ABSTRACT
Rijeka is a deep-water port at the northern end of Croatia’s Adriatic coast. The town’s name means ‘river’. The city has been fiercely contested over centuries: after Hungarian rule, it was part of Italy from 1918 to 1947 (when it was known as Fiume, also meaning ‘river’), then became Yugoslavian. A substantial population change followed. The primary school I visited, although in new buildings, was celebrating its 100th anniversary: it would have been Hungarian, Italian, Yugoslav and Croatian in turn, and the grandparents of the group of 11 to 14-year-olds I spoke with would probably all have been born outside the city. The young people were all born between April 1998 and November 2000. Sanja L’s ( 11) parents were both lecturers in higher education; Želimir Ž’s ( 13) were a businessman and a teacher; Svjetlana M’s ( 13) father was a school janitor and her mother a travel agent; Petar M’s ( 14) parents were a building engineer and a teacher. They discussed their parents’ experiences in the war of independence (1991-5), and I asked if they thought these might make their parents think differently about Croatia.
