MinMig

Accommodating religious, linguistic and cultural diversity while at the same time ensuring cohesion and shared standards of living together are some of the biggest challenges that modern societies face. Most European countries have had heterogeneous population structures throughout their history, as frequent wars left minority groups on both sides of newly established borders. Due to a history of minority persecution and assimilation, most European states have nowadays implemented minority protection policies for historic minority communities. “Respect for and protection of minorities” is part of the Copenhagen Criteria for EU accession, and “respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities” is outlined as one of the EU’s founding values in Article 2 TEU. While protection measures for “old” minority groups are thus firmly rooted in national and international provisions, no stable system for integrating diversity originating from the most recent migratory flows has been established yet. Minorities and migrant groups are regarded as a dichotomy, and largely studied in isolation from each other, when in fact migrant integration frameworks could benefit immensely from the vast experience of minority protection policy and research. The present project aims to bridge this gap, by investigating the under-researched field of claims made by migrants, and comparing them to those of historic minority groups. It poses the following main research question: Which rights and protection systems developed for old minorities could be beneficially extended to new minorities? In order to provide answers to this question, we first have to collect the claims made by “new” minorities, and analyze them in comparison to those of “old” minorities, looking at similarities and differences. If there are claims shared by both groups, those will then be evaluated regarding the necessary framework conditions for extending some of the provisions applied to “old” minorities to migrant groups. The project makes an important contribution to both migration and minority research, and provides the scholarly foundation for a new more comprehensive approach to dealing with linguistic, cultural and religious diversity.