Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to explore the configuration of social and self-identity among descendants of Slovenian migrants in Patagonia, Argentina, through literature, in the context of re-identification and comunalization processes of actors of the Slovenian community in Argentina.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of this paper is to present some preliminary results of my exploration about the configuration and (re)definition of social and self-identity among descendants of Slovenian migrants in Argentina through literature.

In the last decades, some descendants from migrants of three Slovenian migration flows to Argentina (1878-1888; between World Wars; after Second World War) began to publish self-funded books where they usually narrate or represent their families' migration and integration trajectories in Argentina, as well as their own process of adscription to Slovenianess.

I intend to analyse written life stories produced by descendants of the second and third Slovenian migration waves and to explore, from a comparative perspective, the ways in which the descendants represent in autobiographical works their migration stories, identifications, belongings and loyalties. Although the stories are diverse and reflect highly personal views of the authors, I consider them valuable material for ethnographic research, because such non-hegemonic voices are representative of a wider historical significance, the Slovenian migration processes to Argentina.

My hypothesis is that these literary sources are a creative way to negotiate personal and social identities, memories and history, mostly produced in the context of re-identification and comunalization processes of some actors with no adscription continuity to a Slovenian community in Argentina, as a strategy to reaffirm their personal bonds to their Slovenian ancestors and to represent themselves as a part of a Slovenian imagined community in Argentina.