Constructing Border Ethnic Identities along the Frontier of Central and Eastern Europe - A Research Note

Abstract

This paper is based on the results of the cross-cultural comparative ENRI-EAST project, and aims to explore the various aspects of people's national and ethnic affiliations and the social psychological characteristics of national and diaspora identity among ethnic minorities living along the Eastern border of the EU. The goal of our approach is to reconstruct the image of the national identity, which is created through everyday observations, attitudes and value judgments in the individual's mind, as well as the image, which is organized into a coherent identity as some sort of collective stock of knowledge at societal level. Also, we can learn what kind of broader political consequences, value dilemmas, or perhaps tensions may accompany the mechanism of how ethnic diasporas and migrant groups create their own national identity in the context of their home and host nation. Our analyses include four ethnic dyads in the border region of Europe: Lithuanians in Russia, and Russians in Lithuania, Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Ukraine, Belarusians in Poland and Poles in Byelorussia, Slovaks in Hungary and Hungarians in Slovakia.