NGO Strategies for Hungarian and Roma Minorities in Central Europe

NGOs sponsor a variety of innovative projects relating to the Hungarian and Roma minorities in Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine, as well as for the Roma in Hungary. However, a study of 33 NGOs in this region reveals that the strategies behind these projects tend to vary according to the particular group being addressed. NGO projects emphasizing Hungarian minorities tend to utilize network strategies to increase contact between Hungarians and titulars (Romanians, Slovaks, and Ukrainians), while projects for Roma tend to avoid network strategies, focusing exclusively on status-raising strategies. This paper presents the promises and shortcomings of both approaches, and concludes with an analysis addressing why NGOs should be less hesitant to apply network strategies to Roma projects as well as to Hungarian projects.     

The Integration of Racial and Ethnic Minorities into White Congregations

Drawing from the homophily principle and organizational ecology theory, I follow previous literature and predict racial minorities will have lower levels of belonging and commitment when attending predominantly white congregations. Going beyond this literature, I incorporate contemporary racial stratification literature and propose integration into white congregations would vary by racial group as a result of the differing symbolic group positioning of minorities in America's racial hierarchy. Results from multilevel models using a national dataset generally support my hypotheses. The findings from this study reveal distinctions between minority racial groups within predominantly white congregations. Thus, the homophily principle and organizational ecology are not sufficient when studying race within congregations, as it is not enough to rely solely on the numeric representation of racial groups in congregations without taking into account the social positioning of these groups. These results, their implications, and potential directions for future studies are further discussed.     

Preparing an Effective Occupational Information Brochure for Ethnic Minorities

This article discusses the rationale for and process of creating and developing an occupational information brochure targeted for ethnic minority students. Minorities need to expand their awareness and knowledge of career options, and few specifically targeted resources now exist. Field testing during the development process showed that a printed brochure answering questions on how to pursue a specific occupation that contains brief biographies of ethnic minority role models, can both inform and inspire. Such a resource can help equalize minority access to career opportunities.     

Future trends in international migration to Europe

The author discusses future trends in international migration to Europe, with a focus on the impact of the economic situation on labor force needs and resources. Aspects considered include changes in foreign direct investments, changes in the size of the European labor market, and the potential emigration of the labor force in underdeveloped countries.     

Residential Segregation and Institutional Completeness: A Comparison of Ethnic Minorities*

Cette étude de six groupes ethniques à Winnipeg démontre clairement l'importance de la ségrègation residentielle pour le maintien d'un degré de totalité d'un système institutionnel. La communauté francophone se maintient en suivant le modèle que Joy décrit comme s'appliquant au Québec, à savoir celui d'une zone centrale s'étendant dans la région qui l'encercle et se caracterisant par une mobilite intra-régionale considérable. Par ailleurs, les Scandinaves n'ont jamais réussi àétablir une base institutionnelle assez complète dans une zone écologique à part. Ils se sont alors dispersés comme l'auraient prédit les assimilationistes. Contrairement à la prédiction de Joy, la formation de deux communautés juives ségrégées a suivi la mobilité massive de Juifs vers les régions s'étendant dans les banlieues de West Kildonan et River Heights où ils ont établi un nouveau système d'institutions ethniques, abandonnant presque complétement la zone du North End où se trouvait le centre initial de la communauté juive. The importance of residential segregation for the maintenance of institutional completeness is clearly demonstrated by this study of six ethnic groups in Winnipeg. The French community maintainers follow Joy's Quebec core area pattern in St Boniface with extensions of their ethnic belt adjacent to the core and extensive intra-area mobility. On the other hand, the Scandinavians were never able to establish a very complete ethnic institutional base in a segregated ecological area, so they scattered as assimilationists would predict. Contrary to Joy's prediction, extensive Jewish mobility into their West Kildonan and River Heights suburban extended belt areas resulted in the establishment of two new segregated Jewish communities where they have created new complexes of ethnic institutions, leaving the original North End Jewish core area almost entirely.     

The Effect of Residential Concentration on Voter Turnout among Ethnic Minorities

Utilizing a large and unique dataset composed of government records, we study the widely contested effect of co‐ethnic residential concentrations on voter turnout. Non‐Western immigrants are moderately affected by the concentration of co‐ethnic voters in their neighborhoods. As the local concentration of same‐ethnicity voters increases, so does the individual's propensity to turn out for the election. In general, the concentration of non‐Western immigrants in the neighborhood has only a very limited impact on an immigrant's propensity to vote. Finally, we investigate the possible mobilizing effect of local candidates and, in particular, local co‐ethnic candidates on voter turnout. We find that the presence of candidates in general and co‐ethnic candidates running for office in a neighborhood has a moderate positive mobilization effect. However, taking this factor into account, the effect of residential concentrations was not eliminated.     

Asylum seekers in Europe in the context of south-north movements

This article elucidates the threat towards the established system for asylum in Europe which originates from the increase of asylum seekers with very weak or no genuine claims at all. This increase might be the early sign of new intercontinental movements of migration. Europeans are now facing 1) continued immigration control, 2) the development of a single European market, 3) aging and population stagnation, 4) increased economic pressure form countries with weaker economies, 5) new refugee crises in the 3rd World, and 6) an overburdened asylum procedure in industrialized countries with many weak or abusive claims. Solutions include 1) attacking the causes of refugee movements, 2) increased economic assistance, 3) maintaining present refugee legislation, 4) European agreements on state responsibility to carry out asylum requests, 5) speeding up asylum requests, 6) condemning abuse and fraud, 7) facilitating voluntary repatriation, 8) informing the public on refugee problems, and 9) establishing consultative links between states.     

Understanding Crimmigration: Implications for Racial and Ethnic Minorities Within the United States

Crimmigration, or the intertwining of criminal and immigration law, allows whether explicitly or implicitly for local law enforcement and increasingly other government agencies, to act as enforcers of both aspects of the law. Increasingly, practices and polices implemented within this realm are characteristic of interior enforcement practices, expanding beyond border enforcement. No longer are these solely the responsibility of federal immigration agents, but now local law enforcement participates in these seemingly hidden initiatives. In the process of this merge, the scope of citizenship and the applicability of certain rights is continuously narrowing in what Juliet Stumpf refers to in The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, and Sovereign Power as “a society increasingly stratified by flexible conceptions of membership.” To unwind and reform the connections between these two systems requires the treatment of them as components of a larger emphasis on exclusionary social‐control ideology and practices, directed at immigrants and minorities alike.     

Ethnic return migration: an Estonian case

Recently there has been growing interest among scholars in ethnic return migration. This article examines return migration during the post World War 2 period of descendants of Estonians who emigrated to Russia at the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century.
A case of return migration of West-Siberian Estonians from the Omsk province is used as an example. Structuration theory is adopted and return migration is treated as a behavioural norm that evolves, spreads and becomes embedded within an ethnic minority living outside its homeland.
The research shows that in the case of West-Siberian Estonians the main carrier of the migration behavioural norm is a generation. The behavioural norm of Estonians born in the 1910s-1920s has been return migration to Estonia, while the migration behaviour of the 1930s-1940s and the 1950s-1960s generations can be characterized by urbanization in West Siberia.
Behind these inter-generation differences in migration behaviour can be found the different socialization of the generations, appearing largely on the level of practical consciousness.
The results give reason to assume that ethnic return migration over a long period depends neither directly nor indirectly on momentary environmental changes, but rather on changes in people's values, habits, identity etc., which in the case of an ethnic minority living outside its historical homeland may be followed generation by generation.     

Post-Marxism and the new social movements

Cette communication jette un regard critique sur plusieurs tendances du néo-marxisme et du post-marxisme ainsi que sur les tentatives de théoriser les nouveaux mouvements sociaux. L'auteur estime qu'on a trop vite fait de laisser tomber une bonne partie des principes fondamentaux de l'économie politique en analysant les nouveaux mouvements sociaux, alors qu'on évoque ces měmes mouvements comme confirmation des certains aspects problématiques de la théorie marxiste. Les problèmes découlent en partie du fait qu'on a voulu tirer des généralisations à partir d'observations très partielles d'un nombre limité de mouvements. Or, le travail d'analyse théorique doit tenir compte de l'économie politique de ces mouvements tout en s'enrichissant des analyses produites par les mouvements eux-měmes. The paper offers a critique of several theoretical trends in neo-and post-Marxism and of new social movement theory, contending that many of the central tenets of political economy have been too quickly abandoned in analysing the new social movements and that, at the same time, these movements have too often been used to shore up other problematic areas of Marxian analysis. Some of these problems arise from generalizations made from very partial views of only certain movements. Theoretical work needs to include the political economy of these movements and at the same time learn from the analyses generated by these movements themselves.     

British Cities and Ethnic Minorities in the Post-war Era: From Xenophobic Agitation to Multi-Ethnic Government

This essay retraces the history of immigration and ethnic minority politics in British cities in the post-war era. It shows that British cities evolved in that period from an attitude of indifference and/or hostility to immigrants in the late 1950s, to the creation of race-sensitive policies in the context of a bipartisan effort to depoliticize the issue at the national level in the 1960s, and finally to increasing participation of minorities in the politics of the Labour Party from the late 1970s onward.