From National Minorities to Europeanized Others: Frames of Ethnocultural Diversity in East Central Europe at a Time of Rising Anti-EU Politics

This paper starts from the observation that political narratives about the ethnocultural composition of a country do not necessarily reflect the lived experience of ethnocultural diversity in that country. The consequences of such political invocations, however, can be very real. To substantiate this observation, I analyze the effects of growing anti-EU politics in East Central Europe (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic) on the position of traditional minority populations (such as the Ukrainians in Poland or the Roma in Hungary). Minorities in the region have since the 1990s put their hopes on Europeanized norms of minority protection. Anti-EU parties and politicians, on the other hand, have increasingly relied on symbols of national ethnocultural homogeneity as a way to protect the nation against perceived threats of Europeanization. The effect might be that “national minorities” are increasingly turned into “Europeanized Others” and that previous regulations for minority protection might become hollowed out.