Slovenia

906 Words2 Pages

Slovenia was a part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the First World War along with Serbs and Croatians. During the Second World War, the nation was invaded and disintegrated. Slovene decided to join Yugoslavia again which was soon renamed as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. However, many Slovene people disagreed with this decision. Many of them thought that Yugoslavia was really dominated and progressive. The communist killed many Slovene people who were suspected for being the opposed communist leadership. As a result, these murders led fear among people. Some people started moving out from Slovenia in search of protections and a prosperous life. One of articles in HASA (Historical Archives of Slovenians in Australia) website also explained that during the Communist regime, people lacked of freedom of speech and there was a mass killing. Hence, Slovene people fled to neighboring countries. Birsa (1994) also explained that high unemployment rate becomes another dominant factor which led Slovene to flee.
Slovene people started to immigrate to Australia after America had implemented the Immigration Act in 1924. This Immigration Act set the annual limited number of immigrants who could enter the US as permanent settlers. However, it is quite difficult to identify the exact number of Slovene people who came to Australia. It is because Slovene just gained its independence in 1991. So, Slovene was hidden under the name of Yugoslavia before that. Another reason is because some people didn’t want to disclose their true identity. They would rather to say that they came either from Italy or Austria. They believed that those two countries were more prestigious-sounded than Slovenia. According to the Department of Immigration...

... middle of paper ...

...ovene immigrants who came to Melbourne on 18 August 1950. He traced back his parents’ stories and explained how grateful they were for being in Australia. The foods were very cheap and the country was nice. They called Australia as the “lucky and rich country of peace and freedom”. Another story is coming from Ivanka Skof who came to Australia in 1966 when she was 37 years old. She came to Australia together with her family. In her opinion, Australia is a nice country but lacked of culture. So, she along with her family built clubs where they could still maintain Slovene culture and customs.
In conclusion, Slovene migrants are happy for being in Australia. Their main objective to get a better life is succeeded. However, Jupp (2001) said that the active Slovene community members are declining as there are only few migrants coming to Australia over the last 20 years.

Open Document