Albanians move to build integration bridges

TIRANA, Nov. 16 – The Swissinfo.ch wrote an article on how Albanian immigrants there try to build integration bridges for their community, the second largest in Switzerland.
Two major initiatives have been launched to help the Albanian-speaking community integrate in Switzerland and improve mutual understanding.
There are around 270,000 Albanian speakers currently living in Switzerland, of whom 100,000 are under 16. The diverse populations from Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, and Serbia and Montenegro form the second-largest foreign community after the Italians.
Bashkim Iseni is a 39-year-old political scientist from Lausanne University. He is head of the team of journalists behind www.albinfo.ch, a new information website in Albanian, French and German for the Albanian-speaking community in Switzerland that started in mid-October.
The project, financed by the Swiss government and conceived in partnership with the media group Edipresse, offers Swiss news, Balkans politics, features on the Albanian community in Switzerland and a wealth of practical information.
“It reflects the need for information and resources to help Albanian speakers integrate,” said Iseni, who was born in Macedonia to Kosovar parents, but grew up in Switzerland.
For Iseni there is a real need for a forum where thorny topics like inter-generational relations, religion, sexuality, violence, marriage and relations with the country of origin can be discussed.
The priorities, he insisted, must be on improving unsatisfactory school results, as well as changing the generally negative perception of Albanian speakers among the Swiss population, as revealed in a recent study by the Federal Migration Office.
Driton Kajtazi, a 40-year-old teacher from canton Vaud is the director of the applied research institute ISEAL, the Swiss Institute of Albanian Studies, which was officially inaugurated last Friday in Lausanne in the presence of 100 dignitaries. These included the ambassadors of Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania, as well as representatives of the Federal Migration Office, and Lausanne and Vaud authorities.
ISEAL joins the Universit顐opulaire Albanaise in Geneva and the Albanian Institute in St Gallen as a major centre for the promotion of Albanian culture in Switzerland.
The new applied research institute is backed by a 190-strong team of Swiss and Albanian supporters, including Francis Cousin, until recently Swiss ambassador to Albania.
Planned projects include studies into Albanians living in Switzerland, anthologies of Albanian literature in French, German and Italian, and Swiss literature in Albanian, and an economic forum.
Their first project was a conference in Lausanne on Saturday on the integration of the Albanian community, attended by some 100 experts and politicians.
The symposium opened with a gloomy look at the poor educational results and difficulties of the young Albanian-speaking generation.
Only 45 per cent of Albanian speakers complete their secondary education and only seven per cent finish higher education.
Specialists agreed that special attention should be given to learning Albanian, which would help with other topics and general educational performance, and the early selection process in the Swiss school system had penalized young Albanian speakers.
Today we cannot remain passive, said Sherif Zenuni, a Kosovo-born architect who moved to Switzerland at the age of 12, who is also the president of the Albanian Association of Gruy鳥.