Objective
In western Europe the debate about ethnic minorities and multi-culturalism has clarified the distinction between two ideal types of membership in the nation state, those based on conceptions of ius sanguinis and those of ius soli. While most countries have a mixture of both, the balance between rights of belonging based on religious, linguistic, and other forms of ethnic identity are clearly very different from those founded upon the happenstance of birthplace.
The objectives of this research concern the historical and societal presence of Russians who live in the former Soviet states of Ukraine, Bielorus, Moldova, Azerbaidjhan, and Kazakhstan; and the investigation of how strongly these Russians associate themselves with their home- and host-land.
Because these Russians reside in foreign countries, the feelings of their hosts towards them, and other Russians in general, will also be investigated.
The central theoretical question is to understand how this process operates in different settings where specific histories and patterns of economic change will shape the potential for conflict. At one extreme lies the horror of ethnic cleansing with an enormous potential for the generation of ethnic conflict and refugees; at the other, there is clearly the much more desirable outcome that common rights of citizenship serve to relegate differences of religion, language and ethnicity to the private domain, that is, remove their potential for affecting civic rights and loyalties. Which of these alternative paths of development will occur is regarded as the product of a set of processes, each of which will be assessed in this research.
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
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3584 CS Utrecht
Netherlands