This volume presents research on intercultural relations in South-Eastern Europe, including the way they are imagined and managed in different social and historical contexts. After an introductory critique of the concepts of interculturalism and citizenship, the situation in Romania is investigated. The second part deals with a series of in-depth comparative studies, namely on the Roma minorities in Romania and Bulgaria. But it also considers the case of the Pomaks in Bulgaria, of Russians living in parallel societies in the Baltic States and the recent evolution of interculturalism in the region.

This study explores the little-known history of the Hungarian Autonomous Region (HAR), a Soviet-style territorial autonomy that was granted in Romania on Stalin’s personal advice to the Hungarian Székely community in the summer of 1952. Since 1945, a complex mechanism of ethnic balance and power-sharing helped the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) to strengthen—with Soviet assistance—its political legitimacy among different national and social groups. The communist national policy followed an integrative approach toward most minority communities, with the relevant exception of Germans, who were declared collectively responsible for the German occupation and were denied political and even civil rights until 1948. The Hungarians of Transylvania were provided with full civil, political, cultural, and linguistic rights to encourage political integration. The ideological premises of the Hungarian Autonomous Region followed the Bolshevik pattern of territorial autonomy elaborated by Lenin and Stalin in the early 1920s. The Hungarians of Székely Land would become a “titular nationality” provided with extensive cultural rights. Yet, on the other hand, the Romanian central power used the region as an instrument of political and social integration for the Hungarian minority into the communist state. The management of ethnic conflicts increased the ability of the PCR to control the territory and, at the same time, provided the ruling party with a useful precedent for the far larger “nationalization” of the Romanian communist regime which, starting from the late 1950s, resulted in “ethnicized” communism, an aim achieved without making use of pre-war nationalist discourse. After the Hungarian revolution of 1956, repression affected a great number of Hungarian individuals accused of nationalism and irredentism. In 1960 the HAR also suffered territorial reshaping, its Hungarian-born political leadership being replaced by ethnic Romanian cadres. The decisive shift from a class dictatorship toward an ethnicized totalitarian regime was the product of the Gheorghiu-Dej era and, as such, it represented the logical outcome of a long-standing ideological fouling of Romanian communism and more traditional state-building ideologies.

The Roma presence in the European part of the Ottoman Empire - the Balkans - is centuries old and it is not by accident that this regions has often been called the second motherland of the Gypsies. From this region Gypsies moved westwards taking with them inherited Balkan cultural models and traditions. This book explores the history, ethnography, social structure and culture of the Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire. It is based on archival sources, mainly detailed tax registers, special laws, guild registers and court documents. Notes on Gypsies in books by foreign travellers are also included.

Ethnicity and religious confession are concepts around which discussion and controversy arise, generating emotions and feelings of extreme intensity. Each of us belongs to such a community. By default, there is pressure on us to be subjective. Intercultural dialogue can be successfully provided where a community that is aware of the Other comes to communicate, cooperate and build the structure of a multicultural society. Diversity throughout Central and South-Eastern Europe can lead to either cooperation or conflict. Presently, we face discrimination, marginalization, low-status minorities, peripheral societies and the inequitable distribution of resources that leads to unequal distribution of authority and power.

The symposium focused on the problems young people across Europe face in relation to cultural and religious diversity. The participants exchanged good practice in youth work and agreed on a Declaration that sets out the main purpose and objectives in intercultural interreligious from a youth perspective. In addition to the Istanbul Youth Declaration and the conclusions of the rapporteur, this report also gives an account of the issues raised by speakers and the various working groups of the symposium.--Publisher's description.

This title was first published in 2000: The essays in this text examine interculturalism in Europe, focusing on social diversity and social policy within the European Union. Issues addressed include racism and social policy, migrant communities in Europe, ethnic diversity, intercultural education and housing and segregation.

Multicultural education is a set of strategies and materials in education, developed to assist teachers in promoting democracy while responding to the many issues created by the rapidly changing demographics of their students. Multicultural education means to ensure the highest levels of academic achievement for all students: it helps students develop a positive self-concept by providing knowledge about the histories, cultures, and contributions of diversity groups. Multicultural Education: From Theory to Practice – which includes the contributions of academics and researchers from two continents and 14 culturally-challenged countries – aims to provide a platform for multicultural education researchers to present new research and developments in the area. The contributors to the book approach the foundations of multicultural education, the political context of multicultural education, classroom practices in multicultural education, and language education in a multicultural context. This volume will appeal to a wide range of academic readership, including educators, researchers, social students, teacher trainers, and teachers of all subjects and of all levels, who wish to develop personally and professionally. It will also be useful to all those who interact, one way or another, with both students and teachers in a multicultural context.

Filled with thought-provoking examples, photos, quotes, cases, and stories that spark students’ interest and challenge them to reconsider existing viewpoints, the Seventh Edition of Fred Jandt’s An Introduction to Intercultural Communication—a historical framework featuring extensive relevant updates—prepares today’s readers to successfully navigate our increasingly global community.

The search for identity is a continuous challenge in the global world: from personal identity to social, national, European or professional identities, each person experiences nowadays a multi-dimensional self-representation. Placing the topic against an intercultural background, with a focus on communication, this book addresses the complicated relationship between self, identity, and society, from an academic perspective. The authors of the chapters in this book offer a complex landscape of professional and scholar approaches and research, in various parts of the world, including Canada, China, Estonia, France, Greece, Israel, Romania, and the United States of America.