MOBILIZATION OF THE “OTHER” IN SLOVENE NATIONAL IDENTITY DURING THE 2015 REFUGEE CRISIS

Abstract

In the aftermath of the 2015 European refugee crisis, a wave of scholarship has considered Eastern European populist leaderships to explain these states’ policies toward refugee influx. This article challenges these accounts by contending that relationship between influx of foreign nationals in the name of migrants into a national homeland and deteriorating national perceptions deserves greater attention to understand social strife within Slovene society against the flow. To this end, it examines Slovene intelligentsia’s policy of construction of Slovene national identity and its stereotyping Balkan ‘Other’ during the breaking up of Yugoslavia. Concretely, it applies postmodern approach that identities are fluid and benefiting from modernist theories on nationalism to explain deteriorated perceptions of post-communist Slovene society toward distinct Slovene national homeland in the time of refugee influx. The article finds that Slovene national identity that was constructed during the secession from Yugoslavia under the influences of europeanization and globalization has been re-constructed during and aftermath of the 2015 refugee crisis and the Other of Slovene identity mobilized or changed from the Balkan to the Middle East and Islam and that can be investigated through developments, a) changing perceptions of the Slovene nationals, b) Slovenia’s new asylum law, c) collaboration of Slovenia and the Balkan states d) discourses of prominent Slovenes and social media groups.