– Written by Kinga Csorba
c) Minorities
In almost every country, there are minorities whose characteristics, behaviour, habits and way of life differ from those of the majority. In no European country is there a single language spoken, although generally only one language is designated as official. Language plays a huge role in the culture of a people.
i) National minorities
The term ‘national minority’ can refer to people who have been forced to leave their country of origin, but also to people who have moved to another country because of a change of borders. According to the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, adopted by the Council of Europe in 1994, countries that accept the Convention allow minorities to preserve their identity, religion, language, traditions and cultural heritage.
ii) Migrants, immigrants, refugees
Migration, or rather the refugee issue, is a constant topic on the agenda today, which is not surprising, but the phenomenon itself is not a recent phenomenon. World and domestic political changes have forced many people to flee. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly stressed the need for immigrants to accept the values of the host culture and the way of life of the local people. She has repeatedly said that immigrants will be integrated. As we are not talking about a new dollar, which goes back decades, we can draw some historical lessons. First of all, all the statistics show that the economic, social or labour market integration of second generation immigrants is not effective enough. Unemployment, marginalisation, poverty do not automatically lead to terrorism, but they can trigger resentment towards the majority. A second important problem relates to the social and cultural integration of young immigrants.
According to Bernard Lewis, when Muslim immigrants arrive in Europe, there are big differences between their expectations and their experiences. They expect more and they get less. More because they are given equal political rights, employment opportunities, freedom of speech and thought, etc. Less, because in Western societies they do not get the autonomy, the cultural self-determination that Christians and Jews in Muslim empires get.
In her study on “Hanna Arendt on Refugees and Human Rights”, László Levente Balogh seeks to explore the legal and political challenges that world organisations have not yet been able to address. Another reason is the confusion between the concepts of human rights and sovereignty, which can result in people being deprived of their rights. In general, the refugee problem can be solved in two ways, repatriation and naturalisation, but neither of these has actually solved the problem. Arendt sees the solution in the formula ‘the right to have rights’, which at first sight seems tautological, but is not. If we look at it more closely, we see that it implies that people always have the right to belong to a community.
Refugee and statelessness, according to Arendt, are not simply a deprivation of rights, because refugees do not simply lose their rights, but also their political agency. Arendt finds in the political practice of the United States of America a solution to the refugee question. Its significance lies in the fact that it is based not on a substantive identity or historical context, but on the practice of political freedom and equality.
d) Qualities
As we have seen, identity has several ‘shells’, but we often tend to focus on one single element in our interactions with others, which often leads to hasty judgements, generalised opinions or false images.
iii) Stereotypes
Stereotypes are basically built on shared beliefs and ideas about a group of people. They are characteristics that summarise the behavioural traits, habits, etc. of a group. Stereotypes are designed to simplify reality, to make our lives easier: “someone is like…”. Pld. Bosses are bullies, girls are spoiled, boys are aggressive, doctors write badly, etc. Stereotypes are in fact generalisations, which are used to pigeonhole people who belong to a group.