What is the meaning of minority?

In our multicultural European society we are constantly challenged to engage with the „other“ culture, the „other“ language. Ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities are part of our „European culture“. The growth of the population through the arrival of new groups of immigrants, the meaning of „Heimat“, and questions of identity are all of growing concern at the beginning of the 21st century. In 1979, the UN special correspondent Francesco Capotorti defined minority as a group that possesses the following four criteria:

• It is numerically smaller than the rest of the population
• It assumes a non-dominant position within the state it occupies
• Its members are nationals of the state they live in, and
• Its members share ethnic, religious or linguistic commonalities and wish to maintain these collectively

Whether a person belongs to a minority or not should depend primarily on their free will and not on their mother tongue, their name or their background, and should never have to be verified. Citizenship, usually, shows the difference between a so-called old or a new minority. However, there are isolated cases, such as the Russians‘ situation in the Baltic countries, where a long established minority are not granted citizenship.

The activities of international organisations such as the UN, OSCE, the European Council and the EU emphasise the importance of the integration of migrants and ethnic minorities for a peaceful coexistence in Europe. They also point out that minorities, and the way we deal with them, will represent one of the key challenges for our society over the coming decades.

Europe is often referred to as a fortress, albeit one that seems in constant danger of being seized by foreign invaders. Is the EU capable of influencing the immigration influx and if yes, by what means? On the one hand, there are numerically small minorities, such as the Ladins, the Sorbs or the Frisians, and on the other hand, there are minorities that comprise a whole nation, such as the Scottish, the Catalans, or the Basques. Will these small minorities manage to survive culturally and linguistically, and are independence and statehood the only way forward for the larger minorities? The minet team is searching for the answers to these and many more questions within Europe and, sometimes, overseas.