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with European regulations. He is now living at the reception centre of San
Foca without any hope of finding work and unable to move freely because
of his refugee status.
Ardita [age: 38, female] is the mother of four children, who she brought to
Italy with her in January of 1999. She is an Albanian of Islamic faith from
Llucan, a village in Serbian territory, and she remembers the escalation of
tension between ethnic groups. To her, the difficulties began in 1997, when
violence erupted in her mostly Serb-inhabited neighbourhood. Her problems
were made worse by the Albanian villages in Serbia, which moved to
support the Albanians of Kosovo, (though mostly by helping those who
had been forced from their homes). Ardita’s flight from Kosovo was hurried,
and occurred before the beginning of the NATO bombings.
Dritan [age: 63, male] was born in Pristina, but had lived most of his life
in Albania until he and his father were forced into exile by Serbian nationalists.
He is an engineer, has two children and he is an atheist. During
World War II, Dritan fought with Albanian partisans, against the Nazi-
Fascist occupation. When the war was over, he went to university and
studied in Moscow, while the situation of Kosovo was made difficult by
the widening political distance between Yugoslavia and Albania. He then
began a career as a poet and writer. Now that the NATO bombings have
ended, he has finally been able to visit the places of his infancy with his
wife.
Arta [age 23, female] is a Romany woman who arrived in Italy just six
days before the interview. She was still deeply traumatized by the murder
of her mother, which took place before her eyes. Her tale was woven with
the pain of one who, with her father, had to escape her home to avoid being
another Romany victim of the war. Majkell [age 67, male] is Arta's father.
He has lived in Kosovo his entire life before being forced to escape. He is
now trying to reach his sons in Germany. He was barely able to tell the tale
of his wife’s murder before dissolving in tears.
The South: Lecce
Places and mediators
Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
In order to collect interviews, researcher Patricia Ruiz chose the Regina
Pacis immigrant reception centre, which is located in San Foca, in the
province of Lecce. Half of the southern Italy interviews were collected in
this region: five in the centre, and one in the interviewee’s home in the city
of Lecce. This is how she describes the site:
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