Filigree in Istria: From the "brotherhood and unity" to multiculturalism

Abstract

The aim of the paper is a diachronic research of the Albanian minority engaged with filigree production and the relationships (of power) between minorities present today in Istria. The text is motivated by three factors. Firstly because of the prevailing bipolar relation between the Croatian majority and Italian (autochthon) minority this opens up spaces for research of the position of other minorities.  Further, the inquiry for collaboration came from the community and finally by spacious and temporal determinants of the researched subject being Rovinj and Poreč, two cities where the authors lived and which are closely linked to the craft and the period in which the younger author spent her earliest childhood and the older remembers the school motto being: “to build up a comprehensive, free, creative and socialistic personality”. Starting from the idea of “brotherhood and equality” using ethnological methodologies we discover the ambivalent position of the filigree workers/Albanian minority through time and which we articulate through the prism of minority issues and  today’s concept of multiculturalism and interculturalism in Istria.