Understanding the dynamics of transnational formations among Albanian-speaking migrants in Switzerland by bringing in theories of mobility, social inequality and ethnicity

It is nowadays beyond controversy that transnational phenomena are part of migrants’ reality and that the transnational perspective is indispensable to understand migration processes. However, I argue however that the potential of the transnational perspective could be better exploited by linking it to other social scientific theories contributing hereby to a more general theorization of migration processes. On behalf of an analysis of the different transnational formations that have emerged among Albanian-speaking migrants in Switzerland since the Second World War, I will show that insights from theories of mobility, of social inequality and of ethnicity help to understand these identified different forms of being transnational.