Search

The article focuses upon the historic analysis of the process of national, cultural and linguistic homogenisation as a foundation of the social and political functioning of the nation state and the modern transnational European Union. It ties the historic homogenisation of the society and culture to the migration context, to the moving of people and of borders that historically establish cultures of mixedness. Conceptually, the article links to the definition of a culture of mixedness as defined by Sedmak (2011) and the concepts of transculturality and cultural hybridity, presented in depth in Slovenia by Juric Pahor (2012). The article draws attention to the contemporary migration discourses which disclose political, educational and media amnesia. Such amnesia enables migrations to be defined in the European context exclusively as a contemporary phenomenon of immigration and cultures of mixedness to be understood as something new and problematic. Both the forgetting and the premeditated denial of the long history of mass emigration from the European continent, as well as the migration within it, enable the increase of contemporary discourses that present migration as a threat and a danger of immigration. Considering the economic, demographic and spatial possibilities that the European continent objectively provides for the settlement of immigrants, the key question is what and who do contemporary migrations endanger. The analysis shows that they primarily endanger the idea of purity because, just as they did in the past, migrations bring with them the inevitable mixing of people, cultures and languages. The article also shows example of mixed identities from the studies of emigration and immigration in the Slovenian territory. For the recognisability of mixed cultures, people and identities, it is of key importance that they be heard. The voices of individual members of a culture of mixedness and their definitions of uniqueness of their personal, intimate identity and cultural mixedness must be recognised socially and politically, outside the scientific and political or cultural categorisations of homogeneousness. The cases of self-definition of mixed and multiple identities are a way of undermining the concept of culture as something monolithic and internally consistent, and alert us that members of any "culture", even mixed, constantly question its meanings and individually-produced varieties of these meanings, as well as question of "foreigners " - not just those around them, but the "foreigner " inside them as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]