KINPOL: Observatory on Kin-State Policies

ASN 2020 European Conference: Nationalism and Populism in Semi-Peripheries: Central and Eastern European Responses to Global Challenges, 1 – 3 July 2021, Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár/ Klausenburg, Romania

In 2001, a kin-state’s engagement was welcomed by the Council of Europe as a novel form of minority protection. Without any doubt, in many cases, the kin-state’s support has been of paramount importance for protecting the identity and promoting the culture of many minority ethnocultural groups. However, in recent years, kin-state engagement in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has evolved in ways that challenge any attempts to justify it as minority protection. Rather, we notice a proliferation of a neoliberal state rationality regarding trans-sovereign identity politics manifested more acutely in the multiplication of policies that facilitate the access to citizenship for co-ethnics abroad and are justified by a need to rectify internal labour shortages (e.g., Hungary, Poland, or Bulgaria), as well as in the efforts of many states to use the ties with co-ethnics abroad to strengthen their regional influence (e.g., Russia, Romania, or Serbia). Against this backdrop which suggests an instrumentalisation of kin-state engagement in CEE, this roundtable discussion organised by KINPOL Observatory on Kin-state Policies brings together scholars to discuss the benefits, drawbacks and limits of a kin-state’s engagement in CEE in the context of current policies and normative guidelines.     

CHAIR: Levente Salat (Babeş-Bolyai University)

PARTICIPANTS: Myra Waterbury (Ohio University); Andreea Udrea (University of Glasgow); Zsuzsa Csergő (Queen’s University, Canada); Erin Jenne (Central European University); and Tamás Kiss (The Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities)

Full programme will be available here.

BASEES Polish Studies Group/SSEES Polish Studies workshop: Polish studies: Today and Tomorrow, 19-20 September 2019, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UK

This presentation draws on the contribution of Andreea Udrea and David Smith to the project ‘Poland’s Kin-state Policies: Opportunities and Challenges’ (University of Glasgow, 2018-2020). It examines Poland’s relationship with its co-ethnics abroad focusing on the Act on the Polish Card. The Act is one of the most recent kin-state policies in Central and Eastern Europe and has received only limited attention within the growing academic literature on the legislation on kin-minorities. Similar to the legislation of other states in Central and Eastern Europe, Poland’s Act aims primarily to tackle its domestic demographic crisis by encouraging immigration. This paper evaluates the instrumentalization of a kin-state’s engagement drawing on the literature on liberal multiculturalism and international responsibility. It discusses: how a kin-state can contribute to the protection of non-dominant groups in their home-states; and to what extent Poland’s kin-state policy challenges an argument for shared responsibility of minority protection between home-state and kin-state as mutually beneficial inter-state cooperation.

The full programme is available to view. 

OSCE High Commissioner of National Minorities and University of Glasgow, 24 October 2017, The Hague, The Netherlands

This workshop brought together the advisers from the office of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and scholars on kin-state and autonomy issues. It introduced the KINPOL Observatory on Kin-state Policies and its new project on Poland’s kin-state policies; discussed emerging and potential future kin-states; outlined examples of good practice from an OSCE perspective of kin-state policies and contrasted it with examples of unilateral policies; reflected on existing OSCE recommendations and international instruments’ impact on inter-state relations; and engaged with the work of visiting scholars through individual/group interviews and informed advisers’ work on specific portfolios of countries.

PARTCIPANTS: The advisers from the office of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, David Smith (University of Glasgow), Andreea Udrea (University of Glasgow), Federica Prina (University of Glasgow), Zsuzsa Csergő (Queen’s University) and Kristina Kallas (University of Tartu Narva College).