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This article is an ethnographic study of a 29‐kilometer stretch of cross‐border highway located in South Albania and linking the city of Gjirokastër with the main checkpoint on the Albanian–Greek border. The road, its politics, and its poetics constitute an ideal point of entry for an anthropological analysis of contemporary South Albania. The physical and social construction, uses, and perceptions of this road uniquely encapsulate three phenomena that dominate social life in postsocialist South Albania: the transition to a market economy, new nationalisms, and massive emigration (mainly to Greece). Taking this cross‐border road section as my main ethnographic point of reference, I suggest the fruitfulness of further discussion of the relationship between roads, narratives, and anthropology.

This article examines the material culture of migration, focusing on migrants' house-making projects in their countries of birth. In particular, it examines the houses built or refurbished by Albanians in their home-country, which is no longer their place of permanent residence. This is a widespread phenomenon in Albania, but it is also a frequently appearing practice amongst other international migrants. Why do migrants living outside their home-countries build houses there even though they do not plan to return? I seek to answer this question in the case of Albania by focusing empirically on the process of constructing these houses, rather than merely on the material entity of the house as such. I propose that such 'house-making' by Albanian migrants is not only a simple house-building process; it also ensures a constant dwelling and dynamic 'proxy' presence for migrants in their community of origin. These ethnographic observations have further significance for the anthropological study of both houses and international migration. Dimitris: Why do you send most of your savings back to Albania? Edi: If you won't send [money] back [to Albania], what will be done [here]? We do not have any other people [apart from the parents].Migrating-remitting-'building'-dwelling 765

The overarching question of this article is how can we develop a critical understanding of the social place of highways and automobility in the case of a non-capitalist European context such as socialist Albania? Socialism was a period of modernisation for Albania. Part of this modernisation project was the production of a modern built environment, especially infrastructures and urban spaces. Within this context during socialism thousands of miles of new roads were constructed in the country. The remarkably limited use of roads, combined with their systematic building and maintenance, kept this infrastructure's materiality in a relatively good condition for many decades. Since the early 1990s, though, the end of the regime has signified a period of booming mobility and automobility. Postsocialism and the wider context of neoliberalism have been marked by state withdrawal from many of its previous roles, and the maintenance of basic infrastructures has become increasingly dependent on international aid. Nevertheless, the roads are currently being socially reappropriated and reconfigured, as people embrace automobility, which was a very limited practice during socialism. This article explores the kind of socio-material relationships that road construction and the roads themselves generated in socialist Albania and how these are linked to postsocialist spatial practices.

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