THE CHANGEABLE STATUS – TRANSFORMATION OF INTRANATIONAL ETHNICALLY MIXED MARRIAGES INTO INTERNATIONAL ONES
THE CHANGEABLE STATUS – TRANSFORMATION OF INTRANATIONAL ETHNICALLY MIXED MARRIAGES INTO INTERNATIONAL ONES

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with ethnically mixed marriages as with a special form of intercultural contact at the interpersonal level of the everyday life of ethnically mixed couples and with the issue of changing status of mixed marriages. The empirical study, dedicated to the phenomenon of mixed marriages, was limited to the multicultural and multilingual area of Slovene Istra, which excels due to its specific ethnic heterogeneity. The great socio-political changes that took place in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s (disintegration of once common national entity, Slovenia's attainment of independence, new political demarcation) led, however, to the involuntary change in the status of ethnically mixed marriages, which eventually transformed from intranational mixed marriages into international ones. If ethnically mixed families had been once faced primarily with the issues of interlingual and intercultural accommodation, they are now confronted with additional burdens of the partner and family life (phenomenon of split loyalties, increasing nationalism, permanent or temporary breaks in family ties.). Here, however some very diverse strategies of (mixed) families' survival and adaptation to the resulting social situation are exposed.

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