Oral History and Movement and political borders. At the same time, they include a sense of nationhood along with questions of the preservation of national identity and assimilation. We can also study the relations between residents and state institutions and the administrative structures designed to maintain and reinforce the status quo. Of course, these relations produce on a daily basis objects of study for anthropologists and other scholars of culture, and of the social sciences. The most difficult areas to study and review are those where the borders have affected consanguinity or cultural links. These include the borders between the two Germanys, Turkey’s borders with Syria and Georgia, the borders between Israel and its Arab neighbours, the border between England and Ireland, Spain and France, and so on (Wilson & Donnan 1998). Certainly within this category comes the Albanian border with Yugoslavia, incorporating the border that has isolated the Kosovo Albanian population, which has blood ties as well as historical and cultural ties with Albania. This border divided the Albanian people so that the part of the Albanian population living in Kosovo,1 belonging administratively to the Yugoslav state, was detached from the ethnic and territorial Albanian state. This political boundary “stayed” in this area for many decades, and living in these conditions produced many personal and family narratives, the opening up of which then cast light on this moment of history. Opening the border with Albania gave the opportunity to integrate Albanians internally, allowing them to develop their own culture and their own traditions in ways that were attuned to the origins and ethnicity of the people. Seeing folklore as a creative continuity, and recognizing oral history as one dimension of the discipline of border studies (a relatively new field within the wider discipline of anthropology), prompted this study of the personal experiences of Kosovo Albanians when political division led to their separation along ethnic lines. Residents of the border areas with Albania still retain alive in their memory the infamous year of 1948, when many of their personal fortunes were lost and their families were forced into separation. Consequently, couples were separated, children parted from their families, and parents from
Kosovo is the newest European state that declared its independence on October 17, 2008. It is surrounded by Albania, Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Albanians comprise more than 90% of the country’s population. Until 1999 it belonged to Former Yugoslavia.
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