ABSTRACT
The chapter examines two Muslim festivals in a multi-religious district on the Southern Albanian frontier that were resumed within the post-socialist transition to liberal democracy and integration into global capitalism. Building on Gramsci’s theorization of ‘common sense’, it investigates the intersection between religious and secular mobilities, the interplay of symbolic and material boundaries, and the ethnicization of (formal and informal) cross-border regulations. Setting the analysis of pilgrimage as ‘a realm of competing discourses’ in relation to broader ideological frameworks and structural constraints, the chapter contributes to highlight the saliency of political economy for the understanding of contemporary pilgrimages.
