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VetLegion
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I'll give my explanation of why Albanians have a strong mafia, not just in Greece, but also in Italy and other countries where they are significantly present. My conclusions, so take it with a grain of salt.
As all of you know, mafias are generally organized along ethnic lines. Albania is the only country in Europe with a healthy natural population growth rate. It is also a country of scarce resources. Albanians have to look for better life abroad and thus have a huge diaspora. In Italy, Greece, ex-Yugoslavia, USA... and so on. Most of those immigrants have arrived illegaly. There is a huge mafia in Albania that does human trafficking. They also smuggle drugs and various other goods. So mafia becomes very involved with immigrants from the start.
Couple that with fact that Albanian society is structured well for mafia like organizations. Because of geographical and historical reasons the whole country is divided in clans, tribes and closely knit families. This organizational structure is such from necessety, it ensured stability in a dangerous country during centuries of lawlessness. But it still exists today (unlike the nuclear families in most of Europe).
Thirdly, the effective, but relatively small number of criminals and mafiosos will give a bad name to the rest of immigrants, who are honest people.
Fouth, and last, in most societies they come into, Albanians are viewed as culturally inferior. How explicit is the racism against them depends from country to country. So the argument that they fill some criminal or borderline criminal positions because they aren't allowed much alse may hold some truth too.
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21-04-2005 05:27
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