Projects / Programmes
Migration and social transformation in comparative perspective: the case of Western Slovenia after WWII
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 5.11.02 |
Social sciences |
Ethnic studies |
Ethnic studies - humanistic aspect |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 5.04 |
Social Sciences |
Sociology |
migrations, social transformation, interethnic relationships, iron curtain, national issues
Researchers (7)
Organisations (3)
Abstract
The purpose of the project is to study population changes and social transformations in the towns on the western margin of Slovenia in the years following the Second World War and the establishment of a new border between Yugoslavia and Italy. The study will focus on a comparison of two historically and culturally very different realities: the area of Nova Gorica, the newly established administrative, economic and cultural centre of the part of the Gorizia region that remained within the borders of Slovenia, and the northern coast of Istria with the ancient towns of Koper, Izola and Piran, which experienced an almost total change of population and a radical ethnic, social and cultural transformation. The research will embrace the second half of 1940s, the 1950s and 1960s, when the processes under scrutiny were particulary intensive. The objectives of the research are to consider the formation or transformation of the urban realities in question in the light of migration processes, which in both cases were factors of their new physiognomy. We wish to study the dynamics, forms and structural characteristics of migration and, in particular, immigration flows in these areas, and the administrative and organisational aspects and policies by which the socialist authorities influenced them. We wish to compare the social, ethnolinguistic and cultural aspects of the urban contexts under examination, describe the adaptation of newcomers to new environments and present the formation of the identity of Nova Gorica, Koper, Izola and Piran as urban spaces through the views and experiences of their inhabitants. The results of the research will shed light on a chapter of history that has not yet been the subject of specific treatment or consideration and contribute to the comparative history of migrations, the comparative social and cultural urban history, and the comparative history of repopulation and urbanisation processes. The research will shed light on the processes of construction of a socialist order and social and ethnic relationships and identities in the multi-ethnic border area of the "Iron Curtain" on the northern Adriatic coast. The originality of the research lies in its examination of the issue of immigration to the areas in question as a specific and complex multilevel and multidisciplinary research field that has been almost entirely neglected in studies of social changes and developments in the border areas covered here. Another original aspect is the comparative analysis of two different regional realities and the role and impacts of migration processes in/on their social, cultural and economic development.
