Europe And Ethnicity

Considers the complications of race, religion, sexuality, and gender in Europeanizing from below

This comprehensive survey of ethnic groups of Europe reveals the dynamic process of ethnic identity and the relationship of ethnic groups to modern states. Part of a five-volume series on ethnic groups around the world, Ethnic Groups of Europe: An Encyclopedia provides detailed descriptions of more than 100 European ethnic and national groups. Each entry provides an overview of the group as well as in-depth information on the group's origins and early history, cultural life, and recent developments. Among the information presented for each group are global and national population figures and accounts of geographical distribution, diaspora populations, the group's historic homeland, predominant religions and languages, and related groups. The entries also highlight places, people, and events of particular importance to each group, and sidebars introduce related topics of interest. Throughout the text, special attention is focused on the relationship between ethnicity and nationalism. An explanation of the methodology used for selecting the ethnic groups in the encyclopedia is also provided, as is an introductory essay on the topic of ethnicity in Europe.

The 1990s have seen an upsurge in ethnic tensions in many parts of Europe. Europe and Ethnicity suggests the main reasons are to be found in the decisions taken during the first world and at Versailles. * An introductory chapter analyzes the context of the war with particular reference to regions and states where the national and ethnic questions were particularly complex and intransigent * Subsequent chapters present case studies from arenas of conflict: Ireland to Yugoslavia; the Middle East to the Baltic states; Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Europe and Ethnicity confirms the mixed legacy of the period for the ethnic stability of the areas examined, while taking into account the impact of the Second World War and the ending of the Cold War.

A broad-ranging study that explores the complex relationship between ethnicity and democratization, focusing on specific case studies including France, Spain, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Russia, Albania and Hungary. Marrying the empirical and theoretical, the book begins by conceptualizing the nature of ethnicity and relating these ideas to different theories of democracy and democratization. The contributors locate ethnic experiences within a series of common frameworks to shed light on key issues such as: * the effect of democratization and authoritarian rule on ethnic tensions * the extent to which ethnicity is constructed as an ideological tool * whether democracy can only function if all citizens are fully assimilated.

What shapes the cultural, political and ideological values of young people living in Southeastern Europe? Which identities matter to them? How are their values changing, and how can they be changed? Who is changing them? Europe’s periphery is the testing ground for the success of European values and identities. The future stability and political coherence of the Union will be determined in large measure by identity issues in this region. This book examines the ways in which ethnic and national values and identities have been surpassed as the overriding focus in the lives of the region’s youth. Employing bottom-up, ethnographic, and interview-based approaches, it explores when and where ethnic and national identification processes become salient. Using intra-national and international comparisons of youth populations of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia, contributors uncover the mechanisms by which ethnic identities are evoked, reproduced and challenged. In addition to exploring political, regional cultural generational and class identities, the contributors examine wider questions of European unity. This volume offers a corrective to previous thinking about youth ethnic identities and will prove useful to scholars in political science and sociology studying issues of ethnic and national identities and nationalism, as well as youth cultures and identities.

Nation states and minorities resort more and more to violence when safeguarding their political interests. Although the violence in the Middle East has been dominating world politics for some time now, European governments have had their share of ethnic violence to contend with as this volume demonstrates. And as the case studies show, ranging as they do from the Basque Country to Chechnya, from Northern Ireland to Bosnia-Herzegovina, this applies to western Europe as much as to eastern Europe. However, in contrast to other parts of the world, instances where political struggles for power and social inclusion between minorities and majorities lead to full-fledged inter-ethnic warfare are still the exception; in the majority of cases conflicts are successfully de-escalated and even resolved. In a comprehensive conclusion, the volume offers a theoretical framework for the development of strategies to deal with violent ethnic conflict.

This detailed account of ethnic minority politics explains when and how European institutions successfully used norms and incentives to shape domestic policy toward ethnic minorities and why those measures sometimes failed. Going beyond traditional analyses, Kelley examines the pivotal engagement by the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the Council for Europe in the creation of such policies. Following language, education, and citizenship issues during the 1990s in Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, and Romania, she shows how the combination of membership conditionality and norm-based diplomacy was surprisingly effective at overcoming even significant domestic opposition. However, she also finds that diplomacy alone, without the offer of membership, was ineffective unless domestic opposition to the proposed policies was quite limited. As one of the first systematic analyses of political rather than economic conditionality, the book illustrates under what conditions and through what mechanisms institutions influenced domestic policy in the decade, preparing the way for the historic enlargement of the European Union. This thoughtful and thorough discussion, based on case studies, quantitative analysis, and interviews with nearly one hundred policymakers and experts, tells an important story about how European organizations helped facilitate peaceful solutions to ethnic tensions--in sharp contrast to the ethnic bloodshed that occurred in the former Yugoslavia during this time. This book's simultaneous assessment of soft diplomacy and stricter conditionality advances a long overdue dialogue between proponents rational choice models and social constructivists. As political requirements increasingly become part of conditionality, it also provides keen policy insights for the strategic choices made by actors in international institutions.

The first history of Europe since 1945 which examines the continent from a mainly ethnic perspective, Panikos Panayi has drawn on years of research to produce this comparative and exploratory account of the experience of ethnic minorities in post-war Europe. The coverage encompasses all categories of minorities including immigrants and refugees, localised ethnic groupings and dispersed peoples. Geographically, the scope of the book ranges from the Atlantic to the Urals and the Mediterranean to the Arctic, looking in particular at the Soviet Union, Britain, France, Germany, Romania, Cyprus and the former Yugoslavia.