| In 1992, the newborn Republic of Slovenia had to decide how to become an independent nation-state in the wake of the Yugoslav breakup. Decisions had to be made by the state to determine who was allowed to remain as residents within the borders of Slovenia and who was not. This dissertation explores the aftermath of this process and introduces a human rights abuse, The Erasing. A symptom of misjudgments and systematic failures, the Erasing produced people who had been secretly removed from the legal residency rolls, but never told. These people are known as the izbrisani or The Erased. The historical and theoretical implications of this act are explored as a new type of political space outside of the inclusion/exclusion dyad. Through analyses of social care data, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and ethnographic interviews with the izbrisani, a spatial regime emerged that has implications for subject/agency studies. Statistical analysis characterizes who became erased. Participatory Action Research is used to understand the institutional response to the Erasing, and biographical writing illuminates the personal geographies of the izbrisani. The Erasing and its consequences expose the state-level need for sovereignty, the individual need for autonomy, and the balancing forces between those needs as a set of social practices found throughout human social space. |
