The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 5353Sara PistotnikTHE ERASURE AS A TESTING GROUND FOR EUROPEANMIGRATION POLICIES, OR PARDON ME, BUT YOURREGULATIONS HAVE ERASED MY STATUSDuring the period following Slovenia’s gaining of independence, there wasnot a moment of doubt as to which road the country would choose. It immediatelybegan to work towards joining European integration. One of the main areas withinthis system is immigration management. The European Union carefully channelsimmigration to satisfy its economic needs. Along with other norms, Slovenia thereforebegan to take over and upgrade the immigration managing system, in whichlegal status became the main classification criterion drawing a difficult-to-crossboundary between first- and second-class citizens. This dividing line delimited thesegment of the population called the erased people with particular clarity. Havingsuddenly lost their legal status, they represented a testing ground for the structuralviolence anticipated for second-class citizens within this new regime. Thisessay looks into the ways this arrangement was incorporated into the Slovenianenvironment and how it affected individual people. We also take a closer look atthe obstacles encountered by these people when attempting to regain legal statusand the particular tactics they employed to this end.1. How a small country became part of the global migrationmanagement systemFor people living in the territory of Slovenia, the events and processes ofthe early 1990s that led to the country’s independence represented not solelya reappraisal of borders and an adjustment of legal and other standards to thedemands of sovereignty, but also, and above all, a change in the social system.After the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the EU, which until then had incorporatedless than half of the nations living in Europe, emerged as the key organizing and