Albanian communities resist neoliberal land grabs: systemic analysis of Kushner-backed luxury resort protests
Original framing: “Thousands rally in Albania in largest protest yet against Kushner resort” — Al Jazeera
The current land rush mirrors 19th-century Ottoman land codes that enabled absentee elites to seize communal holdings, later exacerbated by Enver Hoxha’s state collectivisation and the post-1991 'democratic' privatisation that auctioned state assets to political insiders. Similar patterns unfolded in Romania (post-1989 land restitution) and Bulgaria (Black Sea coastal grabs), where foreign investors exploited weak legal frameworks. The Kushner project is part of a broader Balkan trend where post-socialist states leverage 'investor confidence' to justify ecological and social dispossession.
The Albanian protests against the Kushner-backed resort are not an isolated incident but a symptom of a global pattern where post-socialist states, desperate for foreign capital, commodify land and ecosystems under the guise of 'development.
' The neoliberal framing of such projects as 'investments' obscures their reliance on IMF structural adjustment, diaspora remittances, and the complicity of local oligarchs—actors who benefit from weak legal frameworks and ecological degradation. Historically, Albania’s coastal communities, including the Cham minority, have resisted enclosure through customary tenure systems, but these are systematically delegitimised in favour of corporate title. The solution lies in community land trusts, diaspora-led sovereign funds, and EU-enforced 'Blue Deals' that prioritise ecological stewardship over extractive profit. Without these systemic interventions, Albania risks repeating the fate of Montenegro’s Budva—where luxury resorts have turned a biodiversity hotspot into a playground for oligarchs, leaving locals displaced and ecosystems depleted. The trickster’s role is clear: to expose the absurdity of treating sovereign land as a stock portfolio, and to demand that 'development' serve the many, not the few.