Society & Culture / Sociology / Social Research & Ethnography

Why This Border Village Denies Its Own Country

Prostori neskladij

Nataša Gregorič Bon

Imagine living in a town where speaking the official national language marks you as an outsider, and foreign money secretly dictates who counts as a genuine local. Welcome to the coastal edge of southern Albania, a breathtaking paradise hiding one of Europe's most unexpected identity clashes. Slide 1: Two Names, One Invisible War Call the village Dhërmi, and you are viewed as a temporary intruder. Call it Drimades, and you claim ancient roots. The bitter tug-of-war over everyday place names reveals an ongoing contest over who actually owns the land's history. Slide 2: Cash Decides Your Heritage Foreign pensions do far more than keep the lights on. Greek state stipends create an elite class of local elders who hire migrants from their own nation as manual laborers, flipping conventional Balkan economics completely upside down. Slide 3: The Native Who Became a Stranger Think your birth certificate guarantees your roots? Think again. Depart for two decades, and the elders revoke your local status. Here, active communal memory matters far more than where you were born. Slide 4: A Language Engineered for Defense Locals navigate daily life through an archaic Greek dialect fused with Albanian administrative vocabulary. This hybrid tongue functions less like casual conversation and more like a protective barrier against external authority. About the Author: Nataša Gregorič Bon is a leading social anthropologist and senior researcher at the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies, ZRC SAZU in Ljubljana. Her scholarship focuses on spatial dynamics, borderlands, movement, and identity politics across the Mediterranean and Southeastern Europe. About the Book: Prostori neskladij (Spaces of Discordance) offers an immersive ethnographic investigation into Dhërmi/Drimades. The work exposes how space and home are never fixed realities, but fragile negotiations shaped by migration, language battles, and cross-border dependency.