Economic crisis and the crisis of national identity in Slovenia: toward a new notion of social order

Abstract

This paper addresses the influence of the economic crisis on national identity in Slovenia. It first analyzes the creation of the contemporary national identity following independence in 1991 that was established in relation to a negatively perceived Balkan identity, which represented “the Other,” and in relation to a “superior” European identity that Slovenia aspired to. With the economic crisis, the dark corners of Slovenia’s “successful” post-socialist transition to democracy came to light. Massive layoffs of workers and the bankruptcies of once-solid companies engendered disdain for the political elites and sympathy for marginalized groups. The public blamed the elites for the country’s social and economic backsliding, and massive public protests arose in 2012. The aftermath of the protests was a growing need among the people for a new social paradigm toward solidarity. We show that in Slovenia the times of crisis were not times of growing nationalism and exclusion as social theory presupposes but, quite the contrary, they were times of growing solidarity among citizens and with the “Balkan Other.”

Keywords:

• economic crisis
• Slovenia
• national identity
• solidarity

Notes

1. For the first free elections in 1990, the Communist Party chose the slogan Europe Now!

2. The protests began on 15 October 2011, and then continued by “occupying” the Ljubljana Stock Exchange.

3. The so-called 15O movement’s slogan was “We are not goods in the hands of banks and politicians” (see http://www.njetwork.org/Nismo-blago-v-rokah-bank-in). As one of the reasons why it did not gain wider public support, Jereb (2011) argues that the form of protest was imported from abroad and thus failed to match the specific context of Slovenia. For more on the Erasure, see Dedić, Jalušič, and Zorn (2003) and Zorn and Čebron (2008).

4. Politbarometer is a poll conducted by The Public Opinion and Mass Communication Research Center (CJMMK) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana since 1996.

5. After 2008 Politbarometer included questions about the influence of the economic crisis on people’s life and work.

6. During the transition period, Slovenia was the slowest of the 10 Central and Eastern European candidate states to adopt a neoliberal economic system, with key firms remaining in the state’s hands. Under EU pressure successive governments have carried out privatizations over the past decade, which have not been very popular with the Slovenian electorate.

7. Since 2015 and the mass migration from the Middle East to Europe along the “Balkan route,” many refugees and migrants have crossed Slovenia. As a consequence, many Slovenians no longer think of migrants solely as Balkan migrant workers.