2. IMMIGRANTS IN EUROPE

Peaceful interethnic relations together with the implementation of minority rights individually and through collective schemes are of utmost importance for peace and stability of the countries in South Eastern Europe and therefore on the European continent. This is the reason why ethnic minority rights need particular attention on the part of governments, of national and international NGOs as well as of the academia in and outside the sub-region.

The three-volume project Cohesion in Multi-Ethnic Societies in Europe from c.1000 to the Present explores and seeks to find solutions to a crucial problem facing contemporary Europe: in what circumstances can different ethnic groups co-operate for the common good? They apparently did so in the past, combining to form political societies, medieval and early modern duchies, kingdoms, and empires. But did they maintain their ethnic traditions in this process? Did they pass on elements of their cultural memory when they were not in a dominant position in a given polity? The first volume of the project explored written sources about the past to show how communities shaped their collective memories in order to ensure the smooth functioning of multi-ethnic political communities. This second volume looks beyond texts and focuses on activities and events that were designed to build a sense of community within a political community made up of different ethnic groups. The coexistence of different ethnic groups is considered not through the prism of theoretical analyses by intellectual elites, but by following community members' responses to current events as recorded in the sources.

The authors focus on families who organize their lives in transnational social spaces within and at the outer borders of Europe, to offer a new perspective on transnational family life and to advance the knowledge on borders drawn by social inequality, discrimination and political exclusion. They also discuss social mobility as inheriting different life worlds, while crossing borders. The research on the socialization of children, raised in different societies provides a better understanding of the new generations in Europe from the beginning of the XXI c. The variety of methods presented in this book is also a contribution to link Western and Eastern European perspectives as well as sociology and anthropology in order to capture a wider spectrum of social reality.

While there has been a spate of books concerned with race and ethnicity in Europe more specifically, this timely volume offers a broader perspective and positions issues of identity, ethnicity, multiculturalism, xenophobia, regionalism and ethnonationalism within the wider contexts of trans- and supranationalism. With the weakening of welfare states and the homogenizing influences of globalization, nations within both Eastern and Western Europe are discovering that the battlefield of political action is being redefined, and as a result emotional alliances threaten to bypass the democratic systems of the past. Offering fresh insights that are both empirically and theoretically informed, this book illuminates the processes and consequences of these new developments. In particular, it reviews Marx's, Durkheim's and Simmel's theories on nationalism and national identity, and presents case studies of Belgium, Italy's Northern League, right-wing intellectual production in Russia, and much more.