AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
between groups, mutual acceptance and openness of groups, or
vice versa, rejection and closure. Marital preferences simply tell
us which groups they communicate with and with whom they do
not communicate.
3 Methods of empirical research
The research of the marital preferences was carried out among
the inhabitants of Prievidza – the town in the west part of
Slovakia. We chose this city for our research for several reasons.
In terms of the number of foreigners Prievidza ranks among
typical Slovak towns and it is a town with a wide range of
foreigners in terms of the reason of their arrival as well as their
country of origin. The share of foreigners in the total
composition of the population (1.73%) is comparable to the
average of Slovak population. Almost 97% of the total
population (47 thousand) are accounted for by Slovak
nationality, 62% of the population has Roman Catholic
confession (another 29% of the population is without confession,
2% are Lutherans). In 2014 the research of local integration of
foreigners was carried out in the town (Hlinčíková - Chudžíková
et al., 2014).
We carried out a questionnaire survey during 2016 and in the
first half of 2017. To obtain the data we used a questionnaire
(with more than 50 questions), which was filled out by
respondents themselves or we filled it out after an interview with
them. Through the questionnaire, we tried to find out how
respondents define and evaluate a mixed marriage in general,
within which groups (defined for example on the basis of
ethnicity, religiosity, race, nationality, cultural specifics, spatial
distance) and specific subgroups they are willing or unwilling to
tolerate the crossing of inter-group boundaries by mixed
marriage and why. The importance of ethnic, religious,
linguistic, racial, national, state or continental identity in
marriage preferences of respondents has already been indicated
by a survey conducted on a sample of 5 respondents that we
realized prior to the start of the research itself. The necessary
information was found in relation to the respondents themselves,
as well as the respondents' recommendations when choosing
their children's partners. We therefore considered the use of open
questions as important. This method gives respondents the
opportunity to think freely, to create their own categories and to
justify their views. The obtained material was then subjected to a
qualitative and quantitative analysis, following the contents of
the testimonies themselves, their structure and the frequency of
occurrence of individual statements.
Several opinion polls in Slovakia (e.g.
Vašečka 2009,
Letavajová 2001) confirm that the perception and acceptance of
something different is dependent on the social characteristics of
the respondents. For this reason, we also observed the influence
of gender, age, and respondents' education, which we perceive in
this research as variables. When selecting respondents, we
applied the so called quota principle, thus we have reached
approximately the same percentage of respondents in the
following categories: gender (male - female), age (up to 30
years, 30 to 50, and over 50) and highest level of education
(primary, secondary without a graduation, secondary with a
graduation and university education). We received information
from a total of 221 respondents, out of which 109 were men and
112 women. Respondents are of Slovak nationality (with the
exception of 7 respondents), 71% of respondents are Christians,
22% of respondents declared they are without confession. The
direct answers of respondents are given in the text in italics.
4 Results
In the beginning, we found out what connotations associated
with the subject of our research - the term "mixed marriage"-
respondents have. Respondents expressed their opinions after
being asked open-ended questions and in most cases gave a
number of explanations. This term was explained by most of
them as a combination of racially different people (37% of
respondents). Another most frequent connotation was ethnic
(national) (35%) and religious difference (27%), the difference
of partners in terms of citizenship (partnership with a foreigner)
and finally, the difference defined by respondents as cultural.
Statistically insignificant, but interesting from the perspective of
content were ideas associated with homosexual couples, or vice
versa with the relationship between individuals of different
sexes, or a difference from the point of view of socio-economic
characteristics of individuals. 4 of the respondents defined a
mixed marriage directly as a “problem” or as “everything that
goes beyond the traditional Slovak marriage”. Relation of the
statements to age, gender or education was not confirmed in this
case.
4.1 Preference of a partner from a similar group
Realizing an affiliation to a certain group and at the same time a
sense of difference from the other groups is evident from several
respondents' formulations. It mainly refers to testimonies
containing plural: “we are Christians”, ”we are different” or
possessive pronoun “our”: “our race”, “only our religion”,
”close to our culture”.
More than a half (56%) of respondents
believe that people should find a partner similar to them and the
group to which they belong. This opinion was expressed in
approximately equal ratio by both men and women, respondents
over 50 years old inclined to this more often and also people
with secondary education with graduation. 34% of the
respondents opposed to this claim. The local endogamy, namely
the preference of a partner from close surrounding, was
examined in the following question. Here we noticed the
opposite trend. Agreement with the claim, that people should
find a partner mainly in their immediate vicinity, was expressed
by 30% of respondents and the disagreement was given by 56%
of respondents. Female respondents and university-educated
people were more inclined to disagree. It is obvious that the
choice of a partner within their own group is still essential for
the respondents, but it is not exclusively related to spatial
proximity.
By using general questions we
examined whether the
respondents perceive some of the particular types of a mixed
marriage as specific and whether they have a special attitude
towards one of them. In these responses we observed
considerable variability and a wide range of opinions. Many
respondents stated that none of the mixed marriages were
perceived by them as specific, they generally perceive them as
a negative aspect and especially marriages with Muslims or
Arabs are perceived as unacceptable. As an example, we can
mention the following answers: “A partnership with a person
outside "a civilized world" with a partner from a civilized world,
since in most cases it is a formality for the purpose of gaining
citizenship in a civilized country.”, “Rather negative, I think that
various races should not mix.”, “I have a positive attitude
towards mixed marriages - as long as it does not concern my
family.”, “Based on several published cases I would be a little
afraid of a marriage with a Muslim.”, “ With the Negros
because their wooing looks like they would hit a woman on her
head and pull her into a cave.”,
“Rather an insane mind.
A person, who does not find a partner in his or her own
background, has a personality disorder.”, “Christian and
Muslim, no, because it is mostly the Christian who has to
convert.”, “When two people understand each other there is
nothing to deal with.”, “If it's not my marriage, let everyone do
what they find as appropriate. I do not really approve of it.”,
“They are all people and I do not condemn anybody because of
their religion, race or nationality.”
4.2 Preferences of partner according to citizenship
Another block of questions was to find out how the respondents
rate the marriages with a partner from a group, whose difference
we defined by one of the specific categories: nationality,
religion, language, race, citizenship and continent. In this part of
the research we examined from which particular groups the
respondents are willing/unwilling to accept their partners and
why. Only 66% of the respondents, who answered this question,
would accept the partner explicitly from European countries or
the EU countries. The partner from African continent was
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