Провал на мултикултурализма? Добре, а оттук нататък?

Author(s): Plamen Makariev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2015

This article refers to minority policies in liberal-democratic societies. A number of failures in this field are explained as a result of the one-sidedness of these policies. I differentiate between two types of them: universalist (of an “orthodox” liberal type) and particularist (nationalist or multiculturalist) ones. I claim that neither “pure’ universalism, nor extreme particularism can serve as adequate approaches to the complex issues of, first and foremost, ethnic and religious minority communities. I comment, further, in a positive vein, two up to date theories which aim at a synthesis of these publicly-political approaches – John Rawls’s political liberalism and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of “two track” deliberative politics.

Миграционният натиск към Балканите и тенденцията за поява на нови идентичности в България

Author(s): Spas Tashev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2015

The main theoretical elaborations on migration pressure have been analyzed in this article and its working definition has been offered. The migration pressure to Europe applied along the Eastern Mediterranean migration route, passing alternatively through Greece or Bulgaria, is considered. It was concluded that this is a main migration route to the EU and for the period 2009 – 2014, 32.7 % of the registered illegal immigrants in the EU have passed along it. The main countries of origin are Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. This fact determines the type of the illegal immigrants in Bulgaria. Out of 39492 people that sought asylum in Bulgaria for the period 1993 - 2014, the applications of 15774 people have been granted or 39.9% of all applicants. A prognosis has been made that during the period 2015 - 2025, considering the expected increase of the working age population in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq with another 16 million people and the difficulties of the national economies to create a corresponding number of jobs, a new surplus labor force will be created, which will increase the migration pressure on the Eastern Mediterranean migration route. This in turn will lead to continuing the trend of appearance of new identities in Bulgaria and the Balkans.

Ислям: идентичност и миграция

Author(s): Vesselin Bosakov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2015

The immigration pressure that is exercised on Europe - the prevalent component of immigration being Islamic – generates problems in the social sphere, in education, interreligious relations and security. The trends related to the increasing numbers of immigrants are the following: Inability to integrate into Western societies and ghettoization of those who are “different”; The formation of separate societies in parallel with the main ones and a growing number of so-called “sensitive zones”;The decreasing attractiveness of the so-called multi-cultural model; Radicalization of Muslims; Construction of identity markers.

Промени в груповата идентичност на трансграничните семейства от Родопите 1992-2015 г.

Author(s): Antonina Zhelyazkova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2015

This text is an endeavor to analyze the consequences of the transborder separation of families and its influence upon group cultural identity. The article is focused not only on the first and second generation of emigrants but also on the parts of the nuclear family remaining in Bulgaria (predominantly children and older parents). The analysis is based on long years of field research, monitoring, secondary analysis of free interviews and target groups responses, as well as on unpublished interviews. As a result of their cultural and religious attitudes Muslims have a hard time to apprehend the existential shock of the fact that the family is no longer based on mutual cohabitation at one place, in traditional community and environment. They also struggle with rifts in the traditional hierarchy inside the nuclear family. Muslims experience serious changes in their understanding of traditional family and its enlarged ancestral variant. For the sake of prosperity, within a time period of twenty five years, the traditional family was lost and became fragmented. With the time passing it became spatially dispersed, the social, cultural and hierarchical bonds grew thinner and partially severed. Despite the increasing scientific interest in the matter, in the year of 2015, the issue of family transformations and local social networks remains marginal and the field research results are not full and not well organized.

Емиграцията в перспективата на търсенето на първа работа в България

Author(s): Rumyana Stoilova,Elitsa Dimitrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2015

This research aims to investigate emigration in the context search of first job after leaving education among young people in Bulgaria. The theoretical framework of analysis is based on theories of individuals’ life transitions and the status changes that define the trajectories of an individual’s life. The authors use empirical data obtained from a representative survey on young people in Bulgaria conducted in 2014, which includes a detailed calendar of education-to-work transitions made by young people in the preceding five years. The survey is focused on a specific age cohort (people born between 1980 and 1999) and on the transition – an important one for young people – from education to work. The results of the analysis indicate that emigration is not the large-scale choice of youths in Bulgaria in the consecutive steps they take from education to employment. Emigration is a potential option, to which young people are open; they take advantage of shorter or longer staysabroad in order to work. The lack of work restrictions for Bulgarians, in the context of the country’s integration in the EU, and the awareness of this opportunity explain the higher quantitative levels of willingness to emigrate among young people compared with their actual experience with emigration. People with lower than secondary education, the unemployed, people from smaller settlements, and those not of Bulgarian ethnicity emigrate more often than other young people. Previous migration experience is one of the strongest predators of intentions to emigrate. Among youths, emigration leads to postponement of starting a family of one’s own but is a favorable factor regarding separation from parents, transition to independent life and, hence, acquiring the status of young adults.

Българските роми мигранти или как миграцията променя ценностите

Author(s): Stoyanka Cherkezova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2015

The aim of this article is to search for pro- and con- evidences for the hypothesis that there is a correspondence between the migratory movements and experiences on the one hand and the change of values on the other. The object is on the values of the Roma who emigrated from and returned to Bulgaria in these values’ relationship to the environment in the home and in the host country (cultural norms of non-migrated Roma, non-Roma in Bulgaria and the majorities in the host countries). Values that have previously been subject of studies are investigated. Research question are: is there a change in attitudes towards traditional values and those of the modern era, in views about education, in opinions about Roma’s integration and in Roma’s representations. Comparative analysis between the values shared by majorities in host countries and Bulgaria; between the values of Bulgarian Roma and of non-Roma living close to Roma communities; between the values of Roma ex-migrants and of Roma, who have never migrated is made. It is based on data from two studies (UNDP/WB/EC Regional Roma Survey 2011 and the European Social Survey - fifth wave / 2010). Changes in the value system of Roma ex-migrants and their character are accentuated. Possible explanations for these changes are offered.

Finding the Right Islam for the Maldives: Political Transformation and State-Responses to Growing Religious Dissent

Author(s): La Toya Waha / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

At the first glance, the Maldives appear not to be prone to religious conflict. The archipelago state comprises a religiously and ethnically homogenous society, the different islands have been subject to shared Islamic rule for centuries and even constitutionally religious homogeneity is granted by making every citizen a Muslim and religious diversity prevented by limiting naturalisation to a specific Muslim group. Yet, today allegations of a threat to Islam play a major role in political mobilisation, the Maldives are faced with Islamist violence, and Maldivians have joined the Islamic State and al Qaeda in disproportionally high numbers. The paper seeks to find an answer to the question of how the repression of dissent under the Gayoom regime and the expansion and rise of violent Islamism relate in the Maldivian context. Next to the theoretical model, the paper will provide an introduction to the Maldivian political culture and the reasons for changes therein. It will shed light on the emergence of three major Islamic streams in the Maldivian society, which stood opposed to one another by the late 1990s and early 2000s, and show how Gayoom’s state repression of dissent initiated an escalation process and furthered Islamist violent politics. The paper will argue that while state repression of dissent played a significant role in the repertoire selection of Islamic non-state agents, the introduction of fundamentalist Islamic interpretations through migration, educational exchange programmes and transnational actors have laid the ground for violence in the Maldives.

Homeland and National Identity in Southeastern Europe

Author(s): Dragoş Nicuşor Petrescu / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2001

The review of: George W. White. Nationalism and Territory: Constructing Group Identity in Southeastern Europe. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. 328 pp.

The Socio-economic Impact of Regime Change in Eastern Europe: Gypsy Marginality in the 1990s

Author(s): Zoltan Barany / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2001

The objective of this article is to gauge the socio-economic changes among Eastern Europe's Romani (Gypsy) population brought on by the post-socialist regime transitions. More specifically, I am interested in two broad questions. First, how have the East European Gypsies' socio-economic conditions changed since 1989? Second, how have inter-ethnic relations between the Roma and dominant populations changed in the same period ? I argue that in both respects the transformation from state-socialist regimes to nascent democracies has had profoundly negative effects on the region's Romani communities. [...]

Attitudes of Young Poles Toward Jews in Post-1989 Poland

Author(s): Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2000

For over nine centuries before the outbreak of the Second World War, Poland was a multiethnic country. Jews in Poland constituted the largest Jewish community in Europe, the second largest in the world, and 10% of Poland's population. Their history on Polish soil goes back as far as Poland's history does. The destruction of European Jewry took place in Poland, and Jewish Polish citizens were victims of the Holocaust. Later, communist ideology denied the existence of ethnic differences between people. History was suppressed; many sites and events were erased from the collective memory. New narratives were supplied; new history books were written. [...]

Letter from Bratislava

Author(s): Martin M. Šimečka / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2000

When I traveled to the West for the first time in my life-sometime in December 1989-I was captivated, apart from the cleanliness of Austrian villages, by the huge billboards that accompanied me like a caravan of pilgrims. Each featured a face, most familiar to me from Austrian television, and beneath the face, there was a sentence to address me. It was very strange: until then, I had known only one kind of billboard, displaying the retouched photographs of communist leaders on the rostrums, built for May 1. Blank faces of dead Marx, Lenin, and Gottwald next to the faces of living Husak and Strougal impersonated the immortality of communist ideology, its constancy, its superiority over life and human fate, over each human being and his or her misery. [...]

Mother Country: Gender, Nation, and Politics in the Balkans and Romania

Author(s): Daina Stukuls Eglitis / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2000

The review of: 1) Gail Kligman. The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 358 pp. 2) Sabrina P. Ramet, ed. Gender Politics in the Western Balkans: Women and Society in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Successor States. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1999. 343 pp.

Prague Spring and the Impulses of National Identity

Author(s): Lee Congdon / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2000

The review of: 1) Jaromír Navrátil et al. eds. The Prague Spring 1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader. Translated by Mark Kramer, Joy Moss, and Ruth Tosek. Budapest: Central European University Press, 1998. xxxix, 596 pp. 2) Miklós Kun. Prague Spring-Prague Fall: Blank Spots of 1968. Translated by Hajnal Csatorday. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1999. xiii, 252 pp.

Book review

Author(s): Anastasiya Fiadotava / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2020

Foundations for Reconstructing Elites: Communist Higher Education Policies in the Czech Lands, East Germany, and Poland, 1945-1948

Author(s): John Connelly / Language(s): English Issue: 03/1996

Stalinist theory demanded uniformity, yet East European societies produced various Stalinist practices. The origins of diverse practice stretch far back into the political traditions of each society, but the Second World War and its immediate aftermath were decisive influences. The war shattered polities and societies. After the rubble of ruin had been cleared, newly constituted societies had to build new foundations. The stability of the Stalinist edifice would depend upon the role taken by Communists in forming these foundations. The study of diversity in Stalinism is promising ground for the comparative social historian, for the political logic that applied in these societies was nearly identical. If the outcomes of the Stalinist experiment varied this was because the societies varied. Hardly any area of societal life figured as prominently in the Stalinist ambition to transform society as did higher education-the tool for creating new elites. [...]

The Politics of Dialects Among Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in the Former Yugoslavia

Author(s): Robert D. Greenberg / Language(s): English Issue: 03/1996

The disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991 occasioned a new twist in the saga of the literary language(s) of Serbs, Croats, Muslims, and Montenegrins. In the summer of 1991 the Croatian and Serbian governments officially declared the end of "Serbo-Croatian," causing the unprecedented demise of an official literary language, which had enjoyed the status of the common language (lingua communis) for the former Yugoslavia. As linguistic realities do not come i nto being overnight, it is still unclear how many "Serbo-Croatian" successor languages will emerge and the extent of their differentiation. Therefore, this paper focuses on the period leading up to the Yugoslav and "Serbo-Croatian" break up, and in particular, on the controversies, both blatant and muted, surrounding the dialects in the Serbo-Croatian speech territory. The linguistic controversies clearly reflected the nationalist and ethnic tensions. Differences in dialects have been used to strengthen claims to specific regions, towns, and villages, culminating in demands of one side or another for new political boundaries among the Yugoslav successor states. [...]

Hungary: Social Policy in Transition

Author(s): Péter Gedeon / Language(s): English Issue: 03/1995

The postsocialist transition in Hungary has offered possibilities for dealing with old and new problems in the field of social policy. The new possibilities include the task of creating a sui generis social policy hitherto unknown under state socialism. After the elections in 1990, the Antall government and the Parliament put together the program of the reform, but this program as a whole has not yet been realized . The delay may have to do with the consequences of a radical reform of social policy: these consequences would combine growing financial burdens with changing or even diminishing social services for large segments of the population. [...]

Notes and Comments – Our Recent Pasts: Recent Developments in East Central Europe in the Light of Various Social Philosophies

Author(s): Elemér Hankiss / Language(s): English Issue: 03/1994

More than four years have elapsed since the velvet or non-velvet revolutions in East Central Europe. It is time and timely to draw the first balance sheets of these glorious and hectic years. But it is easier to state the importance of this project than to achieve it, for various reasons: Events and developments in these four years display such a confusing complexity that it is not at all easy to disentangle the main trends, patterns, and relationships. [...]

From Parent-State to Family Patriarchs: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Eastern Europe

Author(s): Katherine Verdery / Language(s): English Issue: 02/1994

Eastern Europe has been for the past half-century a major proving ground for experiments in both the social organization of gender and the attempted redefinition of national identity. Early pronouncements by socialist regimes in favor of gender equality, together with policies to increase women's participation in the workforce, led optimists to expect important gains for women; the internationalist bias of Soviet socialism promised to resolve the "national question, " making national conflicts obsolete; and the Party's broadly homogenizing goals bade fair to erase difference of almost every kind from the social landscape. Had these promises borne fruit, socialism would have given "gender" and "nationalism" a wholly novel articulation. [...]

Notes and Comments: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Communist Legacy in Eastern Europe

Author(s): Maria Todorova / Language(s): English Issue: 01/1993

Of all four concepts that are enumerated unimaginatively in the title, and whose definitions have been passionately contested, Eastern Europe, for all the controversy over its identity, seems the easiest to define. It is, therefore, appropriate to begin by introducing the terms that are the basic objects of this paper. Because so many wars have been fought over nationalism and communism, both real ones and wars fought with words, it is necessary to inspect and display one's conceptual tools before beginning to use them; in a word, to state where one stands, in very broad terms, within the theoretical debate. [...]