Contemporary Southeastern Europe 2026, 13 (2)

Marriage migrations of women in Kosovo, Albania, and Serbia in comparative perspective

This paper examines female marriage migration in Kosovo, Albania, and Serbia from a comparative historical perspective and highlights its neglect in migration research. Using individual-level microdata from the Serbian census of 1884, the Albanian census of 1918, and Yugoslav household registers for Janjeva (1928), migration linked to marriage is reconstructed through differences between place of birth and residence. The analysis focuses on married couples in predominantly patrilocal societies. The findings reveal substantial cross-regional variation. While about two-thirds of married women in Albania and Janjeva migrated upon marriage, the majority of women in Serbia remained in their place of birth, resulting in a predominance of local marriages. Further variation is observed between rural and urban contexts and across social groups, although religion plays only a limited role. The article argues that patrilocality alone cannot explain these patterns. Instead, differences in kinship structures and exogamy rules shaped the availability of local marriage partners and thus the extent of female marriage migration. By integrating micro-level data with comparative analysis, the study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of migration and family systems in Southeastern Europe.
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Siegfried Gruber

Siegfried Gruber

Siegfried Gruber is a researcher at the Section of Southeast European History and Anthropology, Department of History, University of Graz, where he received his doctoral degree in 2004. His main research topics are historical demography, aging, family history, patriarchal structures within Southeastern Europe, and European comparative studies. He is also active in building the Mosaic database, the largest database of historical census microdata for Southeastern Europe.  
 

Daniel Armin Đumić

Daniel Armin Đumić

Daniel Armin Đumić is a historian specialising in historical demography, quantitative historical research, and the digital processing of historical census data. His research interests include historical demography, diaspora studies, and the application of computational and quantitative methods to historical research, with a particular focus on Southeast Europe. His academic training also includes Ottoman history and palaeography. His research has contributed to the development of an internationally accessible database of digitised historical microdata. He was a collaborator in the project “Demography and Social Structures in Historical Southeast Europe,” where he contributed to the transcription, coding, harmonisation, and quality control of large-scale census datasets from Southeast Europe.
 

Keywords:
marriage migration patrilocality

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