Instrumental and cultural considerations in constructing European identity among ethnic minority groups in Lithuania in a generational perspective

Abstract

Research on European identity focuses mainly on majority populations in Western European countries without differentiating among specific population groups and generations, and, above all, disregarding ethnic minority groups living in Central and Eastern Europe. This paper addresses this gap by investigating the development of European identity among three ethnic minority groups in Lithuania: Belarusians, Poles, and Russians. Theoretically, the project is based on the instrumental approach, which argues that European identity is closely related to perceived benefits from “being European,” and on the cultural approach, which holds a common history, ancestry, and culture responsible for the development of European identity. Existing research has, above all, emphasized the importance of instrumental considerations. Analyzing qualitative interviews collected in the FP7 research project “ENRI-East,” the paper compares how young and adult members of ethnic minority groups construct European identity due to “instrumental” and “cultural” considerations. The results show that both instrumental and cultural considerations are relevant and further development of European identity depends on which age group or ethnic minority group an individual belongs to.

Keywords:

• European identity
• ethnic minorities
• young people
• identity construction
• generations

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the EU, the coordinator of the research project, Alexander Chvorostov, from the Institute of Advanced Studies, Vienna, as well as all experts who were involved in the project. Additionally, I would like to say a big thank you to Evgenia Samoilova from the University of Bremen for her expertise and help in interpreting the empirical results for the Russian minority in Lithuania.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Jiménez et al. (2004) described a third approach, which they labeled “civic theory” and refers to a commitment to duties and rights and to shared norms and values. I did not find it useful, because duties and rights cannot be distinguished from “instrumental considerations” and norms and values cannot be distinguished from cultural considerations.

2 Using translated instead of original transcripts may be considered a limitation.

Additional information

Funding

Data used for this article were collected in ENRI-East – European, National, and Regional Identities, an FP7-SSH collaborative research project (2008–2011) funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme (FP7-SSH grant number 217227).