Migration and social transformation in comparative perspective

The case of Western Slovenia after WWII

Code: J5-2571 SICRIS

Sponsor: Javna agencija RS za raziskovalno dejavnost

Web page: link

Period: September 1, 2020 – August 31, 2023

Head: dr. Aleksej Kalc

 

Partners and researchers involved:

• Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana: dr. Žarko Lazarevič, dr. Janja Sedlaček
• Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts : dr. Mirjam Milharčič Hladnik, dr. Marina Lukšič Hacin, dr. Špela Ledinek Lozej
• Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Koper : dr. Katja Hrobat Virgolet

 

DESCRIPTION

The project investigates the 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 research focusses on the 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 embraces 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 as factors of their new physiognomy;
• o 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;
• 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;
• to contribute to the comparative history of migrations, the comparative social and cultural urban history, and the comparative history of repopulation and urbanisation processes;
• to 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.