Paper short abstract:

On December the 21st 2007 one of the most grievous borders of Europe, the one between Slovenia and north-eastern Italy, has definitively fallen down. Here we are presenting three generations’s narratives in Topolo/Topolove village, living with the border in different ways. Some people elaborated strategies to bypass it; some others have built up a contrasting ethnicity, and a “structural nostalgia” and eventually part of the population in the process of dissolving this cultural essence.

Paper long abstract:

On December the 21st 2007 one of the most grievous and torn borders of Europe, the one between Slovenia and north-eastern Italy, has definitively fallen down, absorbing the Republic of Slovenia into the Schengen area. What was once seen as a border between two irreducible worlds - the border between East and West - since the eighties is considered as one of the most osmotic boundary between the two Europes.

The iconicity of this boundary (Michael Herzfeld 1997) presents two sides, apparently opposite one another, contrasting close vs open, but functional both to the construction of the respective national identities as well as to the dynamics between national state and minorities. It is not a case that the Slovenian people settled along the border between the region Friuli Venezia Giulia and Slovenia are defined as "ethnic minority". This term is dense and full of contrasts when close to the border, becoming meaningless when looking at it from Rome or Naples. The Topolo'/Topolove village has been separated from the Isonzo Valley - its natural agricultural and exchange outlet - by the border set in 1947.

Here I'am presenting three generations's narratives, that have lived with the border in different ways. Some people elaborated strategies to bypass it; some others have built up a contrasting ethnicity, intentional isolation and a "structural nostalgia" (Michael Herzfeld 1997); and eventually part of the population in the process of dissolving this cultural essence. Similarities and differences become differently articulated symbols of the past and of the future.