SEMIRinEE

The project will identify and investigate the consequences of the increasing securitization of national minorities in Eastern Europe, namely the process through which minorities are perceived as a threat, and consequently, their rights are curtailed. Thus, it seeks to answer the question of how minorities can mitigate the negative consequences of securitization to prevent spillover effects at the European level. The research will focus on three case studies, namely Latvia as the most extreme case of minority right deterioration, and Ukraine and Lithuania as two potential cases of the spillover effect. The analysis of Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine will be put in perspective with and build on the South Tyrol experience, generally considered a model of minority protection and ethnic-conflict resolution, in order to develop possible scenarios and provide overarching recommendations to address the process of securitization and avoid deteriorations and tensions in majorityminority relations in the three case studies.

The originality of this study derives from its urgency and timing. Recent developments addressed in the project question assess both recent and ongoing situations. Moreover, interest in the issues of national minority protection in the region of Eastern Europe has significantly decreased since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine and shifted towards the trend of achieving (even) bigger social cohesion at the expense of diversity and minority rights. As a result, official discourses, legislative measures, and policies tend to further securitize minority issues - when minorities are seen as a threat to national security and societal cohesion, as evidence from the Baltic States confirms (Kuczyńska-Zonik, 2017). Minorities have their own perspectives on these measures and seek to effectively mitigate them through available domestic legislative and judicial channels. They also appealed to international monitoring bodies and minority advocacy groups. In Latvia, which has a significant minority constituency, these measures date back even earlier. They are explained by the need to protect the country’s constitutional identity and can be described as “militant democracy measures” (Ijabs 2016, 288). It also resulted in country-specific endeavors that at least implicitly divide minorities into those with more advanced and more restricted rights depending on their kin-state. Furthermore, against the backdrop of the international effect, domestic minority issues have been overlooked and are considered to be of secondary importance.

The overarching aim of the project is to comprehensively evaluate the current situation of minority regimes in Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine in light of the ongoing processes of securitization of minorities in these countries to identify their shortcomings and potential threats to the region and minority regimes in Europe. Objectives: a) Collection and analysis of relevant data on minority regimes and their potential shortcomings and gaps through official documentation and public discourse; b) Addressing the gap analysis through interviews with relevant stakeholders; c) Integration of the historical case study of South Tyrol as a plausible solution to avoid further deterioration; d) Development of recommendations and potential scenarios for tool conflict prevention and improvement of relevant minority regimes.

Methodologically, this project is centred around the official discourses considering them as tools that produce “a shared meaning of the past, present, and future of international politics to shape the behaviour of domestic and international actors’ (Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, and Roselle 2013: 2) and exist “in relationships of complicity and contestation with other discourses” (Gee 1999: 22). Therefore, the discourse-historical approach (DHA) is used to conduct the relevant analysis. The choice of DHA is primarily explained by its triangularity and therefore appeals to “a whole range of empirical observations, theories and methods as well as background information into account” (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009:89). Therefore, it provides tools to focus on specific issues as they appear at historical, social, textual, and intertextual Ausschreibung für Initiativen zur Förderung der internationalen Mobilität von Forscherinnen und Forschern LG 14/2006 Bando di concorso per iniziative di promozione della mobilità internazionale di ricercatrici e ricercatori LP 14/2006 discourse levels. Finally, this approach is particularly beneficial for the assessment of the relevant shifts in minority policies because this approach highlights shifts between the designation of the categories of “us” and “them” within a specific society over time as well as the reasons behind these shifts (Wodak 2006:112–113). Thus, this study relies on two sources. The first includes corpora of legislation, state policies, official reports, and case law on ethno-cultural diversity, national security, and memory politics. The second set processes relevant background information behind the sources specified in the first set (i.e., it addresses official discourses, state reports, and other communication within the framework of the relevant international organizations, minority perspectives, and communication of the relevant state bodies with international organizations). The second set of sources will be collected, inter alia, through the study visits to Lithuania and Latvia in order to meet with governmental officials in charge of ethno-cultural diversity issues, minority activists, representatives of advocacy groups, and international organizations. 

The project complements IMR’s research on minority rights and migrants’ inclusion within bot the ABI and EDIS research clusters. It shows synergies with other research projects, including "Cultural Diversity Governance from a Security Perspective" (DIVSEC) and “Cultural and Territorial Autonomy” (CUTE Autonomy).

OUTPUT 2025

The first phase Baseline setup and road-mapping of the project is completed (March - July 2025), including collection and analysis of domestic minority-related legislation and policies in Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine; reports of international organisations; domestic official and shadow reports; case-law (domestic and international).  

Some interim project results based on the conducted data collection and analysis are currently being prepared for publication. These include one published blog post (The Struggle with Defining Minorities - Eurac Research) and two forthcoming blog posts for MIDAS: one addressing the recent amendments to Ukrainian language legislation and their implications for national minorities, particularly those affected by processes of securitization, and another examining cases of language discrimination through the securitization of language use in public spaces. These blog posts will serve as a teaser for a more comprehensive working paper to be published in EURAC’s Diversity Governance Papers series, where a deeper analysis of these issues will be presented. In addition, in fall 2025 I will present interim project findings at several academic conferences in Poland, Spain, and Germany.

In fall 2025, interviews with stakeholders in Lithuania, Latvia, and Ukraine will also be organized (in the case of Ukraine, conducted online due to security concerns) in order to further enrich the comprehensive data collection which will complete the second phase of the project. 

PLANNED OUTPUT 2026

In 2026, the project will move towards comparative integration and dissemination.The focus will be on cross-country analysis, assessing common features in implemented policies and strategies, and applying the South Tyrolean model to the three case studies. The results will be adjusted on the basis of the feedback received at the conferences, with the finalisation of recommendations and the development of potential scenarios. The project will conclude in September–October with the dissemination of results, including a public seminar, the publication of the final report, and the submission of at least one academic article.