Ethnicities current issue

'Because tumi Bangali': Inventing and disinventing the national in multilingual communities in the UK

Blackledge, A., Creese, A. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:55:28 PST

In this article, we present an analysis of some of the voices we heard as we conducted linguistic ethnographic research in eight complementary (also known as ‘community language’, ‘supplementary’, ‘heritage language’) schools in four British cities. These were the voices of people engaged in teaching and learning languages, including Bengali, Cantonese, Gujarati, Mandarin and Turkish. The content of the language classes frequently reflected the schools’ rationale of teaching students the ‘nationalism of the homeland’ as well as teaching the heritage language. They did this through rehearsing historical events in the collective memory of the country of origin, retelling myths and folk stories associated with the homeland, discussing national symbols, and making explicit links between learning the standard language of the home country and national identity. The students, almost all of whom were born and raised in the UK, at times accepted their teachers’ positioning of them as (e.g.) ‘Chinese’ or ‘Turkish’, but at other times contested the notion of national belonging and affiliation to the country of origin.

Equal recognition, consolidation or familiarization?: The language rights debate in the context of the minority of Western Thrace in Greece

Mantouvalou, K. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:55:28 PST

A number of theorists have tried to determine how liberal states should respond to the language recognition claims made by minority groups. Liberal multiculturalists defend the ‘equal recognition’ of minority and majority languages, liberal neutralists advance the ‘consolidation’ of a single unified language, and democratic liberals argue for ‘familiarization’ of the majority and the minority population as the fairest response to the groups’ claim. In this article, I illustrate and test these responses with the case of the Muslim minority of Western Thrace, a group that has resided in Greece since Ottoman times and has been the subject of competitive Greek and Turkish relations. Contextual analysis in this article will show that when minority groups are part of antagonistic interstate relations, a priori individual and collective rights approaches cannot ensure that their members are treated fairly. I argue that familiarization of linguistically diverse group members provides the fairest response to the claims of linguistic minorities. This is grounded on the democratic ideal of participation in common institutions under conditions of non-domination.

Contexts of exit in the migration of Russian speakers from the Baltic countries to Ireland

Aptekar, S. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:55:28 PST

Recently, Ireland has become a major destination for migrants from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Many of these migrants are members of Russian-speaking minorities leaving a context of restrictive citizenship and language laws and varying degrees of ethnic tension. This article draws on interviews collected in Ireland to examine the role played by the contexts of exit in decisions to migrate among Russian-speaking minorities from the Baltics. The results suggest that Russian speakers from Estonia migrate because of their experiences as minorities, while those from Latvia and Lithuania migrate to escape low wages and irregular employment. This is so despite equally restrictive language and citizenship laws in Estonia and Latvia. I argue that the effect of state policy as a push factor for minority emigration is mediated by other contextual aspects, such as levels of contact, timbre of ethnic relations, and the degree of intersection between economic stratification and ethnicity.

Contested spaces: Globalization, the arts and the state in Malaysia

Hoffstaedter, G. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:55:28 PST

The arts community in Malaysia has been affected in many ways by the state’s desire to homogenize and essentialize ethnicity internally, whilst displaying pluralist ideals externally. There are two levels to the debate, one which is orientated towards the global, where the state employs a multicultural tourism imagery, whilst the other is a localized debate mainly informed by reactionary conservatism and state institutions. Concurrently, the arts community employs, uses and deploys global institutions and regional activism to counteract, validate or co-opt state mechanisms of control. Art forms such as mak yong have been pulled into a political tussle over ownership and power to demarcate what is or should be Islamic, Malay or Malaysian. As a result, practitioners and activists collide with the state’s apparatus and its agents.

Review Symposium: Historic settlements and new challenges: Veit Bader, Secularism or Democracy? Associational Governance of Religious Diversity. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008. 386 pp. ISBN 978--90--5356--999--3

Kymlicka, W. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:55:28 PST

Review Symposium: Why not secular democracy?

Bhargava, R. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:55:28 PST

Review Symposium: Is religion the problem?

Joppke, C. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:55:28 PST

Review Symposium: Reply

Bader, V. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:55:28 PST

Books Received

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:55:28 PST

Retraction

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:55:28 PST