AEMI

JANJA ŽITNIK SERAFIN
pluralism and ethnic, religious, and linguistic
equality. Intercultural awareness
and multicultural national identity are
prerequisite for the internal stability and
security of any country.
This is why authors in the field of ethnic
and migration studies are expected
to use the term integration in accordance
with the understanding explained
in the above mentioned (and other) EU
documents.
25
Host Society/Country
I feel that I must at this point discuss
the problematic use of the term ‘host
society’ in connection with Slovenian
society and its relationship to immigrants
or ‘new’ minorities. The term was
borrowed from international academic
circles, 1 and was first used in Slovenia by
certain research circles, 2 and then by the
wider Slovenian public.
Most people from other parts of Yugoslavia
came to Slovenia before 1980.
At that time Slovenia needed a work
force, and there were sufficient jobs for
what we now call ‘immigrant vocations.’
The housing policy at the time – unlike
that of today – also made it possible to
solve housing problems for immigrants.
Until the end of the 1970s, a large number
of young people 3 came to Slovenia.
They completed the first (and in the
economic sense) passive period of their
lives in the Yugoslav republics of their
birth where they were educated. Then
they brought their knowledge, skills,
and capabilities and invested them in
the Slovenian economy and society. The
investment of their labour power (after
schooling in their home republics) contributed
to the economic development
of Slovenia and eased its way to independence.
They, along with the other
residents of Slovenia, established the
sovereign Slovenian nation. And yet
when independent Slovenia began to
function as a state, it required of them
a different process for the acquisition of
citizenship than their ‘hosts.’ More than
15 percent of ‘immigrants’ from the republics
of the former Yugoslavia – and
even some of their descendants born
in Slovenia – were erased from the ‘active’
register of residents in the administration
offices that provide residents
with personal documents (and became
known in the international media as
‘the erased’). Many of them lost their
homes, jobs, social networks, and the
only homeland they had.
The patronizing notion that Slovenia
is the host country and immigrants are
guests, additionally distorts the attitude
of the state and the wider public to the
rights and position of immigrants, at
the same time distorting the self-image
of the immigrants themselves and
their own awareness about their rights
and position. These immigrants are not
guests in Slovenia. Slovenia may have
hosted refugees, foreign consultants, political
and other delegations, but it can
hardly be said to host the workers that
pay taxes and other contributions into
state coffers and upon whom the Slovenian
economy directly relies. 4 Rather
than the inappropriate and misleading
term of host society/country, I use the
terms receiving society/country, majority
society, etc.
Tolerance or Respect?
Otherness provokes feelings of doubt,
caution and reserve but also, often
enough, resistance and aggression that