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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Natalia Waechter
Natalia Waechter*
Affiliation:
Department of Pedagogy, Education and Socialization Research, Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Germany
*
*Email: natalia.waechter@lmu.de
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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 identityethnic minoritiesyoung peopleidentity constructiongenerations
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , July 2017 , pp. 651 - 668
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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