In this thesis, an original database is constituted, described and exploited in a geohistorical perspective, containing the registration of the population at the local level for the fifteen censuses conducted in Albania between 1918 and 2011. The precision of the spatialization makes possible the diachronic comparability of statistical data in this country marked by numerous territorial-administrative reforms, thus allowing a new look at certain aspects of its history. A detailed description is given of the spatial dynamics and mutations at work beyond the four major systems that have succeeded one another in Albania's modern history : integration into the Ottoman networks ; geopolitical confrontation that saw the disappearance of empires in favour of nation-States ; half a century of communism characterised by its progressive introversion and original territorial development ; and finally the brutal inclusion in the liberal economy that produced sharp emigration and rural decline, consecrating the irresistible emergence of the metropolis-capital.

The data are modulated according to a whole range of regionalisations and typologies of territory, making it possible to situate mobilities and the different phases of urbanisation in their spatial, political and cultural contexts. Cartography plays a key role, revealing spatial structures on unprecedented scales. The approach is alternately nomothetic - observation and detection of regularities, contrasts and breaks in the growth rates visible in the various aggregates and on the maps - and hypothetico-deductive : many hypotheses suggested by the literature (identification of migration chains, specificity of Albanian underurbanization, existence of diverted migration towards the outskirts of cities at the end of communism, political dimension of metropolization, etc.) are revisited on the basis of the corpus of the thesis. The last two censuses (2001 and 2011) are used to reconstruct with great spatial accuracy the succession of migrations between the 1950s and 2011. The strong historicity of the Albanian trajectory is confronted with some classical models of the modernization paradigm : vital and mobility transitions or the emergence of the World-Society.

The geohistorical narrative takes the conventional form of describing a succession of spatial systems and the transitions between them. The end of the thesis contains a different theoretical proposition centered on the concept of mobility geotype. Conceived as a historically significant form of mobility that is recognizable by the regularity and duration of its spatial signature, the mobility geotype lies on a gradient from social reproduction (e.g., marriage spatial patterns) to radical change (crossing of important social boundaries, disruption of the order of co-presences, such as during distant emigration). This property is referred to as histority (dialectic of reproduction and social change). Such an alternative approach is introduced, along with a discussion of its advantages - such as a richer conception of time - and its possible operationalisation in the context of a geohistorical approach. A histority calculation is proposed on the basis of urbanity differentials between the origins and destinations of Albanian migrations.