Albanian Australians


Albanian Australians are residents of Australia who are of Albanian heritage or descent, often from Albania and Kosovo but also Montenegro and Macedonia.
According to the 2006 Australian census 2,014 Albanians were born in Australia while 11,315 claimed Albanian ancestry, either alone or with another ancestry.
According to the 2011 Australian census 2,398 Albanians were born in Australia while 13,142 claimed Albanian ancestry, either alone or with another ancestry. According to the 2016 census, 4,041 people were born in Albania or Kosovo.

History

Early Albanian Immigration

The first recorded Albanian to settle in Australia was Naum Konxha who arrived in Brisbane in 1885 with his English wife and decided to stay permanently. The second Albanian, Spiro Jani from Himara, arrived in Queensland in 1908. Then Kristo Zafiri arrived from the Labëria region and Dhimitër Ikonomi from Dropull. They disembarked in 1913 from an English ship at Townsville. In 1914 Jan Konomi arrived and in 1920 Vasil and Thomas Kasneci.

Interwar Period

As with others from the Balkans, the first major period of emigration to Australia followed the United States quota restrictions on Southern Europeans of 1924. Due to the White Australia Policy, many Muslims during the interwar period were precluded from migrating, while Albanian Muslims were accepted in Australia due to having a lighter European complexion. The Albanians arrival revived the Australian Muslim community whose aging demographics were until that time in decline.
The Australian census did not record Albanians separately until 1933 when there were 770, the largest number living in Queensland. That number doubled by 1947 with the balance shifting to Victoria where it has remained. Albanians who arrived in the 1920s settled in rural areas and engaged in agriculture related employment, mainly fruit growing. As with other Southern European migrants, most Albanians who came to Australia in the 1920s were men. They became market gardeners, sugar cane workers, tobacco farmers and horticulturalists. The largest number arrived in 1928. Early settlements were made in Northam in Western Australia by Ismail Birangi and Sabri Sali, who later moved to Shepparton where they established their families with their friends Reshit Mehmet and Fethi Haxhi. Other Albanians from Western Australia moved to the goldfields in search of work, while others in the 1930s went mainly to Queensland and Victoria as they were economically hit hard by the 1929 Great Depression. Albanians also settled in Cairns, Melbourne, Brisbane and York. During this time some Albanians who had adequate finances sponsored family members from Albania to come to Australia.
The 1933 Australian Census recorded 770 Albania-born individuals living in Australia, mostly in Queensland and Victoria. Many Albanians settled around Mareeba in northern Queensland and in Brisbane. In Victoria, most Albanians settled on rural properties around Shepparton in the Goulburn Valley. In the 1920s, most came from southern Albania, around the city of Korçë, and engaged in agriculture, especially fruit growing. A much smaller number were from Gjirokastër, also in the south and similarly belonging to the Tosk dialect group rather than the Gheg dialect spoken in northern Albania and Kosovo. Other rural Muslim Albanians from the surrounding Bilisht area emigrated to Australia. While the majority were Muslims, it was estimated that about 40% were Orthodox Christians.

World War Two

Albanians in Australia were defined as "enemy aliens" due to Italy's annexation of Albania during World War Two, as they were thought by Australian authorities to pose a fascist threat and some individuals were arrested and interned. The Albanians of Queensland were adversely most affected by those state actions. Those government policies in Victoria were more lenient with Albanians reporting weekly to the authorities and in Western Australia they were given certain labour and farming jobs to do. Naturalised Albanians were exempted from those measures and others applied for naturalisation. Some other Albanians also fought in the Australian army during the Second World War.

Mid to late 20th century Albanian Immigration to Australia

After the war, the Shepparton community was joined by post war refugees escaping the communist takeover of Albania between 1949 and 1955. Only 235 Albanian Displaced Persons arrived and was enough to raise the overall total of the Albania-born individuals in Australia to its highest level until 1976. Post war, there was a much larger displaced ethnic Albanian population in Australia, however refugees were registered as Yugoslav due to their country of origin. The Shepparton mosque was built in 1960 as the religious focal point for the most prosperous and well established rural Albanian community in Australia. Political differences of royalists and democrats among the Albanian community existed in the immediate post war era reflecting political divisions of interwar Albania that was at times expressed as separate gatherings or cultural events of the two groups. Over time those political differences have subsided.
Restrictions on emigration from Albania lasted until the early 1990s which thereafter some 100 estimated families migrated to Shepparton and joined the older Albanian community there who gave them support networks and often employment.
Most recent Albanian-speaking migrants in Australia however came from former Yugoslavia. From the 1960s-1970s the majority of these migrants were from the Lake Prespa region and the villages of Kišava and Ostrec of Bitola municipality which are all located in south-western Macedonia. As these migrants were from the same Tosk dialect group, they were able to integrate with earlier immigrants from the Korçë region. This was due to previous shared historical socio-cultural connections that allowed the forming of strong bonds of community in Australia. The Albanian Prespa community and those Albanians from the Bitola region form the majority of the Albanian community in Victoria and Australia. Most of these Prespa and Bitola Albanians reside in Melbourne's industrial working class suburbs of Dandenong, Yarraville, St Albans, Altona, Preston, Lalor and Thomastown. Within the context of migration, maintaining identity and adapting to a new homeland, Albanians from the lake Prespa region refer to Australia as Australia shqiptare or Australia prespane.
In 1996, there were 6212 who spoke Albanian at home, or more than five times the number of people born in Albania. Of these, 1299 were born in Macedonia and only 60 in Serbia and Montenegro. The political situation since then has increased this latter component and includes people from Kosovo. Apart from smaller numbers of Albanians from Montenegro, Greece, Italy, Turkey and Bosnia the rest were either born in Albania, the former Yugoslavia or Australia.

Language

Unlike some other Eastern European languages, Albanian was spoken over a large age range from infancy to elderly and is surviving into the second generation as well as being added to by recent arrivals. The number using the language rose by one-quarter between 1986 and 1996. A substantial majority of the recent Albanian arrivals settled in Victoria, both in Melbourne and around Shepparton. Albanian of the Tosk and Gheg dialects is both widely used by Albanian Australians.
In Victoria, continued support for maintaining the Albanian language has come from the education system through the Victorian School of Languages and community schools teaching languages.

Religion

57% of Albanian speakers in Australia follow Islam. Though Islam has been the majority religion in Albania and Kosovo, it had been outlawed under the communist regime. Over 400 were Catholic, including some who are relatives of Mother Teresa and settled in Melbourne. 114 were Orthodox. The predominance of Islam gave the Albanian population a degree of unity and the ability to build their own mosques, as in rural Mareeba, Shepparton and Melbourne metropolitan Carlton North.
The Shepparton Mosque was the first mosque built in Victoria, and the Carlton Mosque was the first mosque built in Melbourne. Other mosques in metropolitan Melbourne are the Albanian Mosque in Dandenong. and the Albanian Prespa Mosque in Reservoir. The mosque built in Mareeba was the 2nd mosque built in Queensland and the first mosque built in rural Queensland.
Albanians of Catholic and Orthodox faiths, found an established network of religious institutions available to them in the places they settled with their Muslim compatriots. However, in the absence of Albanian churches and Albanian-speaking ministers, Christian Albanians struggle to maintain their unique heritage. Religious differences have not been a significant factor in Albanian community relations.

Community

The major Albanian community organisation is the Albania Australia Community Association Inc located in North Carlton and chaired by Bashkim Bekiri. It was previously chaired by Erik Lloga, who took an active role in settling Kosovar refugees, including acting as an interpreter for the Prime Minister. The AACA shares premises with the Albanian Australian Islamic Society. Other Groups include the Albanian Australian Islamic Society and there are also Albanian Islamic societies in Dandenong and Shepparton and the Albanian Catholic Community in St Albans. Other Victorian associations have included the Albanian Teachers’ Association and a branch of the Balli Kombëtar political party based on anti-communist post-war refugees. In Queensland there is an Albanian Association of Brisbane and an Albanian Australian Moslem Society in the long established community in Mareeba. There is also an Albanian Australian Association in Adelaide. All these associations cater for Albanians from Macedonia and Kosovo as well as those from Albania and some took an active role in providing support for the Kosovar refugees in 1999.
Albanians belonging to various generations, religions, affiliations and origins gather associate and freely at community cultural events. Albanians in Australia celebrate Albanian Independence Day. The Albanian community has other events and functions involving Albanian music and dance such as the annual Albanian festival held at the Dandenong Ranges in east Melbourne, where many Albanians from Macedonia reside. The festival date falls every second Sunday in December hosted by the Albanian Australian Community Association Inc and at times it also has been held in Melbourne's inner western suburbs.
Over time the people from the Albanian community have become more involved in community affairs by forming associations such as the Australian Albanian Women's Association and a more recent youth directed group Albanians Connect.
In early twenty first century Victoria, Albanian Australians have risen to political leadership roles such as Jim Memeti, serving as City of Greater Dandenong mayor and Dinny Adem as City of Greater Shepparton mayor.
During December 2019, Albanian Australians, through their community organisations raised $255,000 for 2019 Albania earthquake victims.

Culture

Musical traditions

Various musical genres and dances exist among Albanians in Australia reflecting the regions within the Balkans from where they migrated and stylistic differences exist that typify traditional music from northern and southern Balkan Albanian areas. Polyphonic singing, associated with southern Albanian musical traditions of where a singer begins a song followed by a second singer entering at a different melodic line with others maintaining a drone is mainly performed by elderly Prespa Albanians of both genders, though separately, at weddings.
Northern Albanian musical traditions of solo singing are performed by Albanians from Kosovo. The repertoire of songs often involve love songs and narrative ballads about historic or legendary events played on a stringed musical instrument like the çifteli or laut/lahutë. There also exist a variety of local Albanian music bands that have a vocalist and often accompanied by other members playing a clarinet, drums, electric guitar and piano accordion which has increasingly been substituted for an electric keyboard. These bands perform at weddings or other gatherings and their music repertoire often reflects the influences from their place of origin in the Balkans with some creating new musical compositions in Australia.
Bands who reflect a Kosovo Albanian origin often sing about patriotic or political themes alongside traditional songs and their music contains Turkish influences dating from the Ottoman era. Traditional dances are also performed of which some of the most popular being the Shota for Kosovo Albanians, the Ulqin for Montenegro Albanians and the Devollice for Southern Albanians. Some dances which were performed by only one gender are increasingly being danced together by both males and females and many younger members of the Albanian community also partake in traditional dancing.

Albanian sport clubs

Politics