‘Many Nice People’: the nation‐state, post‐Fordism, and the policy norm of flexible ethnic relations in Estonia

Abstract

This article uses historical research and ethnographic fieldwork to ask how policymakers interpret historical, political, and economic factors to construct inter‐ethnic communities that would bring security and economic growth to an enlarged European Union (EU). Focusing on post‐Soviet Estonia's ethnic integration policy, the article argues that ‘flexibility’ applies not only to post‐Fordist, individualized subjects, but also to relations between subjects of different nationalities that policymakers want to form organically in service sector employment. The article explains how this policy construction emerged in light of Estonia's historical trajectory from 1991 to 2001 and demonstrates how it conceptually resolved the fundamental tension between the territorialized nation‐state and deterritorialized global capitalism. A visual media campaign entitled ‘Many Nice People: Integrating Estonia’ captured the essence of this construction, which obscured how the Estonian nation‐state marginalized minorities while integrating into the EU.

Keywords:

• globalization
• policy
• subjectivity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the many nice people who worked on this media campaign in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Their kind assistance made the article possible. The article also benefited from presentations given at the University of Florida, Lund University, Malmö University, and Södertörns University. Merje Kuus provided helpful commentary. Luna Vives and Sarah Zell provided excellent research and editorial assistance.

Notes

1. For my ethnographic fieldwork (1999–2001), I worked voluntarily in the Non‐Estonians Integration Foundation, which functioned as the central hub in the integration policy community. This opportunity gave me routine access to and helped me develop a good rapport with Estonian officials and administrators as well as with Nordic diplomats and officials from the EC, OSCE, and UNDP. My professional connections with them were further strengthened when on two occasions UNDP hired me to evaluate major ethnic integration projects funded by the EU and the Nordic and UK foreign ministries.

2. My interest in ‘community’ pivots on its role as an object to be produced through particular policy strategies. This use of the term differs from the rich ethnographies of post‐socialist Europe exploring transformations and continuities in community life since the late 1980s (Berdahl 1999, Wolfe 2000, Hann 2002, Mandel and Humphrey 2002, Verdery 2003).