The article engages the recent literature on whiteness and East-West ethnic hierarchies in Europe with an Eastern European perspective. We analyze how German ethnicity expresses symbolic superiority in a multicultural region of Romania by tracing how non-ethnic Germans affiliate with the local German minority and sustain German associational life. Such dynamics unfold within institutions of the German minority but are amplified by mobility to Germany, transnational ties, and significant German investments. We focus on how a notion of a “better society” derives not only from regional economic development due to German investments and local German political leadership, but especially from civic initiatives associated with ethnic German minority actors. We thus show how such hierarchies of superiority become articulated from below, as non-Germans attach worth, opportunity, and social improvement to a presumed more progressive “German societal model.”

Salafism is an orthodox movement associated with political Islam that defines itself mainly through the negation of opposing ideologies and practices. Although a minority, Salafist movements have gained traction across parts of the Islamic world. This article examines an emerging branch of Salafism in Iranian Kurdistan (Known as Rojhelat). It employs narrative analysis to examine Sunni Kurds in Iran, with participants selected through purposive and maximum-variation sampling. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that Salafists advocate for a maximalist interpretation of Islam, envisioning a Quran-centric society where Da’wah and jihad are deemed essential for establishing an Islamic state. They attribute shifts in Islamic lifestyle and attire to the weakening of Da’wah, governmental neglect, Westernization, and the erosion of the family’s socializing role. While they promote a form of conditional tolerance toward other Islamic groups, as well as non-conforming Muslims and perceived hidden enemies, their distrust of the Islamic Republic of Iran remains pronounced, criticizing the regime for reducing religion to mere rituals and failing to recognize true Sunni Kurds. However, given their prioritization of resisting Western influence and the security constraints within Iran, Salafists have primarily concentrated their efforts on Islamic Da’wah rather than confrontation with the state.

This article introduces the concept of the inter-factor zone, defined as a bounded transitional phase that complements the traditional push and pull factor theory by incorporating the dynamics of uncertainty and the impact of contingent events in migration processes. Using the case of the political emigration of Czechoslovaks to Switzerland following the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, this study analyses how decision-making during this transitional phase was shaped by structural factors, institutional support, and unforeseen events. The inter-factor zone is empirically traced primarily in transit settings, where departure has occurred but a stable destination orientation has not yet been established. While this article primarily focuses on Switzerland, the analysis also considers Austria, particularly Vienna, as a crucial transit context where many emigrants made pivotal decisions before continuing their journeys. Based on qualitative analysis of 35 biographical narratives and historical documents, the research highlights the critical role of transit countries and humanitarian organizations in shaping migrants’ options and interpretations under conditions of suspended orientation. This study enhances our understanding of migration complexity, offers a novel perspective on the significance of this transitional phase, and provides conceptual insights for contemporary migration scholarship and policy debates concerning refugee reception and integration.

This article looks at how the Czech national identity is constructed in the print media, covering the November 17, 1989, anniversary commemorating the end of the communist rule in Czechoslovakia. It examines front-page articles published in the four most circulated nationwide dailies on November 18, 1999, and front-page articles published in the four most circulated nationwide dailies on November 18, 2019. It pays closer attention to two speeches repeatedly referred to in these articles — a speech by Václav Havel from 1999 and Andrej Babiš from 2019. The underlying research questions are whether the discourse of the 2019 coverage of the November 17 events is different and, more specifically, whether and how the construction of the Czech national identity in the media has changed. It draws theoretically on the work of Michel Foucault, Stuart Hall, Pierre Bourdieu, and Norman Fairclough in relation to concepts of power, discourse, and symbolic power. It adopts the constructionist approach to national identity, which it links to modernity and industrialization and draws on the works of Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, and Eric Hobsbawm in this regard. The research uses critical discourse analysis as its methodological tool, and briefly explains its use.

This research aims to analyze the origins and the processes of self-identification and hetero identification of the communities in Dobruja (Romania) identified from the outside perspective as Muslim Roma. Self-image and the image of Others are processes analyzed from the perspective of ethnicity theories as put forward by Richard Jenkins, who distinguishes between social categorization as an external defining process and group identification, as an internal process, generated from inside the group.

Firstly, we explored which groups were placed in a position of external authority, and the practices used by them to impose on some groups an identity and a social label disconnected from the self-identification discourse. Secondly, we listened to the voice of these groups, examining their self-identification processes, including their motivations for their choice of one ethnic or ethno-religious identity or another.

In terms of methodology, the research is based on the interpretation of information obtained via qualitative methods: semi-structured and life history interviews, conducted with members of the communities who define themselves as Millet, Turkish Tinsmiths, and Davulcu, with the Romanian majority group and other local significant ethnic groups, on participative observation, and not last, on informal talks in seven urban communities in the region.

This study explores the evolving discourse of Mongolian nationalism in online spaces, with specific attention to representations of Mongols beyond Mongolia’s borders. While the historically dominant, exclusive Khalkha-centric nationalist discourses continue to occupy a strong presence in cyberspace, Mongolian nationalist discourse has witnessed a shift toward a more inclusive, yet largely depoliticized, cultural Greater Mongol narrative. This narrative reimagines cross-border Mongols as members of a shared ethnic community. The research explores how the Mongolian state and Mongolian nationalist elites curate this cultural Greater Mongol discourse to position the Mongolian state as the historical and cultural center of the Mongol world. It contributes to a better understanding of the complex and dialectical transformations of nationalist discourses in contemporary Mongolian nation-building.

This article explores how nation and nation-state materialize in interactional contexts and shape the social construction of gender in everyday life with a focus on Turkey. Judith Butler’s (2004) concept of “undoing gender” has influenced debates within the “doing gender” literature, a sociological body of work on the social construction of gender in everyday life, with particular attention to the deconstruction of heteronormativity. However, the more contestation of heteronormativity proliferated, the more the roles that the nation plays in the social construction of gender stayed obscured. I offer a corrective to nation-bound or nation-blind analyses of gender and propose the concept of the “heteronational matrix” as a perspective for analyzing how gender and sexualities are dynamically woven into the symbolic and material construction of the nation and nation-states, and how these constructions, in turn, shape the social construction of gender in everyday life.

In 1966, Baltic activists in the USA established an organization that started lobbying the United Nations to spread anti-colonial self-determination from Africa and Asia to Europe, particularly to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, annexed by the Soviet Union. For five years, the Baltic Appeal to the United Nations (BATUN) tried to persuade UN member states that the Soviet Baltic republics should be decolonized. While it is known that the global South was critical of US narratives about “Red Colonialism,” and also sceptical of Soviet efforts to use the decolonial moment for its own advantage, the story of BATUN throws light on the views of postcolonial nations on the Cold War struggle over self-determination.

The article details the complex geopolitical and national conditions that shaped the securitization of Kists — a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority who primarily reside in the Pankisi Gorge of Georgia. Securitization of Kists emerged at the intersection of colonial encounters: Russian colonial relations with the Caucasus, primarily with Georgia and Chechnya, and Western neocolonial relations with Muslims in a form of global counterterrorist policies that painted Islam as a looming threat to the Western world after 9/11. Moreover, notions about minorities within Georgia contributed to the emergence of the securitization paradigm towards Kists. These circumstances molded Georgian national politics concerning Kists — namely, securitization policies and practices that legitimized violent special operations in the valley, close surveillance, scrutiny, and intimidation of the community. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, qualitative interviews, and critical discourse analysis, this article examines these policies, practices, and the profound effects of the state’s politics on the social landscape of Pankisi. Moreover, this research also observes various everyday strategies and tactics employed by Kists to navigate the social terrains of marginality.

In 1946, the Yugoslav socialist state broke-up all its institutional ties with religious communities entitled to set their own rules of self-governing that they had never had before. Furthermore, Yugoslav legislation of the time provided no specific requirements for official recognition of religious communities, which henceforth became equal in their rights and duties. The hypothesis of the article is that this apparently benevolent state attitude might have had a less evident political purpose that could be disclosed through an in-depth analysis of a legal framework of religious freedom in post-war Yugoslavia and a long-term political agenda of its socialist government: if this socialist secularism released the religion communities from state supervision, it also boosted separatist and dissident movements within them. The law made churches free, but weaker due to being subject to competition and extortion. By focusing on the evolution of Serbian Orthodox Church self-governing during socialism, the article examines the impact of formally neutral state legislation on internal ecclesial conflicts – primarily those over autocephaly of the Macedonian Church, but including also the case of the independent Priests’ Alliance contesting episcopalian authority – that resulted in transformation of a once decentralized and democratic Serbian Orthodox Church into the present-day oligarchic one.

This article examines a 2024 trolling campaign targeting a Russian-speaking Facebook group in Finland, in the context of Russian information warfare against the EU. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, it explores how pro-Kremlin trolls localized their messaging to exploit vulnerabilities of Russian-speakers in Finland. Two strategies – “fat” and “subtle” trolling – provoked emotional responses and led users to reproduce propaganda narratives, amplifying them and pre-existing tensions. The sentiment that the Russian-speaking audience “had no home” in Finland was a sensitive area. The article highlights the audience’s role in negotiating the meanings of troll messages. The trolls drew on local media content and sociocultural tensions. While some users succumbed to provocation, others resisted, restoring group cohesion. The article underlines the importance of micro-level analysis of audience responses to understand their vulnerabilities and recommends further research in this area. To counter the threat of polarization by information warfare, it also recommends recognizing the “pain points” of target audiences and including them in public discourse as members of multicultural societies that accept difference rather than marginalize it.

This article investigates how Kurdish identity is performed, contested, and negotiated within Turkey’s stand-up comedy scene, a space increasingly marked by ethnic visibility and political ambivalence. Based on 15 in-depth interviews with professional Kurdish and Turkish comedians, the study explores how humor functions as both a site of cultural representation and a mechanism of racialized hierarchy. The recurring stage phrase “Hello, I am Kurdish” is examined not merely as comic material but as a loaded utterance that reflects deep-seated societal prejudices and the historical suppression of Kurdish identity. While humor enables a partial reappropriation of stigma and offers potential for subversion, it also risks reinforcing entrenched stereotypes through self-deprecation and audience validation. This article highlights the ambivalent role of ethnic humor: it can simultaneously serve as a language of resistance and as a tool of conformity. The findings suggest that the transformative potential of stand-up comedy is constrained by classed and racialized dynamics within Turkey’s public sphere. Ultimately, the study contributes to critical debates on race, ethnicity, and cultural performance by demonstrating how ethnic humor reflects broader power structures and offers insight into minority subjectivities under authoritarian conditions.

This article examines the proliferation of decolonial rhetoric in the digital sphere in the articulation of ethnic minority rights in Russia following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Based on an analysis of diaspora discourses, it identifies three clusters: ethno-political self-determination, which reframes Soviet-era minority nationalism in the language of decolonization; indigeneity-centered cultural discourse, which foregrounds ecological, epistemic, and linguistic struggles; and Islamic epistemic discourse, which advances religiously grounded alternatives to liberal-secular modernity. Although these clusters diverge in their political imaginaries and epistemic orientations, all engage – albeit in different ways – with the legacies of imperial and Soviet systems of minority governance, while operating within transnational networks shaped by exile and mediated through digital environments. By situating these discourses within a semi-peripheral positionality – as activist discourses navigate both Russian and Western imperial legacies – the article argues that contemporary decolonial rhetoric is neither monolithic nor inherently emancipatory. Rather, it can be used to challenge certain inherited hierarchies while leaving others intact or creating new ones.

The article analyzes ethno-demographic trends in the contemporary Russian Federation, first of all, from the point of view of the probability of the development of separatist aspirations in ethnic autonomies within it. In recent decades, due to the shrinking opportunities to maintain the identity of indigenous peoples, assimilation processes have intensified among many of them (primarily the peoples of the Finno-Ugric group, as well as peoples whose is subjected to persecution in Russia, such as Ukrainians). Because of the assimilation, the share of the Russian ethnic majority in the country’s population is growing. At the same time, in the national republics of the North Caucasus and Siberia, the number of indigenous peoples is growing. In general, there is a process of ethnic separation: “Russian” regions are becoming ethnically more and more “Russian,” while 13 out of 21 republics are getting more and more “non-Russian.” Russian aggression in Ukraine also increases the likelihood of destabilizing Russia in the future, as the ideology of the “Russian World” politicizes inter-ethnic relations within Russia itself, making ethnic minorities second-class citizens.

Through the example of Romania’s divergence from Soviet refugee policy in the case of the 1971 East Pakistani refugees, this article suggests that great powers face barriers to persuading even weaker states within their orbits of influence to acquiesce on issues of refugee politics. Responses to refugees touch sensitive state concerns about sovereignty. Aiding refugees can be an implicit condemnation of the state from which refugees flee. States that want to avoid the microscope of international opinion looking inside their own domestic human rights contexts will be hesitant to scrutinize another state, even in the context of a great power proxy conflict. As Romania sought to leverage favorable economic agreements, including with Pakistan and India, its position on the East Pakistani refugees reflected a hinge approach that attempted to balance political and economic relationships on both sides of the conflict. Small states use diplomatic entrepreneurship to work between larger powers as they pursue their own strategic goals. This article uses archival, diplomatic documents from Bucharest, some of which had never been accessed prior to this research. The article contributes a small state’s perspective based on diplomatic correspondence by its own officials and in its own language.

Within nationality studies, the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) is typically presented as the founding father of liberal-nationalism because of his warning that liberal democratic institutions need to be embedded within the framework of a mononational state. However, the leading Mill scholar in the field, Georgios Varouxakis, has long challenged this designation. Indeed, in the absence of any attempt by other scholars to refute his claim that Mill should be interpreted as a cosmopolitan patriot instead, he has raised the question of whether the conventional view is little more than a disciplinary dogma. This article defends the conventional view through two key moves. First, to counter Varouxakis’ principal objections, we show that Mill’s account of the emergence of nationalities, as a historically progressive phenomenon grounded in an expansion of human sympathies, implies that his concerns about nationalistic indifference or hostility to foreigners do not translate into objections to nationality as such. Second, to counter Varouxakis’ presentation of the cosmopolitan patriot interpretation as a viable alternative to the liberal-nationalist one, we argue that Mill’s ethical and political cosmopolitanism is insufficient to support a liberal-postnationalist interpretation and is instead best understood as an integral component of his liberal nationalism.

This study aims to analyze how two popular television series, Famagusta (produced in Greece) and Bir Zamanlar Kıbrıs (Once Upon a Time in Cyprus, produced in Turkey), reflect the political approaches of Greece and Turkey toward the Cyprus issue. Television series are often powerful media for national narrative building, and both Famagusta and Bir Zamanlar Kıbrıs series demonstrate the ways historical events are selectively portrayed to reinforce contemporary political perspectives regarding Cyprus. Beyond simply retelling historical events, both series are used to reflect the ongoing efforts of Greece and Turkey to assert rights over Cyprus, a geopolitically significant island with a complex colonial past. This study will analyze how these series engage in narrative framing to legitimize national claims over a distant territory, using television series as a medium for both national narratives and colonial continuity. The study will explore the underlying messages, rhetorical tools, and symbolic elements that each series uses to shape the public perception about the Cyprus issue, drawing on concepts from media studies and international relations.

Social scientists have paid significant attention to the study of ethnic and religious minorities in Europe, and yet one group that evaded such scrutiny is the Tatars residing in modern-day Lithuania, Belarus, and Poland, who are unique in being Europe’s only Muslim community that survived under Catholic rule since the late medieval period. While Muslims in medieval and early modern France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain were eradicated through a mix of mass expulsions, forced conversions, and massacres, Lithuanian-Polish Tatars survived over six centuries. This article examines this unique case to understand the comparative political dynamics of persecution and toleration across medieval and early modern Europe. The article argues that the interstate and societal configuration of power explains the Tatars’ exceptional survival. The interstate and domestic dynamics are linked in that Lithuanian rulers successfully resisted forced conversion and eventually adopted Christianity on their own terms, which allowed for the preservation and perpetuation of religious sectarian diversity backed up by multiple political stakeholders. In the domestic struggle between monarchs, Papal allies, the Catholic nobility, and non-Catholics, none of the religious sectarian factions could achieve a hegemonic majority, let alone monopolistic control of political and military power, necessary for a coercive religious sectarian homogenization.

This article examines the position of the Slovak minority in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during the Second World War, focusing on the tension between official discourses of interstate friendship and local experiences of insecurity. Drawing on extensive archival sources, including diplomatic correspondence and administrative and security reports, it shows how ethnic Slovaks were formally portrayed as members of a friendly nation while remaining exposed to administrative exclusion, stigmatization, and violence in peripheral regions. Inspired by selected insights from Brubaker, Wimmer, and Kalyvas — used as heuristic points of reference rather than deductive frameworks — the article conceptualizes this ambivalent position as that of a “frenemy” minority: symbolically included yet structurally marginalized. It argues that the deterioration of the Slovak community’s security from 1942 onward resulted from an uncoordinated syncretism of centrally implemented policies of ethnic exclusion and processes of state degradation, manifested in fragmented authority and the brutalization of local actors. By highlighting the gap between declared friendship and practical neglect, the article contributes to debates on minority governance under fascist rule and on the effects of weak state capacity and localized violence in wartime authoritarian contexts.

This article examines the political ecology of water and ethnic conflict in Kirkuk, Iraq. Kirkuk is an internally disputed frontier territory, controlled by the federal government of Iraq but claimed by Kurdish nationalists. Kirkuk contains some of Iraq’s largest oil fields and most productive agricultural lands. In recent decades Kirkuk has also faced water shortages tied to global climate change. The article deploys survey data, supplemented by qualitative historical research, to evaluate framing of environmental security and the relationship between water insecurity, ethnic conflict, and governance. We find that commitments to competing programs for territorial control in Kirkuk correlate with different framing of ecological risk factors. Arabic-speaking respondents frame water scarcity as a matter for the federal government. Kurdish-speaking respondents prefer to enlist the Kurdistan Regional Government or local politicians to deal with water scarcity, undercutting federal jurisdiction. These findings cast doubt on environmental security and peacebuilding theories which suggest that ecological scarcity can spur inter-ethnic cooperation toward sustainability. Rather, commitment to different ethnoterritorial programs justify different perspectives on ecological change. At a policy level, these findings show that political conciliation must come before progress in environmental peacebuilding.