In his highly influential article On Ethnographic Authority, James Clifford poses a question on authorship of anthropological works. He provides, among others, an example of research by Renato Rosaldo, who intended to study the social structure of the Ilongots, but instead was ceaselessly pressured to listen to stories about local histories. Only after his return from the field did he realize that the stories provided him with a research topic: the culturally diverse sense of narrative and history among the Ilongots. This experience of ‘directed writing’ raises the question of who the actual author is of the fieldnotes (Clifford 1983: 136). I can say the same about my research.
The topic of economic migration among Macedonian-speaking Muslims from Macedonia to Italy found its own way to me. When I first came to Western Macedonia’s Municipality of Centar Župa, my intention was to conduct research on the identity of the Torbeši. It soon transpired, however, that the town we arrived in was a place of economic migration – pečalba – and most of the inhabitants permanently reside in Italy. Two of my then students, Ewa Pieszczyk and Natalia Koperkiewicz (Pieszczyk 2009; Koperkiewicz 2009), attended to the topic of pečalba, and I noticed that, in the area we were researching, it was a self-arising topic.
I returned to this issue in 2009, when I started conducting pilot research in villages south of the municipality of Centar Župa and, more specifically, in the Struga area. The migration pattern is slightly different there, as it is mostly men who migrate, more often to Slovenia than Italy. In 2010, owing to a monthly CEEPUS-programme scholarship, I studied literature on migration from Macedonia in Skopje, and conducted interviews with Macedonian-speaking Muslims (including members of the PEI party, Partija za evropska idnina; ‘Party for the Future of Europe’). The subsequent research was funded by a grant from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (N N109 094839). Financial support was also provided by the following scholarships: the Modern University (financed by the EU’s Human Capital Operational Program for young PhDs 2010/11), and a stipend from the Minister of Science and Higher Education for outstanding young scientists (2011–2014). A substantial portion of this book’s typescript was written during my stay in Graz in April 2014 as part of the CEEPUS programme scholarship (awarded by OeAD – the Austrian Agency for International Scientific and Research Cooperation and funded by the Federal Ministry of Science and Research).
In 2011, I travelled to Ravenna, a city to which Macedonian-speaking Muslims from the Reka region migrate. I returned to the people I previously met there in 2012 and 2013, during my visit in their hometowns in Macedonia, to attend weddings and pay customary social visits to relatives and neighbours. In the years 2013–2014 I went to Ravenna once again to observe the everyday life of migrants. In 2014 I also conducted research in Fonte, near Treviso; I arrived there on the invitation of one of my research partners. The amount of time I spent on fieldwork aggregates to approximately six months of interviews, conversations and observations, as well as following the activities of my interlocutors via Facebook. I was accompanied on the majority of these trips by my colleagues and friends, Anna Kijewska and Anna Zadrożna, as well as my children. While planning to republish and translate this book into English and Macedonian in 2022, I made a return ethnographic visit to Ravenna and contacted my key research partners online. I discuss the findings of this visit in the epilogue at the end of the book.
During the research, the final topic of my book took shape. My research interest in this work centres on concepts related to anthropological concepts on people’s mobility and their everyday practices spanning two countries, Macedonia and Italy, or more specifically, between migrants’ villages of origin and their new places of residence abroad. The first-generation male and female representatives of the Macedonian Muslim migrants from the Western part of the country (known here as Macedonian-speaking Muslims, or Torbeš) are the subjects of my research. Most of them were around 30–40 years old, with at least several years of experience living abroad, and were usually married with children. The men worked almost exclusively in construction, both as skilled and unskilled workers, with the majority of them having a secondary education. The women were not gainfully employed, and most of them had either primary education or had completed only a few grades of primary school. The younger interlocutors are the generation in-between, often referred to as generation 1.5 in the literature. They were born in Macedonia and spent their childhood there, but they received their education in Italy and are fluent in Italian. Some of them were university graduates, or still studying at the time. All of my research partners currently ‘legally’ reside in Italy, have settled status and work permits. Some of them obtained Italian citizenship, and several others are waiting to receive it. Most of the families live in rental flats, and it became increasingly common for them to take out homeowner or business and investment loans. Nevertheless, due to the economic crisis begun in 2008, young migrants started to invest in acquiring languages other than Italian and to organize onward migration further into Western Europe.
The aim of this book is to analyse the migrant experience of Macedonian-speaking Muslims in Italy, especially how it varies in relation to gender and intergenerational dimensions, and how it changes depending on how long a person lives abroad and how he or she is immersed in the sociocultural context of the host country. I observe how everyday activities, roles within the family, prestige, or the intergenerational transfer change due to migration. At the same time, I recognize certain ideas, practices, values and perceptions that create conflicts and intrafamilial tensions (especially between parents and daughters), but also reveal the transforming worldviews and attitudes of my interlocutors towards the attitudes and worldviews of those who have never emigrated from Macedonia. This is expressed in definitions of terms such as West/Europe vs the Balkans, or modernity vs backwardness. Finally, I engage with the debate on the utility of the category of transnationalism in the anthropological study of migration, and in particular of the social change caused by migration, and analyse the local conceptualization of the diaspora.
The changes that take place in everyday life as a result of the migrant experience are reflected in the title of this book: Spaghetti with Ajvar. It may seem confusing, especially seeing that in one of the following chapters it is interpreted quite literally – in the context of food. It was co-authored with one of my young interlocutors in Fonte, in 2014. Both of us agreed that this metaphor captures the immersion in the cultural and social context of the place of origin and settlement, and also shows their mutual influences and interconnectedness.
This book originated as a foundation for my habilitation procedure at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. I would like to extend my gratitude to the previous and current Directors of the institute: to Professor Lech Mróz, now retired, who always supported me with both substantive and institutional issues, as well as to the current Director, Professor Anna Malewska-Szałygin, for her help and kindness.
Some parts from this book were previously published and appear here in a revised and refined version (with the originals listed in the bibliography). I would also like to thank my colleagues, especially Anna Zadrożna, Renata Hryciuk and Helena Patzer, for their valuable comments I could always count on from the earliest days of my research. My gratitude goes to Magdalena Lubańska, Iwona Kaliszewska and Helena Patzer for inspiration and discussions during classes on the anthropology of migration and Islam that we taught together, as well as to all the students who participated in these classes.
I would like to thank the staff of the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, and especially Robert Pichler, for their valuable bibliographical comments and suggestions, and Karl Kaser for his warm welcome. Most heartfelt thanks are also due to my friends from Croatia, Macedonia and Bulgaria, who assisted me with my bibliographical queries when I struggled to reach the sources, and who offered me substantive guidance and indicated paths for analysis. I will limit myself to mention only Jasna Čapo Žmegač from Zagreb, Petko Hristov from Sofia and colleagues from the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje: Aneta Svetieva, Ljupčo Risteski, Ana Aštalkovska. I also offer most sincere thanks to Professor Tanas Vražinovski for providing me with access to his publications on migration to Canada and the United States.
I also owe my deepest thanks to the participants of the conferences at which I presented my research findings. Of those, two are of particular importance – the congress of the Association of European Social Anthropologists (EASA) in Tallin (31 July–3 August 2014) and the ‘Super-diversity: Theory, method and practice in an era of change’ in Birmingham (23–25 June 2014). Thank you for all the fruitful discussions on food in the context of migration. I received very valuable comments particularly from the panel leaders of ‘Food parcels: Intimate connections in transnational migration’, Diana Mata-Codesal and Maria Abranches, as well as Maja Povrzanović Frykman. In Birmingham I had the opportunity to participate in an inspiring discussion on languages and multilingualism with Jan Blommaert. I would also like to thank the reviewers of the Polish version of this book, Professor Michał Buchowski and Professor Maciej Ząbek, for their kind and constructive comments.
My warmest thanks go to my colleagues and friends: Anna Kijewska and Anna Zadrożna, who were my companions during most of my field research in both Macedonia and Italy.
None of this work would have happened if it were not for my Research Partners – I thank them for sharing their stories and their time with me, for treating me to coffee and Macedonian delicacies, and for calling me ‘naša’ (our). I will mention by name only a handful of them – those who helped me find my way in the field, meet other people and who welcomed me with kindness: Mirela Ismaili and her family, Meho Sulemanski, and the Shaini household of Asim, Sabrija, Nehrim and Bukurija. Heartfelt thanks also to Zafi, who is a fascinating tale in his own right. Whenever I felt the temptation to give up writing a book and instead produce – in line with the presently prevailing policy – a series of articles for a prominent magazine, I would remind myself that my promise was to bring back a book …
Thank you from the bottom of my heart to my family – my husband Janek, who bravely put up with my journeys and complaints, and my sons Adam and Krzyś, who somewhat unintentionally accompanied me on my field trips as babies. I dedicate this book to them.