Around the bloc: Bulgarian Diaspora Grows as Home Population Keeps Shrinking
Remittances from foreign-based workers are vital to the nation’s economy.
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Remittances from foreign-based workers are vital to the nation’s economy.
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Council of Europe’s top rights official urges Budapest to scrap laws that criminalize migration.
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Last week the Czech Republic witnessed the emergence of Bohuslav Sobotka as a major new political player.
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The subject of the article is the education situation of the Roma people in Czechoslovakia. The author examines the activities of the state’s educational authorities and educational schemes aimed at the Roma community. The education system within the communist state did not maintain its institutional autonomy but, similarly to most totalitarian regimes, served in favour of dominant ideology. When the policy of assimilation of the Romani was in process a myth prevailed that all the pupils are the same and their needs do not very much. As a consequence nearly identical pedagogical approach was applied towards all the students. The linguistic and cultural disparity of the Roma was not recognized and their ethnic identity was not taken into account. The stereotype of common needs has lived on nearly until present times. This situation is a result of the education system, its personnel and the curriculum not being sufficiently equipped for the challenges of intercultural education.
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Music has accompanied a man from the beginnings of his existence. Especially with the word it has significantly extended the human possibilities of the communication, being an endless means of expression. Traditional highland-style music illustrates the elements which formed its contents, so there are traces of both certain culture arising due to an aboriginally shepherd’s way of life, as well as the specific historical and social conditions. Besides, it gives vent to emotions or inward states, articulating the everyday reality – a work, entertainments and worries. Folk songs can show how a certain highland community was living and perceiving itself and its own “smallest world”. Using the paraphrase of the conception of linguistic view of the world, the main purpose of this article is to recapture some meanings and values essential for a former, but currently resurgent culture of the highlanders. This analysis is based on an example of the Żywiec highlanders.
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Bulgaria may detain migrants in gated centers after violent incidents in one of the country’s refugee centers.
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This article examines the way people’s psychology influences the creation of TV news and its contents in terms of meaning and structure without disrupting its state of being authentic, factual and documentary. The analysis is based on people’s psychology factors which create particular models of human behavior related to the individual’s upbringing, intelligence, education and culture. How does this combination of characteristics influence different people’s perceptions evoked by the images on the TV screen and their psychological impact? How does people’s psychology determine the variety of rules in the sphere of information, including the ways it created and distributed? In the article, we are attempting to prove why journalists who work for TV companies should take into consideration the people’s psychology of the particular ethnic group in the process of transforming the events into news. We have examined the methods of creating and distributing TV information implemented by several TV media, such as CNN, BBC, AL-JAZEERA, etc.
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Presented in this article are the shifts of stereotypical notions on the characteristics of various nations (Lithuanians, Germans, Russians, etc.) in the past decade. The stereotypes formed in the consciousness of Lithuanian students on Lithuanians and foreigners were studied in 2003, 2008 and 2015. A change in national stereotypisation was to be expected during this period due to the changes in political climate and international relations. Results of this study confirm this: the negative stereotype index of Russians has noticeably increased, while the positive index has decreased; stereotypes about the Jewish, having taken into account shifts in positive and negative stereotypes, have been consistently improving during the past decade; etc. The study has also revealed the changes in Lithuanian auto stereotypes: the self-image of the nation has not improved and the signs of lower social activity have become more pronounced.
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CEE countries are experiencing post-socialist transformations. The new ideas that are coming from the Western part of Europe or USA are kindly welcomed in the former socialist countries. With these new ideas, in the CEE countries has appeared a new phenomenon – gated communities (GC) – as the new-style residential settlements that become the symbols of territorial segregation. This phenomenon in Lithuania is not so often, but during the last years the number of such neighbourhoods has increased and currently we count around 30 GCs in our country. In public and academic literature that is analysed and presented in this article, the appearance of such territorial structures in the cities and their regions is considered controversially. On the one hand, it is pointed out that these settlements create a positive atmosphere, economic value, social infrastructure for both: settlement residents and also for the neighbourhoods where they are located. On the other side stand the opponents of GCs who underline that these settlements segregate the society and they provide with the list of negative effects of these gated settlements again for both: GC residents and the ones who are left “outside the wall”. The main questions that are raised in our research are the following: does the emergence of gated communities influence the segregation in the cities/city regions? How do the GCs affect the residents of these settlements and the society that is left “beyond the wall”?
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The paper is analyzing causes and character of irredentist activities of Hungarian governments in relation to Czechoslovakia during the monitored period. Principal aim of irredenta was to establish an alternative to the direct annexation of Slovakia, or at least of part of the Slovak territory inhabited by the Hungarian minority. The goal of irredenta, besides other, was also to reinforce ethnic awareness of the Hungarian population in Slovakia, to cultivate a historic legacy of Hungary and to eliminate integral processes, which could weaken connections of members of the Hungarian community toward their kin country. Parallel with the increase of political instability during the second half of thirties, intensify also irredentist activities among ethnic Hungarians. The status of majority of Hungarians living in Slovakia was dramatically changed after the annexation of the majority of Hungarians to Hungary.
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The year 1989 marked a new stage in the Slovak historiography which allowed a new reinterpretation of the previous research and opened up topics which were considered taboo until then. This article discusses the results of scientific research in the field of Rusyns' history in the twenties of the last century. This later research showed that it was a crucial period for them. On the one hand, in this period began divergent development that separated Rusyns of eastern Slovakia from their countrymen in Ruthenia. On the other hand, while this development was initially perceived negatively, it is argued that of the entire homeland of Rusyns in the Carpathian Mountains, Rusyns in eastern Slovakia have probably the best prospects for their further national development.
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The authors of the text provide information about Slovaks in Croatia in the censuses between 1880 and 2011 with regard to the Slovak language as a native language of Slovaks in Croatia. Authors in the first part bring information about the arrival of Slovaks in Croatia, and then deal with their number, religious and gender structure as well as their literacy. The text is the result of research in the Croatian State Archives and published material in the Central Bureau of Statistics and literature. In conclusion the authors emphasize the need of a systematic approach to the study of Slovak communities in Croatia.
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Way of life of Slovaks in the Low Land was and remains a continually evolving socio-cultural system which is very vividly and naturally responsive to the surrounding environment and circumstances that have been brought about in different historical periods. The important question is not just which elements of their way of life are typically "Slovak" , but rather to what extent and how can the Slovak community maintain ethnic consciousness, mother tongue and communication links with Slovaks during the entire period of the separation. The paper presents characteristics of current Slovak minority in Romania in the context of historical development, and also presents selected aspects of empirical research of the Slovaks living in Romania.
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The article considers the modern politics of memory of the Ukrainian society, which does not include in the national historical narrative the events connected with one of the most numerous ethnic national minorities of Ukraine. Here the symbols of Sovietness (“Sovetskost”) in the post-Soviet space are the lacking sites of memory in the city space, connected with the Jewish people who have been recognized marginal for the national project. Thus while analyzing the modern museumization and memoralization of the Holocaust victims the author revealed not yet overwhelmed Soviet ideological clichés in which the Jews are pictured as “the others” to Ukrainian history, and the national identity construction is based on the image of the titular social community.
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The article is devoted to the post-Soviet monumental maternal imagery in Russia’s ethnic regions. The author supposes that monumental sculpture has a special place in the regions’ symbolic space. It serves as a form of ideology. Monuments, bas-reliefs, sculptural groups are used in the visualization of topics, important for the state propaganda. The monumental image, focused primarily on the spatial visualization ability, is more effective than any other arguments. The author analyzes four maternal imageries: "Mother Buryatia", "Mother Chuvashia", "Mother Yakutia" and "Mother-Yugra". All these monuments continue both the pre-revolutionary traditions and the canons of Soviet aesthetics. Maternal monumental rhetoric of Russia’s ethnic regions can be different in form but similar in the content. The idea of the native land, combined with the idea of the mother, is reflected in various monuments.
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This paper analyzes empirical data on the processes of development of Tatar-Russian bilingualism in a regional context. The aim of the research was to demonstrate the contradiction between the declared status of the Tatar language and the actual limitation of its use. Attention was paid to the gradual transformation of the Tatar language to a simple marker of ethnic identity. The following conclusion was made: achievement of the real bilingualism is possible only under the condition of preserving and expanding the instrumental function of the Tatar language.
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The concept of the “sociological expedition” implies various forms of collaborative empirical research, for which ethnographic fieldwork serves as the fundamental model. While this form of training students (“education through research”) is still relatively rare in Russia, in recent years its visibility has grown and its organizers have become more experienced. We were interested in finding out how, in each particular case, the idea of organizing such training retreats for students developed. What are the peculiarities and practical difficulties involved in conducting this kind of research and training? Finally, what role in the educational process should such research expeditions play? Participants in the discussion below note the importance of collaborative field research to students’ professional socialization and reflect about their own experiences of such trips, expressing regret that academic institutions still do not sufficiently support the practice.
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The concept of the “sociological expedition” implies various forms of collaborative empirical research, for which ethnographic fieldwork serves as the fundamental model. While this form of training students (“education through research”) is still relatively rare in Russia, in recent years its visibility has grown and its organizers have become more experienced. We were interested in finding out how, in each particular case, the idea of organizing such training retreats for students developed. What are the peculiarities and practical difficulties involved in conducting this kind of research and training? Finally, what role in the educational process should such research expeditions play? Participants in the discussion below note the importance of collaborative field research to students’ professional socialization and reflect about their own experiences of such trips, expressing regret that academic institutions still do not sufficiently support the practice.
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Review of: Fabio Mattioli - Rozita Dimova. Ethno-Baroque: Materiality, Aesthetics and Conflict in Modern-Day Macedonia. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013. 176 pp. ISBN 978-1-78238-040-5.
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