Original scientific paper
THE CHANGEABLE STATUS – TRANSFORMATION OF INTRANATIONAL ETHNICALLY MIXED MARRIAGES INTO INTERNATIONAL ONES
Mateja SEDMAK
Abstract
The paper deals with ethnically mixed marriages as with a
special form of intercultural contact at the interpersonal level
of the everyday life of ethnically mixed couples and with the
issue of changing status of mixed marriages. The empirical
study, dedicated to the phenomenon of mixed marriages, was
limited to the multicultural and multilingual area of Slovene
Istra, which excels due to its specific ethnic heterogeneity. The
great socio-political changes that took place in the former
Yugoslavia in the 1990s (disintegration of once common
national entity, Slovenia's attainment of independence, new
political demarcation) led, however, to the involuntary change
in the status of ethnically mixed marriages, which eventually
transformed from intranational mixed marriages into
international ones. If ethnically mixed families had been once
faced primarily with the issues of interlingual and intercultural
accommodation, they are now confronted with additional
burdens of the partner and family life (phenomenon of split
loyalties, increasing nationalism, permanent or temporary
breaks in family ties.). Here, however some very diverse
strategies of (mixed) families' survival and adaptation to the
resulting social situation are exposed. The empirical study,
which was carried out with the collection of auto/biographical
stories in the period from May to December 2000, sets out, as
a central determinant of influence, the ethnical affiliation of
the mixed marriage partners, the element of (non)autochthony
and the social distance between the diverse ethnic groups.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
19611
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2002.
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