The article discusses the importance of preserving immigrant languages in Slovenia, focusing on the opportunities immigrant children have for learning their mother tongue in school. The legal and formal framework which defines the development of immigrant languages in the education system in Slovenia is described. There is also a discussion of the implementation of legal and formal measures in practice, of the attitude of immigrants and their children to learning their mother tongue in school, and of the attitude of teachers to the teaching and use of these languages within the education system. Research has shown that there is a desire among immigrants to preserve their mother tongue, but for various objective and subjective reasons most of them do not take advantage of the opportunity. In order to preserve immigrant languages in Slovenia, language policy in this area needs to change.
COBISS.SI-ID: 12566349
There are three constitutionally recognised minorities in Slovenia: Italians, Hungarians and Roma. There are, in addition, some other ethnic groups that might, in line with the Slovene concept of “autochthonous”, be described as autochthonous national minorities. These include the small community of “Serbs”, the descendants of the Uskoks, who live in the Bela krajina region, bordering Croatia. The article presents the results of several years of field research focused on the following question: Can the “Serbs” of Bela krajina be considered as a national minority? The facts indicate that the “Serbs” in four Bela krajina villages are a potential national minority, but considering their modest social vitality and that they express no wish for minority status, the realisation of the relevant special protective measures involved is questionable.
COBISS.SI-ID: 12626765
The article addresses the importance of plebiscite celebrations as part of the culture of remembrance and the shaping of collective memory in Slovenia and Austria. The latest studies underline that celebrations around the 10th of October are still significant for young people in Austrian Carinthia. This has a lot to do with the national stereotypes in the neighbouring states. While in Austria the 10th of October for the majority marks a celebration of victory or “Abwehrkämpf” and affection towards Carinthia, in Slovenia it is seen as the date of the plebiscite which resulted in a historical injustice – the separation of a large part of Slovene ethnic territory in Carinthia from the motherland and consequently the loss of the “cradle” of the Slovene nation. The author analyses two historical events that contribute to collective memory and the culture of remembrance in this region.
COBISS.SI-ID: 12852045
The Roma ethnic minority is a community of overall deprivation. It lacks adequate space, municipal infrastructure, capital (social, cultural, financial, etc.), and tolerance by non-Roma. It also lacks the driving forces that could move the Roma from the margins of society and allow them to participate in the management of public good. One of the reasons is the fact that spatial planning providers only made it half way. They mapped the Roma settlements but failed to plan the social anchors which provide a settlement with satisfactory vitality. These anchors make up social, human and cultural capital, which are all important components of human resources development and thus a significant source of the development efficiency of the Roma community in Slovenia. The two pillars of development - human resources and development efficiency - should both aim at reducing the exclusion of the members of the Roma ethnic minority from the Slovene society. The paper presents the main findings of the research project entitled The Increase in Social and Cultural Capital in Areas with a Roma Population.
COBISS.SI-ID: 12715597
This study looks at the size, ethnicity and religious affiliation of the settlements of Čikečka vas, Motvarjevci, Pordašinci, Prosenjakovci and Središče, from the late eighteenth century to the census in 2011. The main aim is to offer as full a picture as possible of population changes in these settlements, and their linguistic, ethnic and religious composition. During roughly the first 230 years (to 1910) the population grew in size and then it started to decline – a trend that continues today. With regard to ethnicity, the settlements of Čikečka vas, Motvarjevci, Prosenjakovci and Središče had a Hungarian majority in the second half of the eighteenth century and in 1991, whereas Pordašinci had a Slovene majority. Overall, the Slovene population of the area has grown at the expense of the Hungarian. Most of the inhabitants of Čikečka vas, Motvarjevci, Pordašinci, Prosenjakovci and Središče were Protestants (Calvinists and Evangelicals). There was still a Protestant majority in 1991, but the relative size of the Catholic population had increased.
COBISS.SI-ID: 12937293