ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Albanian immigrant women's civic education and political engagement, within the broader socio-cultural parameters of democratic participation in the state of Greece. A number of studies on immigration and citizenship reveal the complexity of the issues involved in this dialectic. Following an ethnographic approach and utilizing the snowball technique, we located involved Albanian women starting from the last and more advanced stage of their participatory activities in ethnic associations and moved towards the community level. Analyzing their background is not important only in anthropological terms; it has social and political significance as well. One needs to juxtapose these 'lessons' to their past experience in order to appreciate the impact that these constitutional principles had on immigrants in the host society. Ethnic associations played no active or influential role in Albanians' adaptation to the Greek social and political reality in the early days of their arrival.
