Irredentism is one state's desire to annex the territory of another state. This desire can be motivated by ethnic reasons because the population of the territory is ethnically similar to the population of the parent state. Historical reasons may also be responsible, i.e., that the territory previously formed part of the parent state. However, difficulties in applying the concept to concrete cases have given rise to academic debates about its precise definition. Disagreements concern whether either or both ethnic and historical reasons have to be present and whether non-state actors can also engage in irredentism. A further dispute is whether attempts to absorb a full neighboring state are also included. There are various types of irredentism. For typical forms of irredentism, the parent state already exists before the territorial conflict with a neighboring state arises. However, there are also forms of irredentism in which the parent state is newly created by uniting an ethnic group spread across several countries. Another distinction concerns whether the country to which the disputed territory currently belongs is a regular state, a former colony, or a collapsed state.
An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's position within society. This criterion differentiates ethnic conflict from other forms of struggle.
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction. Both the definition and charge of ethnic cleansing is often disputed, with some researchers including and others excluding coercive assimilation or mass killings as a means of depopulating an area of a particular group.
Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the state. Nation-building aims at the unification of the people within the state so that it remains politically stable and viable in the long run. According to Harris Mylonas, "Legitimate authority in modern national states is connected to popular rule, to majorities. Nation-building is the process through which these majorities are constructed." In Harris Mylonas's framework, "state elites employ three nation-building policies: accommodation, assimilation, and exclusion."
Consociationalism is a form of democratic power sharing. Political scientists define a consociational state as one which has major internal divisions along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines, but which remains stable due to consultation among the elites of these groups. Consociational states are often contrasted with states with majoritarian electoral systems.
A stateless nation is an ethnic group or nation that does not possess its own sovereign state. The term stateless implies that the group has the right to self-determination, to establish an independent nation with its own government. Members of stateless nations may be citizens of the country in which they live, or they may be denied citizenship by that country. Stateless nations are usually not represented in international sports or in international organisations such as the United Nations. Nations without a state are classified as fourth-world nations. Some stateless nations have a history of statehood, while some were always stateless.
Created on July 8, 1992, by the Helsinki Summit Meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), now known as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) is charged with identifying and seeking early resolution of ethnic tension that might endanger peace, stability or friendly relations between and within the participating states of the OSCE. The HCNM focuses on the OSCE area and will alert the Organisation where a situation has the potential to develop into a conflict. The Organisation consists of 57 participating States across North America, Europe and Asia. The establishment of the HCNM is generally considered to be a “success story” and a useful instrument of conflict prevention.
The European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) is an academic research institute based in Flensburg, Germany, that conducts research into minority issues, ethnopolitics, and minority-majority relations in Europe. ECMI is a non-partisan and interdisciplinary research institution. It is a non-profit, independent foundation, registered according to German Civil Law.
The Ohrid Framework Agreement was the peace deal signed by the government of the Republic of Macedonia and representatives of the Albanian minority on 13 August 2001. The agreement was signed by the country's four political parties after international mediators demanded their commitment to its ratification and implementation within a four-year period.
Ronit Lentin is an Israeli/Irish political sociologist and a writer of fiction and non-fiction books.
European Islam is a hypothesized new branch of Islam that historically originated and developed among the European peoples of the Balkans and parts of countries in Eastern Europe with sizable Muslim minorities which constitute of large populations of European Muslims. Historically significant Muslim populations in Europe include the Ashkali and Balkan Egyptians, Gorani, Torbeshi, Pomaks, Bosniaks, Chechens, Muslim Albanians, Ingushs, Greek Muslims, Vallahades, Muslim Romani people, Balkan Turks, Turkish Cypriots, Cretan Turks, Yörüks, Volga Tatars, Crimean Tatars, Lipka Tatars, Kazakhs, Gajals, and Megleno-Romanians from Notia today living in Turkey, although the majority are secular.
As a result of World War II, Poland's borders were shifted west. Within Poland's new boundaries there remained a substantial number of ethnic Germans, who were expelled from Poland until 1951. The remaining former German citizens were primarily autochthons, who were allowed to stay in post-war Poland after declaring Polish nationality in a verification process. According to article 116 of the German constitution, all former German citizens may be "re-granted German citizenship on application" and are "considered as not having been deprived of their German citizenship if they have established their domicile in Germany after May 8, 1945 and have not expressed a contrary intention." This regulation allowed the autochthons, and ethnic Germans permitted to stay in Poland, to reclaim German citizenship and settle in West Germany. In addition to those groups, a substantial number of Poles who never had German citizenship were emigrating to West Germany during the period of the People's Republic of Poland for political and economic reasons.
An ethnoreligious group is a grouping of people who are unified by a common religious and ethnic background.
Territorial nationalism describes a form of nationalism based on the belief that all inhabitants of a particular territory should share a common national identity, regardless of their ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural and other differences. Depending on the political or administrative status of a particular territory, territorial nationalism can be manifested on two basic levels, as territorial nationalism of distinctive sovereign states, or territorial nationalism of distinctive sub-sovereign regions.
Eine warme Kartoffel ist ein warmes Bett is a collection of essays by Nobel Prize-winning author Herta Müller, first published in 1992. The essays were previously published as columns in the monthly Swiss publication Du between 1990 and 1992.
Stefan Berger is the Director of the Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, and Chairman of the committee of the Library of the Ruhr Foundation. He is Professor of Social History at the Ruhr University. He specializes in nationalism and national identity studies, historiography and historical theory, comparative labour studies, and the history of industrial heritage.
Daniel Levy is a German–American political sociologist and an Associate Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Levy earned a Bachelor of Arts in sociology and political science (1986) and a Master of Arts in sociology (1990) from Tel Aviv University, as well as a Doctorate of sociology from Columbia University in 1999. He is a specialist on issues relating to globalization, collective memory studies, and comparative historical sociology. Levy, along with the historians Paul Gootenberg and Herman Lebovics, is a founder and organizer of the Initiative for Historical Social Science, a program that is run out of Stony Brook with the goal of promoting the "New Historical Social Sciences". He also, along with the Human Rights scholar and historian Elazar Barkan, is the founder of the "History, Redress, and Reconciliation" Seminar series at Columbia University. The seminars are an attempt to provide "a forum for interdisciplinary work on issues at the intersection of history, memory, and contemporary politics" focusing particularly on the "redressing [of] past wrongs and gross violations of human rights."
Professor Richard G. Whitman is an academic, think tank member and media commentator focusing on the European Union's international role and the UK's foreign policy. He is professor of politics and international relations and a member of the Global Europe Centre at the University of Kent. He is also an associate fellow at Chatham House.
Belinda Joy Davis is an American historian of modern Germany and Europe at Rutgers University.
Florian Bieber is a Luxembourgian political scientist, historian and professor working on inter-ethnic relations, ethnic conflict and nationalism, focusing primarily on the Balkans.
