Geographical scope of the ENRI-East
The geographical coverage of the project includes four regions that are located along the line that divides (or unites!) the European continent into its “Western” and “Eastern” parts. Such line has many dimensions, such as historical (it is a constantly moving borderline), political (power games, geopolitics, wars and peace) or social (peoples’ habits, cultures, religions)… Thus, in order to better understand what exactly is uniting or dividing peoples of Europe along and across this line, we have designed the ENRI-East project and have selected four regions for an in-depth analysis. These regions are conventionally labelled as “Baltic region”, “Eastern Europe”, “Central Europe” and “Carpathian basin”.
The sample shall be stratified in order to represent “bigger minorities” (100 thousand people and more), “small minorities” (less than 10 thousand people) and “medium-size minorities” (20 to 50 thousand). In a series of case studies the social, cultural and political components of the daily lives of at least 10 ethnic groups living along and across the Eastern borders of the enlarged European Union and the Western borders of its neighbouring Newly Independent States (NIS) countries are explored. Through choice (sampling) of the geographical scope the project reflects the statistical weight of a group in European countries as well as representing “Western” and “Eastern” parts of the European continent.
The main project areas are the “overlapping” geographic regions that are conventionally labelled as follows:
- Baltic region (including Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, northern parts of Poland and Baltic-bordering provinces of Russia);
- Eastern Europe (including bordering areas of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary);
- Central Europe (including the special case of Germany and possible further extensions of the study in the case of secured co-funding);
- Carpathian basin (border regions of Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine).