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Concept
Albanians in Italy
Summary
The Albanians in Italy (Albanesi in Italia; Shqiptarët në Itali) refers to the Albanian migrants in Italy and their descendants. They mostly trace their origins to Albania, Greece and since recently to a lesser extent to Kosovo, North Macedonia and other Albanian-speaking territories in the Balkan Peninsula.
As of 2019, there were 441,027 Albanian citizens living in Italy, one of the largest Albanian immigrant population in any country as well as the second largest immigrant group within Italy. They are adherents of different religions and are Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Sunnis and Bektashis as well as various forms of Irreligion. Between 2008 and 2020 more than 250,000 Albanians acquired Italian citizenship.
The Albanians in Italy may include among others a long established Arbëreshë population in Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily and across Southern Italy as well as Albanians to have migrated to Italy from any territory with an Albanian population in the Balkans and any person originally from the Republic of Albania.
There is an Albanian community in southern Italy, known as Arbëreshë, who had settled in the country starting with the 15th and the 16th century and later, displaced by the changes brought about by the persecution of Greeks towards Ethnic Albanians of Epirus and later expansion of the Ottoman Empire. Some managed to escape and were offered refuge from the repression by the Kingdom of Naples and Kingdom of Sicily (both under Aragonese rule), where the Arbëreshë were given their own villages and protected.
The Arbëreshë were estimated as numbering at a quarter million in the year 1976.
Arbëreshë people
Stratioti
The Italian Peninsula across the Adriatic Sea has attracted the Albanian people in the Balkan Peninsula for more than half a millennium often due to the immediate proximity which was also seen as the primary gateway to Western Europe. The medieval ancestors of the Arbëreshë people were the first Albanian people to migrate to Italy historically as mercenaries in the services for the kingdoms of the Neapolitans, Sicilians and Venetians.
Official source
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