Constructing "new" minorities: : an evaluation of approaches to minority protection in post-socialist Slovenia from the perspective of liberal multiculturalism.
Documents and Treatises: Journal of Ethnic Studies, 2012, 67: 100-123
This paper deals with the construction of "new" minorities as opposed to "traditionally settled" minorities in Slovenia. Its aim is to conduct an evaluation of the foundations for minority protection in Slovenia from the perspective of liberal multiculturalism, as formulated by the political philosopher Will Kymlicka. The author argues that the distinction between "new" and "old" minorities in Slovenia, which takes for its basic criterion the principle of autochthony, cannot find any basis in the target approach of minority protection that is suggested by Kymlicka. The reason is that the members of former Yugoslav minorities were in most cases retroactively defined as immigrants, although most of them had settled in Slovenia before the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The paper also explores possible approaches to minority protection according to liberal multicultural policies in cases, where some minorities do not "fit" the traditional definition of old and new minorities.