‘We are New-born Muslims’: Reconstructing Religious Identity among Albanian Migrants in Italy

This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with members of the Union of Albanian Muslims in Italy (UAMI) to examine the identity reconfiguration processes of Albanian Muslim migrants to Italy since the late 1990s. After the fall of Albania’s Communist regime, Albanian Muslims were forced to renegotiate their identity in relation to national culture and its secular and religious legacies in a new context. The analysis illustrates how being both migrants and minorities in Italy shaped processes of identification and strategies adopted by UAMI members to articulate a specifically Albanian Muslim presence. As a space for cultural and religious mediation, the UAMI constructs a sense of belonging based on shared religious imaginaries and national specificity within a field already structured by non-Albanian Islamic organisations. The article underscores the role of religious organisations in enabling collective identification in which cultic and cultural factors intertwine in complex ways in diasporic and minority contexts.