Opposition to immigration in contemporary Russia

The study examines sources of opposition to immigration in contemporary Russia. It distinguishes between two types of opposition to immigration: exclusionary attitudes based on national membership and exclusionary attitudes based on race or ethnicity, directed exclusively at foreigners with non-Slavic or non-European origins. Findings indicate that a quarter of ethnic Russians can be classified as “racial exclusionists”; they are willing to admit immigrants who share a race/ethnic group with most of Russia’s people but object to the admission of racially/ethnically different immigrants. Another 42% of ethnic Russians are classified as “total exclusionists”; they object to immigration of all foreigners, regardless of their race/ethnicity. Multivariate analysis focuses on the impact of perceived collective vulnerability, human values, and socio-demographic attributes. Opposition to immigration in Russia is further situated within temporal and cross-national comparative perspectives. Apparently, exclusionary attitudes toward immigrants who share a race/ethnicity with most Russians increased between 2006 and 2016.     

族群战争的爆发：一个广义理论

基于两个分析性的创新：对社会事实秉持以机制为基础的理解路径和对动态交互影响的强调,作者提出了一个有关族群战争爆发的广义理论,并利用两种元机制——安全困境/螺旋模型和群体间–群体内互动——作为“元综合器”,将战争的影响因素与冲突行为的直接驱动力联系起来,对散布在现有文献中的众多因素和机制加以综合,形成了一个更具整合性且动态的族群战争理论。该理论不但整合了既有文献中已经识别的众多因素和机制,而且揭示了先前被隐藏或被忽视的因素、互动和机制,由此指明未来在这些方向的探究将是硕果累累。     

‘They treat us like criminals’: urban public spaces and ethnic discrimination in Italy

Mantovan’s article analyses the processes that lead to discrimination against migrants in the public spaces of Italy’s towns. Her analysis is based on a three-year research project conducted in northeastern Italy using mixed methods—ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews, a press review, an analysis of relevant documentation and data collection—and remaining constantly in touch with research conducted in various Italian cities. Starting from an idea of a city whose evolution is the product of alliances, conflicts, active networks of individuals and their respective competing interests, Mantovan sheds light on how discrimination against immigrants in Italy’s urban public spaces is the result of a process of social construction implemented by a number of social actors (journalists, citizens’ committees, politicians and police forces) who represent the visible presence of migrants in these public spaces as deviant and unlawful, especially if they are undocumented immigrants and/or of low socio-economic status. She also argues for the importance of taking into consideration the contribution of economic and political dynamics, both global and national, to the generation of these phenomena by interacting with those at the local level.     

Public health as an agent of internal colonialism in interwar Czechoslovakia: shaping the discourse about the nation’s children

Shmidt’s text discusses the specifics of internal colonialism in the discourses and practices of the dominant group (Czechs) concerning Slovaks and Rusyns, ethnic groups from the peripheral, eastern areas of interwar Czechoslovakia. By targeting the reproductive patterns of these groups, seen as undesirable by the authorities, internal colonialism shaped the discourse about children by consistently opposing the normalized childhood inside the nation to the supposedly abnormal child development outside the civilizing process. Shmidt focuses on three interwar projects aimed at introducing new public health practices as an ‘infrastructure of dependence’ with regard to the peripheral groups. Being directly supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, these projects contributed to building the new Czechoslovak nation and securing its international legitimacy.     

Bodo ethnic self-rule and persistent violence in Assam: A failed case of multinational federalism in India

Indian federalism has been credited in the literature on comparative federalism for having successfully resolved many of its ethnic conflicts (in a country of immense ethnic diversity) since 1956 by conceding varied forms of statehood. In most cases, the resolution of ethnic conflict has entailed self-determination for ethno-nationalist groups. There are however cases when the experiment has failed and the institutional arrangements for recognition of ethnic self-determination have given birth to more conflicts and persistent violence. In this article, we argue that the Bodoland Territorial Authority (created in 2003) in Assam is a failed case of multinational federalism in India. We argue that the case of Bodoland illustrates the limits of territorial management when groups are intermixed and highlight the need for power sharing in government and/or non-territorial representation as a better method for managing ethnic conflict in such cases.     

Old (Molotov) cocktails in new bottles? “Price-tag” and settler violence in Israel and the West Bank

In the early morning of July 31, 2015, masked attackers threw firebombs into two Palestinian homes in the West Bank village of Duma, south of Nablus, killing three Palestinian civilians. Contrary to claims by Israeli and Palestinian politicians, this attack was neither an isolated anomaly nor just another incident of settler violence. Instead, it was the latest attack in an important but largely unknown phenomenon called “price-tag,” in which a loosely connected group of young Israelis called “hilltop youth” burn Palestinian mosques and destroy property in hundreds of attacks accompanied by threatening graffiti that references Israeli settlers, outposts, and anti-Arab slogans. Using an original dataset of price-tag incidents and interviews with key actors, we demonstrate that the perpetrators, targets, and strategies of price-tag are different than previous patterns of settler violence. Whereas previous settlers saw the Israeli state as legitimate and largely decided to cooperate with it, the hilltop youth have decided to confront it by using price-tag attacks to deter settlement withdrawals and chain-gang the state into a conflict with the Palestinians. This analysis of the strategic logic of price-tag reveals its potential to shift the political landscape within and between Israelis and Palestinians.     

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

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.     

Ethnic diversity and development in Kenya: limitations of ethnicity as a category of analysis

This paper challenges the relevance of ethnic diversity in explaining the development impasse in Africa, using Kenya as a case study and arguing that the neopatrimonial and ethnic diversity theses are contradictory as explanatory variables of Africa's development crisis. The former speaks to homogeneity while the latter implies heterogeneity in the public policy process. This paper singles out the ethnic diversity thesis as the weaker of the two, arguing that ethnic groups lack a collective ethnic agenda that can be flagged as consequential for the political economy of the polity. Ethnic group intervention in the political arena is not determined by innate ethnic characteristics: it is due to the tendency for certain actors in the body politic to exploit institutional failure. With proper institutions, the assumed burden of ethnicity in African development would naturally evaporate. Focusing on supposedly ethnic problems is the wrong target.     

资源贫乏的少数民族山区建立扶贫新机制的思路

资源贫乏的少数民族山区,经济基础设施简陋,经济实力单薄,扶贫的任务非常艰巨.为实现2000年农村人口基本解决温饱的目标,必须采用非常措施,因为传统的扶贫措施,已被证明对最低层的贫困人口的脱贫效果甚微.因此,要充分利用西部大开发的有利时机,启动新的扶贫机制.     

蒙元对西北各民族地区的经营设治

蒙元统治时期的西北,民族情况复杂,各民族的迁徙对流频繁,民族间的分化与重组相互交叉,政治上的统一与分裂变化无常,中央政府通过亲王出镇、建立甘肃行中书省和行枢密院、设置站赤、打开交通、开展屯田垦殖等一系列措施,加强了地方与元王朝中央的政治联系,巩固了西部边疆民族地区的统一.