Slovenian Migration Institute (SMI) at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) is involved in interdisciplinary research of international migration. Researchers are focused on emigration and immigration issues, analyses of return migration, ethnicity, migration and integration processes and policies, cultural-artistic production of migrants and different methodological and theoretical research approaches to migration. Their disciplines span from the humanities to social sciences – historiography, literary history, art history, ethnology, anthropology, geography, cultural studies, political studies and sociology. Researchers are involved in international projects and strive to compare their own research with related Slovenian and foreign research methods and results.
SMI issues the international scientific journal Dve domovini/Two Homelands and the monograph series Migracije (Migrations). SMI also organises international symposiums and consultations on the topic of emigration and immigration, culture and education. Researchers present their research results at public lectures, exhibitions, with films and other visual materials. They cooperate with various educational institutions and are therefore actively included in education process. Researchers of SMI have - together with University of Nova Gorica and other partner institutions from Europe and Africa - developed an international MA study in Migration and Intercultural Relations.
Specific fields of research include emigration from Slovenia, immigration to Slovenia, return migration, migration and integration policy, culture and art (cultural heritage and its digitalisation, emigration and immigration literature, visual arts), history of emigration, spatial, ethnic, cultural, gender and professional identity, acculturation, socialisation, re-socialisation, multiculturalism, assimilation, re-integration, forced or political migrations, emigrant communities, descendants of emigrants, life stories, women studies, contemporary labour migrations.
Slovenian Migration Institute cooperates with the following institutions and associations:
AEMI - Association of European Migration Institutions
INMI - International Network of Migration Institutions
The Society for Slovene Studies
University of Stavanger
The Norwegian Emigration Center, Stavanger
University of Nova Gorica
Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
Office of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia for Slovenes Abroad
Slovene Ethnographic Museum
The National Education Institute
Portal for Slovenians abroad
