On Albania’s Independence Day, when red-and-black flags usually dominate celebrations across the Albanian diaspora, a different kind of gathering took place in the Austrian capital. 

There were no flags, no nationalist anthems, and no concert atmosphere. Instead, a quiet but politically charged event invited members of the Albanian and Kosovar diaspora to do something rarely asked of them: to archive themselves.

An initiative titled Breaking Archival Silence was launched on November 28, 2025, by Rina Limoni and Alberta Sinani, two diaspora researchers and community workers. Their own lives reflect the complex histories of migration from Kosovo to Western Europe. 

Two Initiators, Many Voices

Rina Limoni was born in Gjilan, Kosovo, and moved with her family to Germany in the mid-1990s. This was due to her father’s political activism. She later settled in London, where she has lived for more than 15 years. With an academic background in political geography and geopolitics, Limoni has researched diaspora involvement in nation-building and political activism.

Alberta Sinani was born near Prizren, Kosovo, and moved with her family to Austria in the early 1990s, when she was just two years old. Educated in Vienna, she now works with migrant communities and specialises in political science, social design, and community psychology.

Both speak Albanian, German, and English fluently, and both describe themselves as products of diasporic movements rather than as having a single national belonging. Together, they launched Breaking Archival Silence to challenge how diaspora histories are recorded and who gets to tell these stories. In an interview with Hajde, they provide further insight into this initiative. 

An Archive That Breaks Silence

At its core, Breaking Archival Silence is an experiment in redefining the archive. Rather than relying solely on official documents or written testimonies, the project invites personal storytelling, objects, spoken memories, and dialogue.

“Traditionally, the archive is textual,” says Limoni. “But marginalised people are often excluded from official forms of knowledge. Yet, they can speak, they can perform, they can use symbolism, and those are archives too.”

Symbolically, they placed an old-fashioned suitcase in the room, and participants were invited to place an object inside and explain its personal meaning. The act symbolised what migrants carry with them, not only physically, but emotionally and historically.

“We are not trying to speak over people,” Limoni explained. “We are standing next to them.”

Vienna as a Diaspora Crossroad

Vienna, home to a large Albanian migrant population, provided a fitting setting. Despite decades of settlement, Alberta Sinani argues that the community still lacks physical spaces, representation, and recognised spokespersons.

“When it comes to Albanian society, there is a lack of community spaces,” she said. “We don’t have enough people who get to the front and represent the diversity of our diaspora.”

This absence, she noted, is especially damaging for younger generations navigating identity across multiple cultural contexts.

Why the Archive Is Political

For Rina Limoni and Alberta Sinani, the archive is not neutral. It is a response to what Limoni describes as an ongoing process of “othering” in both the West and Kosovo itself.

“In the West, you are never an individual,” Limoni says. “You are always a migrant, always grouped. You are never allowed to live a ‘boring’ life.”

This categorisation continues even when members of the diaspora return to Kosovo. Limoni described feeling judged for speaking German and for carrying elements of a different kind of socialisation. “Language is part of your identity,” she says, “and this is where othering begins.”

The 'schatzy' discourse, which Limoni critically analyses in her podcast, describes this everyday form of symbolic distancing, in which the diaspora is simultaneously romanticised and marginalised.

She emphasised that although Kosovo’s institutions do not have the structural power to suppress the diaspora, everyday discourse continues to marginalise it. This illustrates a double exclusion: the diaspora is positioned as external to both Western societies and Kosovo itself.

“This silence brings us back to the archive,” says Limoni, adding that “because we are never allowed to define our own stories.”

In this context, the absence of archives is not accidental. Traditional archives privilege stable citizenship, territorial continuity, literacy, and institutional recognition. Migrant lives, fragmented by borders and shaped by rupture, rarely meet these criteria. As a result, the Albanian diaspora appears historically 'thin,' despite its political, social, and economic significance.

Youth, Identity, and Mental Health

Sinani connected the lack of archives directly to youth mental health. Young migrants, she says, grow up targeted by political debates about integration, language, and belonging.

“We are now the third or fourth generation,” she says, raising the question: "Do we still identify as diaspora? What does that even mean?”

Without access to their own histories, Sinani argues, young people are left without anchors. “Belonging is fundamental to mental health. If those phases of identity-building are missing, where do migrant children strengthen themselves?” she raises the dilemma.

The archive, she insisted, is not about enforcing identity. “It doesn’t tell you what to think or believe,” says Sinani, “it gives you back the voice that you lost in the migration process.”

What Comes Next

Breaking Archival Silence in Vienna marked the beginning of a broader European initiative. The next session will take place in London, expanding the archive geographically and demographically.

For Limoni and Sinani, the goal is long-term: to map where Albanian diaspora communities have unfolded across Europe and how those communities continue to shape both host societies and ideas of homeland.

“We are challenging what counts as an archive,” Limoni said. “And we are doing it with the people, not about them.”

In a diaspora often framed through nostalgia or economic utility, Breaking Archival Silence offers a different proposition: that telling a personal story is not only an act of memory, but an act of political presence.