Launch of the new ARIS-funded project »Migrants’ emplacement at the micro-level: Restaurants as the contact zones«

Launch of the new ARIS-funded project »Migrants’ emplacement at the micro-level: Restaurants as the contact zones«

On January 8, members of the new ARIS-funded project »Migrants’ emplacement at the micro-level: Restaurants as the contact zones« held their first meeting to discuss the aim and objectives of the project as well as the preliminary individual topics to be addressed within the project. The project aims to investigate migrants’ social emplacement at the micro-level by focusing on the restaurants as institutions that have, throughout time, sustained various groups of migrants.The project team will therefore analyze the economic, social, political and cultural aspects of the process within which migrants meet, work, socialize, and negotiate with members of the receiving societies through work and life in the restaurant Among the members of the project team are also five members of the Heritage on the margins program group (Martina Bofulin (the PI), Nataša Rogelja Caf, Špela Ledinek Lozej, Eva Fekonja in Ana Reberc).  

On February 17, the project is organizing the first colloquium dedicated to the eating establishments run by Albanian-speaking migrants in Slovenia. Mladen Zobec (University of Graz) will give a talk titled »Ethnic economy in Jugoslav-type socialism? Sweet shops and bakeries of Albanian migrants in Slovenia« and will discuss the emergence of sweet shops and bakeries run by people who, in the era of socialism, moved to the Republic of Slovenia from Kosovo and the Republic of Macedonia.