholarship there without having any local social network.

Aid from social networks extends from helping incoming migrants prepare documents and sharing preliminary practical information, to providing accommodations during the initial migration phase. In some cases, friends and relatives secure housing for women. Monika shared a room with a friend who went to Italy 2 years earlier. Likewise, Elida, Fiona and Egesta say that at first, their relatives hosted them. Again, similarly to Chap. 5, the roles of parents and social networks in these women’s migration processes illustrate how moving on one’s own is a relatively complex process involving a wide range of actors.

7.2 Transition Phase—Life Abroad

In this section, I focus on the early phases of adjustment to the destination cities and the main patterns that emerge. Again, social networks play a significant, palpable role in how the women cope with the new everyday practices and social relations, as well as the new divisions of space and time, in the destination cities to establish a smooth everyday routine (Boyd, 1989; Shu & Hawthorne, 1995, Çaro, 2011) in these novel, unknown places. I use Çaro’s (2011, 82) definition of adjustment as a process by which ‘individuals attempt to pursue their goals, satisfy their needs and respond to cultural differences in a new environment’. In this regard, Fiona and Egesta describe how their cousins helped them get to know their new cities and how these cities were organised, their main streets and corners and other useful information. All the women mentioned in this chapter migrated to big European cities, some during the 1990s and early 2000s. The organisation of life in their cities of origin, and sometimes even in Tirana, was quite different in terms of infrastructure, transportation, social relations, communication styles, the organisation of time and space and the functioning of institutions. Those who migrated directly from their cities of origin used to spend their lives within minimal spaces, such as school and home, and were accompanied by parents or other family members most of the time. Thus, many of these young women faced new everyday practices, from mundane everyday tasks such as buying a metro ticket to widescale communication patterns and gendered divisions of space and time. They no longer had to conform to their hometowns, and space and their timewas not confined to home and school.

In the next two sections, I expand on two elements of what that which Egesta calls the ‘new world’ means for most of these women: the relations of anonymity that prevail in the ‘big city’ and the new gendered division of space and time.

7.2.1 Facing Anonymity

In the following excerpt, Beti expresses how she struggled with the new minutiae of everyday life. She also highlights shame as a feature of the dominant culture, especially in small cities in Albania, used to control others (as also identified by Mai & Paladini, 2013). The feeling of ‘shame’ mentioned by Beti may be explained by a culture of control that often leads to self-censure. Nixon’s (2009) analysis of how shame in Albania works as a tool for social pressure reveals that, during communism, shame served as a tool for the social control of both genders but, since 1991, it has been applied more to women’s behaviour. One’s behaviour seems to be controlled by an inner voyeur that projects the judgment of the community, as demonstrated by the fact that it took these women some time to get used to their newfound freedom.

Beti: The first year in Italy was quite tricky, but after some time, you got used to living there. It was more complicated when it came to some tiny, stupid things. I didn’t know how to use various automatic machines for cards or train tickets, all these silly things that I was unfamiliar with. And I was so ashamed. I was embarrassed because I was thinking that everybody was looking at me, but nobody was looking at me. … I was used to my neighbourhood where people were checking on you: “‘What is she doing? How is she doing? Who’s she talking to’?”

Similarly, Fiona states:

In the beginning, I was embarrassed to walk alone or go to the park to read a book by myself as I watched the others do. But later I got used to this as I understood that nobody was judging me there.

These quotations show that it is not easy for such student migrants to go from a provincial city in Albania, with very few afterschool activities but strict community control exercised under the guise of tradition, to a big European city, with utterly unknown spaces and modus operandi. They become familiar with new social relations, with the anonymity that replaces the constant social control in their hometowns, with new technologies and urban facilities, and with different bodily representations. In this context, Fiona recounts while laughing, that, within a short period, she went “‘from a normal long-haired young girl from Kukësto a punk, short-haired, young girl in Bucharest’.” Not only do the young women gain a new relationship to their bodies but, in the cities of destination, they also faced new gendered organisations of time and space, as I elaborate in the next section.

Finally, I want to turn to the cases of Monika and Lindita. They report fewer difficulties adjusting to living more independently and new everyday practices than the other women. They had already taken a step in the process of migration by moving internally from their cities of origin to Tirana,so migration abroad was a continuation of their independent life. It appears that they had already acquired some mobility capital (Dahinden, 2010b), which assists one not only in migration possibilities in and of themselves, but also in gaining experience in how to adapt to the new social realities of migration. By migrating to Tirana on their own, Monika and Lindita had already faced anonymity, new everyday practices, and new gendered divisions of space and time.

7.2.2 A New Gendered Division of Space and Time

Before migration, most of the interviewed women split their days and space between school and home. Once abroad, many discover a continuum between home, school, work and social life. Beti says:

Another challenging thing at the beginning was how to organise the day because I used to get home very early. [In Albania], after school, I went back home, had lunch, and then did some work in the house and studied. But the afternoon was mainly at my place, and very rarely did I go out alone. […] In Italy, I had an entirely different experience. We had classes late in the afternoon, people were inviting me to go out for a drink in the evening, and things like this. ... These were all new things for me at the beginning.

New spaces, different or unavailable from those in their cities of origin, were finally open to them. In the beginning, Egesta was scared of the idea of having afternoon classes; she did not know ‘what to do during the free hours in the morning’. It took her some time to get to understand the city as she was scared to walk alone ‘in such a big city.’ She adds:

In Lezhë, the only thing I did alone was buying bread next to our building. Now imagine me having to walk alone for more than half an hour, sometimes during the evening. … The beginning was challenging.

She adds that, initially, she spent a lot of time at home but, after a while, it served only as a place to sleep, and she spent her day at school, work, and doing other activities with friends.

As the students appropriate new spaces outside their cities of origin, they also get to know the new gendered organisations of space. Monika illustrates this:

It was helpful knowing the safe places where to go to. … You know, some streets are dodgy, not very suitable for women to walk, especially during the night-time, so I was careful not to go nearby these areas that I was told about by my friends.

The cities of destination themselves have their gendered divisions of space and time that may differ from the students’ hometowns and they represent new configurations where space and time are not necessarily without constraints for women, as mentioned in the previous excerpt. Women everywhere learn to avoid some areas of the city during the evening, for instance, for fear of certain risks, such as sexual assault (Rose, 1993).

The interviews illustrate the entanglement of gender with the organisation of space and time. As Massey (1994, 186) states, ‘the gendering of space and place both reflects and has effects back on how gender is constructed and understood in the societies in which we live’. The interviewed women come from post-communist Albania, where the gendered configuration of space and time was transformed after the communist period. After communism, public spaces in cities became more dangerous for women and girls, and a more traditional gender division of time and labour re-emerged. (In the immediate post-communist period, women and girls were mostly confined to the domestic space and labour.) The gendered division of space is a common feature across many societies but also differs geographically and historically (McDowell, 1983). The women discussed in this chapter move from a specific gender division of time and space to new such configurations that, in turn, influence their construction and understanding of femininity. Despite the difficulties that such changes may entail initially, as Egesta mentions, they appropriate new organisations of space and time, distinct from those of their hometowns, affecting, for instance, streets, parks, bars, late-night hours, and even physical representations.

Elida’s case presents another example of how gender shapes space and time. She recounts how at first, when she moved abroad, she experienced some challenging moments because she was far from her daughter and the sense of ‘being a bad mother’. Elida often declined invitations to social activities, such as dinners and other gatherings, as she felt guilty over leaving her daughter and husband behind in Tirana. She says, ‘I was just going to classes and, after that, straight back home.’ She organised her time and space according to maternal guilt by distancing herself from activities in the destination city. The experience of transnational mothering may be painful due to feelings of guilt. As Erel (2009, 126) emphasises in the case of Turkish migrant women, ‘mothers may also find it difficult to reconcile transnational motherhood with their ideals of good mothering’. Elida says that this feeling of guilt and anxiety over her family negatively influenced her academic results during the first year. Still, afterwards, she ‘made up her mind to continue and succeed’. Student migrants are not only students but also daughters, mothers, wives; their migratory experiences, therefore, reflect these other roles (King & Raghuram, 2013; Oluwaseun, 2016; Brooks, 2013). Given the aim of this analysis is to examine these migrant women’s experiences after they migrated to Tirana, I focus less on the other phases of their migration. As in Chap. 6, I attempt to narrow in on the significant features of this group’s migration abroad, and the adjustment process during their earlier migration phases appears to be such a feature. That process of adjustment entails making a new home (Ahmed, 1999) in new social realities. After the return to Albania that, for most, also means another move to Tirana, they undergo the processes of adjustment and homemaking all over again, as analysed in the next section.

7.3 Tirana as a ‘Middle Ground’

This section explores the main patterns of the return experience for these women who moved to Tirana. Here, I focus on their reasons for returning and their methods for coping with the adjustment process in Tirana in their social networks and the labour market. As in Chap. 6, return migration also entails a new move (i.e., not a return to their city or town of origin), making it difficult to speak in terms of a strict return. I start by analysing their reasons for returning to Albania and for moving to Tirana instead of their hometowns. I then trace the main patterns of their adjustment to Tirana, which is a new place for most.

7.3.1 Reasons for Returning

Similar to Chap. 5, it is quite hard to delineate the motivations for returning to Tirana, as they often overlap or are due to factors attributable to both Albania and the destination country. Furthermore, the grounds for returning to Albania are, for some, intermingled with their reasons to return not to their hometowns but to Tirana. First, a distinction, albeit not entirely clear, could be made among those migrants unwilling to return and those planning to return. Only Elida and Lindita left Albania with clear, voluntary plans to return from the beginning of their migration. Elida moved to Italy for her doctoral studies while her family (husband and daughter) stayed in Tirana, and she had no plans to stay in Italy after graduation. Lindita received her scholarship on the condition that she return to Albania after studying for 2 years, and she complied with the restriction.

The other women returned to Albania for various reasons, some unexpected. Family reasons are the most prevalent. As Egesta explains it, she returned because her father became ill:

I didn’t want to return to Albania. After so many years in Italy, I had no plans to return. But my father had some health issues, and I decided to come back for a few years, and here I am still. I came back in 2005 after ten years [of migration]. I didn’t want to return as I had nothing, except my family, to attract me here. … But I had to, for my father who was ill and for my family, so that I could support them.

In this particular case, Egesta had to return to Albania. Although her sister lived there, as Egesta says, she was married and lived with her husband’s family in Vlorë, so she could not be of constant help, physically or financially, to their parents. Thus, the household gender structure influenced her return. Care is considered the responsibility of women; in this case, of the single daughter. Artemisa, too, returned from Germany in 2008 after 8 years when her mother suffered a long neurosis after her younger sister’s death in a car accident. To be near her mother and father, Artemisa decided to stay in Tirana for a while:

I didn’t plan my return. The accident just happened, and I came back as soon as possible. … My mother was not recovering from the stress and the pain, so I thought it would be better to stay a little bit longer with her. Maybe a change would help her recover soon. … I decided to live for some time in Albania to be closer to my parents. They still live in Vlorë, as they have all their life there, but being in Tirana allows me to meet them almost every weekend. … I go there, or they come to Tirana.

Egesta and Artemisa had already obtained legal residency permits in Italy and Germany and could therefore return to their home countries or move to another country. Possession of a residency card in a foreign country facilitates the decision to return to Albania and gives a sense of comfort and flexibility if the women envisage migrating again. According to Mai and Paladini (2013, 50), having legal residency status in Italy or another country remains a priority for Albanian migrants and constitutes a safety valve, as stated in Chap. 5. In the case of Egesta and Artemisa, their Italian and German residency cards provided an additional resource allowing them to return to Albania and leave again quickly.

That brings us to the second reason why the women decided to return: the lack of residency cards or passports in the destination country. Difficulties obtaining residency permits and visas are a significant reason for returning to Albania (Zenelaga & Sotirofski, 2011, Trimçev et al., 2005). Some of the participants cite the impossibility of regularising their stay abroad as their primary reason for returning.

Fiona: I returned because of the residence permit in the UK. … I couldn’t arrange the documents for work, and I could not register for doctoral studies as it was costly. I could have found some other ways, such as marrying, for example, finding someone and marrying him to stay. But I was not ready for this, to be honest. I know that many do this, but I could not, it was like stepping on my dignity. I may sound foolish...

Fiona’s return story points to a combination of structural constraints, individual agency, and the difficulty of getting a residency permit in the choice to return and preserve her ‘dignity’.” Beti and Monika also report the structural constraint of obtaining a work permit as a reason for returning to Albania. Beti says that after failing to arrange for a work permit in Italy, she left for France but still had difficulties switching from a student visa to a work permit, so she ‘thought it best to return to Albania for some time”. This demonstrates how the impossibility of complying with residency permit regimes drives circular migration or moving among various countries, as defined by Triandafyllidou (2013). Switching from a student permit to a work permit is a process strongly tied to the labour market structure in the destination country.

Unwillingness to do ‘‘any sort of job in the country of destination is a third reason for returning to Albania, as Monika illustrates:

It was complicated to find an appropriate job that would count towards a work permit, and I didn’t want to work in a whatever position only to stay there. That is why I decided to come back, as I thought that I could find a better job in Tirana, more appropriate for my education... My roommate stayed in Italy. She is from Fier too, but she didn’t want to return to Albania. We both completed bachelor’s and master’s studies in Bologna. … I returned. She found a job in a travel agency, nothing to do with political economy and her master’s studies. But she didn’t want to come back, and this was the way to stay there as she applied for a work permit.

Mai and Paladini (2013) describe the marginalisation of Albanian migrants (economic and student) in Italy and their dilemma of whether to stay in Italy or return to Albania and try their luck in finding jobs in their professions. The reasons why migrants return thus are related to structural constraints, such as the absence of regular residency permits and the structure of the labour market in the destination country(ies). As stated by Cassarino (2004), the decision-making process leading refugees to return is explained not only by individual factors but also by broader social and economic contexts influenced by the situations faced in the host or home country. Similarly to the cases presented here, Sondhi and King (2017) show that female Indian international migrants return due to visa expiry after completion of studies, the desire or obligation to stay close to their parents, and the better job prospects in their home countries. The difficulty of clearly defining the return as voluntary or involuntary arises here, too.

7.3.2 Choosing Tirana as a Middle Ground

The women in this chapter all settled in Tirana instead of their hometowns. First, Tirana appears to offer more opportunities for finding jobs related to their education and experience.

Egesta: I live in Tirana and go very often to Lezhë. It’s a less-than-one-hour trip now. […] I didn’t think of living in Lezhë when I returned as I could not find a job related to my education. Indeed, I returned as my father was ill, but staying unemployed in Lezhë would not help him much. I needed to continue working to be more useful to them all [Egesta’s family].

Egesta preferred returning to Tirana over her place of origin due to the economic opportunities available in the capital. Although she returned for family reasons, she preferred to live in Tirana and take care of her family at the same time. She was able to do this thanks to the improved infrastructure of Albania, which has shortened the time it takes to cover distances.Footnote 3 Thus, travelling and visiting one’s family can be done comfortably and quickly. Artemisa tells a similar story. She goes to Vlorë very often to stay with her parents, and they also come to Tirana more frequently than before her return.

I had no idea where to work in Vlorë. Tirana seemed a little different, a growing city and with a lot of international and private institutions. Nowadays, it’s not such a great distance, less than two hours by car, so I can quickly go there if they need me, and I usually go at least two weekends per month, and my parents often visit as well. It is suitable for them too, to come to Tirana and have some distraction.

Economic prospects and better job opportunities are therefore the first reason why returnees choose Tirana instead of their hometowns.

Secondly, for those whose first migration abroad was also an escape from the social control and the mentality in their cities of origin, Tirana, asa big city, may be still considered a getaway from their towns of origin. These migrants move to Tirana in an attempt to continue the lifestyle they nurtured abroad, living on their own away from their communities of origin.

Fiona: I returned and decided to live in Tirana, as a middle ground. Going back to Kukës was absolutely out of the question. I go there very often… but I could not live there. The pressure of the small city is unbearable. … I could not go and live with my family after eight years of living alone. It is so difficult to go back to the comments, ‘Where are you going’? ‘You are coming home late’, etc.

Artemisa: But I never thought to stay in Vlorë, first of all as I could not get back to that way of living in a very provincial city where everybody controls everybody else, with very aggressive men, no respect for women at all, lack of safety in the streets, a lot of these things.

Although they have not lived previously in Tirana, they imagined it to be a big city, with a different lifestyle from their hometowns and somehow similar to the cities in which they lived abroad.

Fiona: Tirana appeared to be a more open city compared to Kukës, with more job opportunities, and people returning from abroad … more of a cultural life, more activities. … I’ve had not so much contact with people in Tirana. … it’s not that I’d visited Tirana so much previously. … I was not planning to return, so that’s why.

Again, as analysed in the previous chapter, Fiona’s quotation shows that geographical gendered imaginaries shape migration projects, illustrating Riano’s (2015, 45) descriptions of the role of gender aspirations and geographical imaginations in migratory projects. Imaginaries about Tirana as a place of opportunities and freedom, with less social control through gender norms, inform the women’s plan to return to Tirana. The capital shines in the imaginary of these women, who hope to continue the life they had abroad. For instance, Artemisa says that, to her eyes, Tirana appears as a place where she can continue living on her own, with ‘no unbearable gossiping around’.

In these cases, we notice a process of estrangement from their hometowns. Ahmed (1999, 343) argues that “‘the past’” becomes associated with a home impossible to inhabit and be inhabited by, in the present. … Migration can hence be considered as a process of estrangement, a process of becoming estranged from that which was inhabited as home.’ By staying in Tirana, these young women find a middle ground between their previous homes, their hometowns, and the homes they made during international migration. Living in Tirana helps them preserve the independence they gained abroad and secure good jobs while also maintaining a relationship with their hometowns and caring for their parents. Gender informs their practices, as it becomes manifest in their frequent visits to their cities of origin to look after their parents. Moreover, gender influences the women’s choice of Tirana over their hometowns, which are viewed as less free with regards to gender expectations and relations and as sites of stricter social control—places to which they have become estranged.

7.3.3 Tirana: Between ‘Estrangement’ and ‘Homemaking’

Most of the migrant women discussed in this chapter lived abroad for longer than 4 years and did not visit Albania regularly. Elida is the only one who travelled to Albania a couple of times a year as her family (daughter and husband) stayed in Tirana. The financial costs associated with frequent travel to Albania from the UK or Germany also pose an issue. Still, it is important to note that most of the women who left Albania, had no apparent plans to return. Returning to Tirana after several years or moving to Tirana upon their return entails a new process of adjustment to the city in finding housing and jobs and learning everyday practices.

Nevertheless, their interviews show that the migrants do not return out of the blue, and with no plans, but rather engage in varying amounts of preparation beforehand. A returning migrant mobilises various ways to prepare for the return. Particularly for these women who are also moving to a new and unknown place, this requires a process of adjustment to a new location (Ley & Kobayashi, 2009) that is often anticipated through previous transnational relations with people in the home country. Let us explore in detail some of the patterns of this new adjustment process.

First, mobilising existing social relations is one of the essential elements in the process of returning and adjusting to Tirana. As seen, friendships play a larger role than family relations here. Monika recalls that while in Italy, she maintained her friendship contacts in Tirana and ‘knew a little bit of what I was to expect back in Tirana’. Dahinden (2010b) argues that often migrants maintain transnational relations that turn out to be highly relevant after the return. These transnational networks might not be robust but are mobilised after the return to cope with the adjustment process. Artemisa speaks about how some of her friends from Vlora have moved to Tirana:

I have not had much contact with my old friends in Vlora, but with two or -three of them, I kept in touch more … They had moved to Tirana … It was good to know some people here [in Tirana], especially at the beginning after you return after many years abroad. … She [an old friend from her hometown now living in Tirana] helped me a lot to find an apartment. … You have someone with whom to have lunch sometimes or get invited to her place.

Additionally, Beti says that she only had a few friends left in Albania, only one of whom was living in Tirana, but that friend’s help was crucial upon her double return.

When I came back from France, I was a little bit depressed. I came to Tirana and was living at a friend’s house. I wanted to start searching for a job immediately, … but I was entirely shocked by the chaos in Tirana. ... Here, everything was being done through friends and acquaintances. I almost went crazy. But this friend of mine helped me a lot to adapt a little bit.

Beti’s friend acquaints her with where the locals go to have coffee or attend cultural events. The use of networks, friendship networks in this case, is crucial for everyday life and for finding employment (as I elaborate in the next section). Therefore, itis useful to understand how these social networks are built.

Here, we come to the second point of this section: the intricate weaving of new social networks. Most of these women seek out relationships with international students returning from abroad who followed similar pathways. The ways the women build their social networks seem to follow a homophilic principle, both in terms of status and value. In status homophily, similarity ‘comprises the large, socio-demographic dimensions, which stratify society: i.e., attributed or acquired characteristics like ethnicity, gender, age, religion, education or occupation’ (Dahinden, 2010a, 128). Status homophily can be seen in the case of female, educated, returned migrants who stay more frequently with women than men, and with both women and men who have similar education pathways and experiences. ‘Value homophily, on the other hand, is based on shared values, attitudes and beliefs’ (Dahinden, 2010a, 128).

Egesta: I have made some friends, mostly women and a few men with similar pathways to mine. They have also been abroad, and they have studied abroad and are now back in Tirana to work. It is easier to be with them as we have similar ways of thinking, of organising the day. We feel the same lack of activities here in Tirana.

Similarly, Artemisa says that she has not made many new friends but, of the ones she has, the majority are young women, returned student migrants. Monika, in contrast, says that she has many friends of approximately the same age, young female and male return migrants who have studied abroad:

I spend a lot of time with them. We share quite the same passions and ideas. … We struggle a lot to create some new spaces for debate and exchange of ideas. … A lot of young people are returning from abroad, and sometimes they do not feel at ease in Tirana, and when we are together, it feels better.

This brings us to the third point in this section: after returning to Tirana, most young women try to maintain their previous habits, for instance, going to a particular coffeeshop which reminds them of their life abroad:

Beti: I used to go to the French bakery here in Tirana every weekend, to establish a routine that I had in France. It’s not the same, I know, but just to do something I loved to do there and I was missing here.

Similarly, Fiona goes to a coffee shop doubling as an art space established by a friend who is also a return migrant. Fiona says that this coffee shop makes her feel at home, reminding her of the places she went to while abroad. Thus, the return from abroad involves adjustment processes that do not demand detachment from or abandonment of the previous migratory experience (Cassarino, 2004). The interviewees go to bookshops, cafés and cultural centres where they follow particular routines, meet with other people similar to them and keep up with certain cultural activities. This behaviour may explain the creation of new communities in Tirana that consist mostly of young people returning from abroad who try to engage in cultural and social activities and create spaces alternative to those that are managed by the state or that are entirely absent. These gatherings of young women and men returning from migratory experiences can be analysed through the processes of estrangement and homemaking (Ahmed, 1999). These particular young people may form these new communities ‘through the shared experience of not being fully at home’ (Ahmed, 1999, 345).

The fourth point worth noting is that adjustment and homemaking in Tirana involve both old and new Albanian networks as well as the social networks established during migration. The web of social networks is quite intricate and includes foreign connections. Women in this group maintain their social contacts and relations abroad after their return to Tirana. For Egesta and Artemisa, keeping in touch with their previous social links is relatively easy, as they both have long-term residence permits in Italy and Germany. These permits serve as a mobility resource, allowing them to visit their destination countries and maintain their contacts. However, new technologies such as the Internet and, more recently, social media also facilitate these transnational relationships. For instance, Fiona and Monika mention that they talk regularly with their friends (in the UK and Italy, respectively) through various types of online chat programmes. Fiona says:

It is good to talk with them [friends in the UK] often. … We talk about the social activities they have there, anything new and exciting I make here—movies, books, conferences, articles. I mean, the things that we talked about there, now we talk about through Google Talk or Facebook. … It’s virtual, but it’s okay, it’s comfortable. … I think I would go crazy without this continuation of my friendship with them. … Can you imagine, starting a new life from scratch, like a tabula rasa? That would be awful.

In Fiona’s case, previous social networks serve to mitigate the adjustment process upon her return. Again, as highlighted by Cassarino (2004), the return process is not merely a turning page but also includes the maintenance of existing habits and social networks. Additionally, Elida often talks to friends she made in Italy:

I keep in touch with some of my colleagues from my PhD programme. … We share information about our work, about conferences, or books and articles that could help us in our work. … Information about conferences or workshops abroad is the most valuable, as they have more connections than I do here in Tirana, so keeping these contacts helps me a lot with that.

In this case, relationships with previous social contacts continue in the context of professional life. Black and King (2004) state that returnees need to maintain their access to the broader international professional and social world in which they have worked and lived. This need creates a motivation to keep the transnational links to their social networks abroad.

7.3.4 Employment in Tirana

As previously stated, educated female return migrants live in Tirana, among people who are similar to them due to employment opportunities that are more appropriate for them given their education. It is their relation to the labour market and career advancement that I flesh out in this subsection. First, the interviews demonstrate the importance of family and friendship networks and the lack of institutional support in finding jobs. None of the interviewed women has any knowledge of governmental programmes for return migrants, and they report a lack of trust employment agencies. Four have heard of the Brain Gain programmeFootnote 4 but none has ever applied to benefit from it.

Fiona illustrates the informal practices involved in looking for a job in Albania and the lack of trust in institutional channels:

One has no idea how to find a job, and there are no announcements, no employment agencies, nothing. The announcements in the newspapers are just to comply with official rules because vacancies have already been assigned. … I knew nobody. I spent about six months just going around, completely lost and also disappointed. I started to look for ways to leave again as I had absolutely no hope here. And I graduated from my MA with very high grades. If you do not have the right connections, nobody cares for your diploma. Then, entirely by chance, I met somebody who needed a consultant for a two-year project.

Interestingly, in this excerpt, Fiona claims that Albania has ‘no employment agencies’. In fact, each of the country’s twelve prefectures has employment agenciesFootnote 5 but job seekers rarely resort to them since these agencies focus more on low-skilled employment (Wittberger et al., 2012; Danaj, 2014). Beti also highlights the role of social relations: ‘Here everything was being done through friends and acquaintances’. In the same context, Elida says that one of her former colleagues recommended her to a private university looking for staff with doctoral degrees. The interviewees reveal that finding a job is a process generally mediated through social relations (mostly friendship networks). Egesta, too, says that she found her first job through her friends’ acquaintances. She adds that she later found complementary, part-time employment through friends she made at her primary job.

The women in this chapter work for public and private universities as lecturers and for NGOs and private television stations. These sectors hold the most appeal for international student returnees. Mai and Paladini (2013, 52) also emphasise that well-educated returnees from Italy mainly work in recently developed sectors in Albania, such as private universities, NGOs, private televisions and the public administration sector.

A second point concerning the participants’ employment in Tirana is career advancement, which they stress as a significant issue for them. Therefore, it is worth exploring how they succeed in this area.

Monika: Here, it is like a jungle. There are no rules. Nobody knows what should be done to advance your career or to keep your job. It’s just like a jungle.

Egesta: It is challenging to advance in your career. I mean, the worst thing is that one day, you may have a high position, surprising even to yourself, and then tomorrow, you are out. And, you know neither why you obtained the fantastic job to start with, nor why you were thrown out.

A lack of gradual steps to career advancement and the absence of specified regulations and competencies pertaining to job positions emerged as the main issues in the interviews. Other obstacles include corruption, nepotism and political favouritism in the labour market in Albania, as has been extensively documented (Vullnetari, 2012; Trimcev et al., 2005; Musaraj, 2009; Mai & Paladini, 2013). Beti describes this lack of clarity about career advancement:

There is no clear idea how the hell you can advance in your job. Yes, we all know that you have to know the right people, but I don’t know if there is any other way. … It’s only a question of image.

Beti adds:

You have to be good-looking, present across the media. These are the values required to progress in your career. And this is so humiliating. It’s humiliating to be appreciated only for this. It’s like a violation, which is not physical, but sometimes it is even worse. I had forgotten these ‘values’ entirely, and now I have to adapt to this situation. Sometimes I find myself acting in ways I don’t recognise. It’s terrible.

Here, we come to the third pattern that materialises in these women’s relation to the labour market as it emerges from their interviews: physical appearance seems to carry much more weight than competency. As shown by Beti’s quotation, prizing appearance over competency violates her values and beliefs. Furthermore, she experiences an inner conflict as, to preserve her job, she might have to behave in a way she does not like. In addition to Beti, Fiona also says that she hates women have to look like “‘supermodels when they go to work, so they can be appreciated and have a good career’.” It is evident that women often face escalating sexual objectification. Accordingly, Egesta declares:

I often get pissed off, especially at older men and their offensive comments about your physical appearance and other sex-related comments. … I mean, yes, in Italy too, men are like this, with their words and stuff, about your legs and breasts, and whatever … but not so gross and not so persistent and offensive… Then you have to become either arrogant and act brutally or refuse any contact and keep to yourself. … The problem is that this disgusting man might be your boss or your boss’s friend, so then you don’t really know how to behave since you want to keep your job.

Interestingly, Egesta’s words testify to the existence of sexual offences both in the home and the destination country. Sexual objectification is not an Albanian-specific problem that these returnees experience only after returning to Tirana. Additionally, and more importantly, Egesta denounces sexual objectification and sexual offences for adding to job uncertainty.

On a last note, insecurity about keeping their jobs preoccupies all the participants. We have seen that they criticise the lack of regulation regarding career advancement and promotions or even the lack of official rules for a job. On the one hand, this isa feature of the Albanian labour market where corruption, nepotism and informality replace institutional functionality. On the other hand, job insecurity is an issue that extends beyond Albania: the growing employment precarity among young, educated people is a global phenomenon (Simone et al., 2015). This precarity is not exclusive to low-skilled workers but affects even highly skilled ones, as highlighted by Pierre Bourdieu (1998). The women in this chapter are all highly educated but in a situation of uncertain and unstable employment despite that fact.

In the wider Albanian context, these women are considered to have good, well-paying jobs relatively in line with their professions or, at least, with the Albanian expression ‘office jobs’ (pune zyre). However, the participants all report that they have no trust in the contracts they maintain, and some, particularly Egesta, even doubt whether the employer was paying their social insurance contributions. Likewise, Fiona says that her contract is ‘just a piece of paper’, as one of her colleagues was fired within one day despite it. Elida shares that the risk of being fired is ever-present; therefore, she tries to keep her and her husband’s social networks as stable as possible in order to keep their jobs or possibly find others in case something happens to their current positions. Most importantly, this uncertainty surrounding the ‘interviewees’ employment and social statuses is also reflected in their dilemmas and projects about leaving Albania again. Migrants find it very difficult to readjust upon their return in Albania due to their home country’s different work climate and culture, and that drives them to consider other migration projects (Kopliku, 2016).

7.3.5 Return Migration as a Transitional Phase

This section focuses on women’s projects to migrate again, showing that for most of them, Tirana is only a phase in their migration project. Similarly, other researchers (Black & King, 2004; Ley & Kobayashi, 2009; Sondhi, 2013; Sondhi & King, 2017) see return migration not as a permanent move but as part of a broader, continuing migration process. Everyday informal practices and insecure jobs drive returnees’ projects to migrate once again. Sondhi and King (2017) underline similar patterns among Indian return international students.

The state of being in between two countries is another factor in these return migrants’ projects of migration. Egesta, for example, describes how some returnees to Tirana remain in limbo between their current life in Tirana, to which they have difficulties adapting, and their previous experience in the destination country.

I don’t know how the health insurance system works because anytime you need to go to the hospital you have to deal with everything individually. … Yes, life in Tirana is indeed far more dynamic than in other Albanian cities. Still, this insecurity that you have, especially when you are alone and live alone, is becoming unbearable. … What hurts me more is that despite the life that I had built in Italy, I was not feeling at home as my family was in Albania, but here in Tirana, I don’t feel at home either. It’s a complicated feeling. Leaving aside the sentimentalism, I am concretely planning to go to Italy again as soon as I manage to take my parents with me.

Egesta gives one example of what it is like to be caught in a vicious circle. She returned to Tirana since it offers more job opportunities than her hometown and allows her to live on her own. However, her employment situation and the difficulties of living alone push her to plan to re-emigrate. Here, once again, we also see how gender intersects with migration strategies. Caring for one’s parents influences the decision of whether to re-emigrate and, if so, when and how.

Egesta also addresses the matter of feeling at home. Uncertainties of ‘being at home’ characterise the returnees’ experiences in Tirana (i.e., the home is considered to be a ‘physical location or ‘house/apartment and, in the Albanian language, the same word, shtëpi, also denotes the set of feelings and ideas associated with it) (Vullnetari, 2015, 40). The returnees experience estrangement not only in their place of origin but throughout their migration experiences. In the words of Egesta, ‘home’ is neither in Italy nor Albania. Fiona, too, reports feeling like a stranger in Tirana:

I am looking to leave again. … I hope to find a job somewhere else. I’ve applied for some jobs in Switzerland, and the UK also—that would be great—and Germany too. … It is complicated here, I need to work very hard, and at the same time, I have nothing stable. … I feel like a stranger most of the time. … It’s this feeling like I am here temporarily until I find something better abroad.

Artemisa explains that when she left in 2000, she expected Albania would make more progress in 8 years’ time. To the contrary, she says the situation looks even worse in some ways. She stresses the feeling of uncertainty that dominates in Tirana, especially regarding employment:

If you lose your job here, you’re practically lost. There is nothing there to protect you, no assistance, nothing. ... Tirana is perfect as long as you don’t have any problem, as long as you have a job and good money and good health. Otherwise, you’re lost.

In the same vein, Lindita, who only stayed in Sweden for 2 years, is trying to leave again, probably to a Nordic country where, she says, ‘women are in a far better position than in other countries’. As Lindita recounts, the situation of women and men in Sweden, and the differences from Albania, impressed her. Configurations of gender roles and relations fuel Lindita’s desire to migrate as well as her choice of destinations. Her experience abroad also informs her plans to re-migrate:

I hope I will manage to find some opportunity for a PhD programme or even a masters. … But sometimes I think, uh, I am 28 years old, and I’ll have to study again, instead of having a good job and some clarity about the future. It’s not a very beautiful picture. But what can I do?! But, you know, I am also thinking about applying to the Canadian lotteryFootnote 6 as I have heard that it is an excellent country to live in, a very social one, and maybe it will be easier to find a job and settle.

Again, they perceive further education as a strategy to enable migration in the context of the constraining migration regime for Albanian citizens. A paradoxical situation emerges as women try to fulfil their desire for stability by re-emigrating. They build their migration project on gendered geographical imaginaries about social and gender-equal countries, as highlighted in this research.

7.4 Conclusions—Discussing the Findings

This chapter analyses the experiences of female international students who migrated on their own and settled in Tirana after returning. Similar to the cases analysed in the previous chapter, it is difficult to speak of a definite return as here, too, women returned to Albania but moved to Tirana instead of their hometowns. Thus, the process of adjustment to Tirana has particular significance for most of the women as a completely new settlement. In what follows, I start with outlining the overall findings and then emphasise four specific patterns.

I should first note that, as previously observed, the decision-making process of these international migrant students is not individual but is embedded within social relationships, particularly to their parents and friends. Again, parental support is not only financial but also motivational, emotional and protective in the face of the social pressure these women face in their hometowns. Parents also relieve their daughters of their caregiver role so that they can migrate, as research on Turkish and Chinese international student migrants has also found (Erel, 2009; Kajanus, 2014). The cases in this chapter show that female student migrants are daughters, wives, and mothers, as well as students, and they must juggle all these roles while making decisions about whether to migrate abroad and return to Albania.

Additionally, the women’s interviews depict the multiple processes of adjustment and readjustment that they experience. Through their cases, migration manifests as a plurality of experiences and histories (as defined by Ahmed et al., 2003). Most of these women are in a constant process of ‘uprooting and regrounding home and migration’ (Ahmed et al., 2003, 2,10). They adjust to, among other factors, new everyday practices and new gender divisions of space and time both in the destination countries and upon their return to Albania.

The first particular pattern of this chapter is related to the motivations triggering the migration process for these international student migrants. The results of the analysis reveal these motivations are numerous and gendered. Similar to other studies on international student migration (Findlay et al., 2012; King and Ruiz-Gelices, 2003; Ichimoto, 2004; Kajanus, 2014; Oluwaseun, 2016), these women migrants are attracted by better educational opportunities which they hope will lead to better jobs. The saying ‘better education means better jobs’ is a general maxim in Albanian society, as it became evident in the preceding chapters. The insight that better education does not necessarily lead to better jobs and career advancement has wide-ranging repercussions for the lives of international student returnees. In many of the cases presented in this chapter, it has forced them to return to Albania or engage in countless cycles of remigration.

The female students’ international migration is not only shaped by a desire for better education and job opportunities but also informed by an aim to transgress the accepted borders of femininity in their places of origin. These young women migrate to escape the social pressures borne out of gendered expectations in their hometowns. Matsui (1995) and Ichimoto (2004) relay similar accounts of Japanese female international student migrants, who explain that one of their motivations for leaving is to escape the patriarchal society in Japan.

Education provides another means of migrating with proper paperwork and not through illegalised channels. Again, education is revealed as a strategy for migration, in this case for international migration. Women in this chapter illustrate King and Raghuram’s (2013) finding that international students are involved in a life migration strategy and their educational objective is part of their life-course desire for long-term migration.

In a second point, I observe one of the gendered patterns of these migrants’ return to Albania in their new move to Tirana. They favour Tirana over their hometowns as the capital offers more economic opportunities and enables them to emulate the lifestyle they had abroad to a certain extent: living on their own, away from the social pressures of their communities of origin. This strategy asserts these young women’s agency and resistance to the traditional gender roles and expectations dominant in their places of origin. By staying in Tirana, these young women find a middle ground between the two homes they have made. Gender informs their preference of Tirana over their cities of origin which, with their stricter gender relations and more stringent social control, are places to which they have become estranged. This pattern confirms Ghosh’s (2000) claim that the initial motivations for migration heavily influence the decision to return. In this case, the initial motive was to escape the social pressure present in the interviewees’ cities of origin. Again, as noted, gendered geographical imaginaries—Tirana as a place with less strict gender expectations and more freedom—inform their choice to not return to their hometowns. Settling in Tirana may be seen as a resistance to giving up their autonomous way of life and freedom. Sondhi and King (2017) similarly discuss Indian international female students who do not want to return home specifically because they want to avoid losing the sense of freedom they experienced while living abroad. Interviewed women here prevent their loss of liberty by moving to a space in the middle instead of returning to their hometowns.

The third pattern concerns the new social relations created upon the participants’ return to Tirana. Their narratives show that they base their new social networks on similarities and include mostly return international students with similar migration experiences. The participants cope with the constraints experienced in Tirana by mobilising existing social networks, as well as creating new ones. These international student return migrants establish new communities and alternative spaces, confirming Tarrius’s (1993) view that migrants participate in the social construction of the place of destination. Furthermore, we can analyse the gatherings of young women and men returning from migratory experiences through the lenses of estrangement and homemaking (Ahmed, 1999). ‘Having come from other places’, they attempt to ‘come together’ in this new place (Ahmed, 1999, 345). The sense of estrangement they may feel after returning to Tirana presses these young people to create new spaces and communities of exchange and interaction that, in turn, help transform the city itself. The creation of new social networks and connections is an adaptation to the new social reality in Tirana.

The chapter’s fourth finding centres on the paradox that the desire for stability pushes these women to consider additional re-emigration projects. Paradoxically, re-emigration means seeking stability in migration. More concretely, the cases analysed in this chapter reveal that return migration is not a permanent move but more often is part of a continuous migration process, confirming the findings of Ley and Kobayashi (2009) and Sondhi and King (2017). Although these women have more opportunities to find better jobs than highly educated women who have migrated only internally within Albania, these groups have in common the fact that their jobs are precarious. Some aspects of the post-return experiences relate to job insecurity, precariousness, and sexual objectification. This finding is similar to the experiences of Indian female return student migrants who face a male-dominated labour market and a lack of freedom in everyday life (Sondhi & King, 2017). Thus, the cases in this chapter show how, paradoxically, these women seek job stability in instability, by planning to migrate again.

Another noteworthy point is that their return migration is not a conclusive return, since they describe themselves as in a state of in-betweenness and estrangement (see also Ahmed, 1999). As in other research (Mai & Paladini, 2013; Ghosh & Wang, 2003), some women can find that they fit culturally or economically neither abroad – where they have no work appropriate to their education – nor in Albania – where they feel culturally estranged. They report not feeling at home anywhere, similarly to what Ghosh and Wang (2003) reveal about their experiences between India, China and Canada.

Finally, like the international migrant women discussed in Chap. 5, some women analysed in this chapter engage in circular migration upon their return to Tirana to maintain contact with their networks abroad. In line with other research (Black & King, 2004; Cassarino, 2004; Dahinden, 2010a), the cases in this chapter show that return does not entail total detachment from previous migratory experiences. Instead, return migration involves the maintenance of transnational links to previous social, professional, and friendship networks and the retainment of some earlier habits. The women featured in this chapter show that what their experience upon their return, appears to be a constant state of limbo between their hometowns, Tirana and abroad.