Paper short abstract:

The paper will explore the spatial dimension of rituals and celebrations and their role in Slovene diasporic community in Argentina. In the diasporic and transnational contexts, notions of 'roots' (origin), homeland and belonging are symbolically asserted in religious as well as political rituals.

Paper long abstract:

In the paper I will analyse the spatial and symbolic dimensions of rituals, celebrations and festivities and their role in Slovene diasporic community in Argentina. After the Second World War and the communist revolution in Yugoslavia, thousands of Slovenes were killed or exiled and a large part of them migrated to Argentina. In Argentina Slovene migrants and their descendants established a diasporic community with complex formal organisation, churches, schools and associations. The pervasive struggle for preserving and affirming 'roots' and belonging is still going on in the community, even among descendants of migrants, and has even resulted in travels, transnational connections and recent return migrations to Slovenia.

Social memory of traumas, political exile and migration, mythology of origin and homeland, and even aspiration of eventual return are central to numerous religious, public and political rituals, celebrations and festivities. In this paper I will explore how spatio-cultural concepts of 'roots' (origin), homeland and belonging are symbolically asserted in these rituals and how they are redefined in the process of contemporary return migration.