| Note: | Abstract: The practices of crossing the border in the Upper-Adriatic area after World War II can be understood in depth if we analyze the dynamics of the urban-rural relationship in a gen-der and long-term perspective. The rural populations of Gorizia, Trieste, and Istria found a market for their agricultural surplus in the main city centers of the Austrian Littoral, where women played a primary role in the sale of produce and in some proto-industrial activities (pac-kaging and sale of bread). Women’s crossing of the border was not problematic as long as it remained within the traditional relationship between the city and the countryside, and adhered to the model of daily commuting. In socialist Yugoslavia women continued to sell their products in a capitalist country such as Italy, without endangering the ideological and political balance of the two neighboring societies. The only actors that sought to address this issue were Slove-nian middle-class leaders, who attempted to interfere and limit this commerce by way of natio-nal defence measures. Women’s crossing of the ethnic border in a private sphere, which was free of any possible external control, posed a threat to the integrity of the national body to which women belonged. |
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