Constructing border ethnic identities along the frontier of Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The analysis is based on an empirical sociological study (interplay of European, National and Regional Identities: nations between states along the new eastern borders of the European Union Project) aimed at exploring the various aspects of people’s diaspora affiliations and their ethnic and national identity on the Eastern borderland of Europe. We surveyed ethnic minority groups in eight countries along the frontier of Central Eastern Europe. With the ethnic minorities having a similar ethnic status along the border, we demonstrated how ethnic minorities ‘deal’ with their minority status in their ‘host’ country. The analysis reconstructs the image of the ethnic minority at the societal level. We model personal and collective ethnic identities as a stock of knowledge based on cognitive and affective components, and test them along the different ethnic dyads. The paper shows how successive generations are able to transfer the pattern of ethnic identity within the family, and also how language use practices and personal networks play a role in preserving personal ethnic identity.

Keywords:

• ethnic identity
• borderland
• diaspora
• Eastern Europe
• ethnic dyad
• national identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The ENRI-East project focused only on constitutive national ethnic minorities, which have a mother country across the border. Therefore, the Roma minority, which is a transnational ethnic group by descent, despite its size and importance, had to abandon the research.

2. The sample size of the ethnic groups in the given countries was 400–800. In the interest of later interpretation of differences between groups, and to give equal weight in all the groups in developing complex indicators, we ‘changed’ the sample size to 400 in all the ethnic groups. We did this through simple weighting.

3. It is important to note that such differences can be explained by the distribution of age in the sample. The Slovak sample is older, and their parents married earlier, when the border changed often. The respondents could not remember precisely whether their parents were born in the mother country or whether they were members of ethnic minorities living in territories annexed by Hungary.

4. See the discussion of use of mother tongue in this section.

5. We can see ethnic Slovaks in Hungary are separated into two special groups. The first one consists of people living in closed Slovakian communities. The second one has an ethnically mixed network.

Additional information

Funding

This work was a FP7-SSH collaborative research project, funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (2008–2011).

Notes on contributors

Antal Örkény

ANTAL ÖRKÉNY is Professor of Sociology in the Department of ELTE UNESCO Minority Studies at Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary.

Mária Székelyi

MÁRIA SZÉKELYI is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary.