‘I’m not a tree to grow roots’
Albanians from Greece moving to the UK — a new phase in Albanian migration.
|2025.05.22
Albanianness as a vital and often overlooked part of contemporary Greek society
Illustration: Dina Hajrullahu / K2.0.
What does it mean to be an Albanian from Greece living in Britain?
Until 1997, there were no clear legal pathways to regularization status, meaning migrants had no access to public health care, social services or labor protections.
Alongside the search for better job opportunities, onward migration to the U.K. also emerged as a way to escape the discrimination and xenophobia they encountered in Greece.
“I do not speak in any one language, as the others have said. It is a mix of Albanian and Greek together. No one from the two sides understands when we speak.”
Illustration: Dina Hajrullahu / K2.0.
Language, cultural references and shared origin are important markers of identity, but they are not sufficient to sustain meaningful social relationships on their own.
Rexhina Ndoci
Rexhina Ndoci is a lecturer at the departments of Linguistics and English of the Ohio State University where she also completed her PhD in linguistics. She specializes in sociolinguistics exploring both quantitatively and qualitatively the role language plays in the construction of ethnoracial identities. She teaches courses on the relationship between language and culture, race & ethnicity and social justice.
Petros Karatsareas
Petros Karatsareas is reader in Multilingualism and Language Contact at the University of Westminster in London. He specializes in the sociolinguistics of multilingualism, with a focus on language ideologies, practices and hierarchies in contexts of migration and diaspora, particularly in London’s Greek-speaking communities. His work is ethnographically grounded and engages closely with minoritized groups, exploring how language intersects with discrimination, identity and community education.
This story was originally written in Albanian.
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