Pragmatism and Non-national Perception of Homeland by Younger Generations of Slovenian Emigrants

Abstract

Abstract The article researches the subjective perception of migration, the reasons for emigration and the conditions for return, and the perception of homeland by recent emigrants from Slovenia. Since the 2008–2015 economic crisis, there has been a strong stream of net emigration and brain drain from Slovenia. By means of semi-structured interviews with recent emigrants, we found out that their prevailing reasons for migration were economic, their view of the selected location pragmatic, and their subjective perception of homeland mostly reduced to the narrow social network and world of everyday life. Only a smaller part of the interviewees identifies itself with Slovenia as an organised cultural and political space. Therefore, under the condition of the free movement of labour within the EU and a semi-peripheral position of the Slovene economy, new waves of net emigration from Slovenia can be expected in the future, especially in periods of economic crises.