Social, economic and cultural history of Slovenian emigration

Project Code: J5-7167 (A)

SICRIS

The comprehensive review study Social, economic and cultural history of Slovenian emigration will be presented as a final monograph about emigration from the Slovenian ethnic territory and the Slovenian diaspora. Slovenia does not yet have a comprehensive presentation that would in one place collect and connect all the social, economic and cultural aspects of Slovenian emigration from the mid-19th century until today. European migration histories do not include Slovenian emigration because most available literature describing it is fragmented, scattered and linguistically inaccessible to foreign readers. Because they have not been transparently and interpretatively linked, the findings of many studies carried out in Slovenia in the last decades have been less accessible for both Slovenian experts and the general public, while the very topic of migration in historiography is typically studied separately from other historical processes. Research goals: to connect the existing findings, systematise and define the entire period from the mid-19th century to today, to evaluate the importance of emigration in particular eras and to position it into the general history of Slovenians; to interpret the selected aspects in the international context and compare them to similar currents in the European framework; to place Slovenian emigration on the map of European history as a history of mass emigrations that have crucially defined the development of Europe and its present condition. The originality of the project is in its comprehensive approach to the subject of the study and in the analyses and interpretations that will take into account the connections between emigration and other historical processes and the relationships between the diaspora and the country of origin. The originality of the project is also in the fact that it focuses on cultural, social, economic and other transfers that were made possible by migrations and the relationship between the homeland and the Slovenian diaspora. The most important novelty in the methodology and the final results of the project is in its simultaneous consideration of the following three aspects: the general historical aspect that will contextualise the occurrence of emigration and the resulting diaspora into the economic, social and political events from the mid-19th century onwards; the cultural-historical aspect that will study the cultural perspective of the phenomenon in all the studied periods of time, with a focus on the questions of identity, the organisational forms of the Slovenian diaspora in different parts of the world, its cultural production and its cultural relations with the country of origin; the human-centred aspect that will offer a view of the theme of emigration and diaspora through the case studies of personal and collective experience of the migration process and subjective interpretations of the dynamics within the framework of the heterogeneous migration communities. Relevance and the potential influence of the results: the project will, for the first time, offer Slovenian and international readers a complete overview of Slovenian emigration in the form of a monograph with charts and maps, which will be made available for study and educational purposes at the university level as well as for the general public. The monograph will be freely accessible on the Internet. When additional funding is acquired, it will be translated into English, which will immediately make it available to foreign researchers. This will make it directly useful for the international study programme EMMIR (European Master in Migration and Intercultural Relations), in which the project group members participate, as well as other study programmes (history and other humanities programmes, sociology, migration studies, cultural studies).