Journal articles on the topic 'ETHNO-CULTURAL IDENTITY CRISIS'

Thearticleprovidesanoverviewofinternationalexperiences,namelythepracticesof the United States of America and Canada in which «multiculturalism» acts as a state policyin defining national identity in the area of cultural policy, in the contemporary world theproblemofovercomingthecrisisofthenationalidentityforanystateisoneofthemostessentialtopics.ThepaperalsoshowsthatCanadaandtheUnitedStatesofAmericaaresomeofthefewcountriesintheworldthatusethemodelofmulticulturalismasanintegrationpolicy,have a multi-ethnic population, and receive hundreds of thousands of temporary or permanentimmigrants every year. The policy of multiculturalism, as oneof the models of integrationpolicy,isusedinthesestatesasoneofthewaystoachievethisgoal.Thepurposeoftheauthorsistoanalyzethepoliciesandactionsoftheseforeigncountriesandtoshowthatthecallingofamulticulturalpolicyisconsideredtobetheconsolidationofa fragmented society by ethno-cultural characteristics, through the comprehensive support ofculturaldiversity.

The article discusses the prospects for preserving the ethno-cultural identity of the Buryat people in the 21st century. Under the conditions of the transformation of Russian society over the past twenty years and the impact of global integration processes taking place in the world the opportunities for preserving the ethno-cultural identity of the Buryat ethnic group and its language are rapidly declining. Based on the analysis of vari-ous environmental factors, we have considered the possible scenarios for the development of the Buryat ethnos in the conditions of the socio-economic crisis and in the economic stability and growth, and summed up the total prospects for preserving its ethno-cultural identity in the 21st century. The “negative” scenario for the development of the Buryat ethnic group covers the crisis period of the 1990s and early 2000s. Predictive assessments are based on an analysis of the impact of crisis phenomena on the agricultural sector and the social sphere of the village, which led to the outflow of the Buryat population from the village to the city. The economic crisis has a negative impact on the institutions of reproduction and transmission of the Buryat culture: it leads to a reduction in funding and commercialization of their ac-tivities and separation from the needs of the bulk of the ethnic group. Thus, the socio-economic crisis accelerates the process of de-ethnization and acculturation of the ethnos. The “positive” scenario reflects the development of the ethnic group in the context of eco-nomic growth, however, its consequences also negatively affect the preservation of ethnic identity and language, since the needs of the economic development of the ancestral terri-tory of the Buryat ethnic group will entail an influx of labour resources, that is, a popula-tion of other ethnicities, which will reduce the demographic power of the Buryat ethnic group. Thus, the economic growth, as well as the economic crisis will contribute to the ac-culturation and assimilation of the Buryats. In the context of global integration processes taking place in the world and the current policy of Russia, the opportunities of preserving the ethno-cultural identity of the Buryat ethnos and its language due to objective reasons will gradually decrease in the 21st century.

Modern society emphasizes the concept of tolerance at all levels and in all aspects, including international relations and cultural interactions. Social and cultural problems that arise in the process of globalization have a significant impact on the forms of self-determination of individual people. In the course of the modern era, a new type of self-identification of a person is being formed in culture. Types of socio-ethnic identity are also undergoing significant changes. This growth of cultural and socio-psychological diversity is by no means a harmonious process. Behind it lies the global phenomenon of the destabilization of the relationship between the individual and society, the crisis of the individual's social identity. The globalized world simultaneously involves him in many new informational, cognitive and practical interactions, and turns the purpose and meaning of these interactions into something relative, transitory, situational, devoid of this value content capable of forming stable human societies. This situation can also be defined as a crisis of human sociality and its institutional foundations.

The concept of identity is a complex phenomenon, which includes the desire of an individual to belong to one or another ethno-national, confessional, social, political, religious, professional, linguistic and other communities. At the same time, self-identification as self-identity is the most important component of cultural identity. At the turn of XX–XXI centuries the Russian society faced with the problem of identity, along with unresolved economic, political, social and general cultural problems. It deals with identity of the nation as a whole, of individual groups, and of the individual. In general, the crisis of cultural identity can be seen as a global trend.

Post-colonial states has been remained a home to multi ethno lingual and hetero cultural folders. Pakistan is one of the examples, having diversified ethno lingual groupings. It has four provinces and each have a distinct socio, cultural and lingual identity. Currently these Ethno-Nationalist movements have pivotal position in the political life of Baluchistan. The land of Baluchistan has experienced the violent tides of different ethno national and sectarian movements, but communalism in Baluchistan pushes the country toward hot water. Along this, uncountable waves of religious extremism in the region add fuel to fire. Both communalism and religious extremism is proving a thorn in flesh and the major hurdle to strengthen the socio economic political path. The concerned study aims to detect major driving factors that contribute to violent moves and also suggests remedial measures to eradicate yielded crisis. That voices our endeavors to cultivate literacy, harmony, equality, and in short neutralization of ethno national movements. The research concludes that intensity of ethnic rise must be the Centre of our priorities because still the water is in dormant position once it flowed, than it would be an uphill task to bear the aftershocks. This piece is intended to highlight the root cause of ethno nationalism and also the expected nightmare as we had faced in the form of Dhaka’s fall. Keywords: Ethno-nationalism, fragmentation, harmony, regional stability, socio economic political disparities.

For communities that sit at the fringe of ethnic, cultural and linguistic divide, the twin questions of identity and belonging often remain issues of concern. The remoteness of such communities from the mainstream of sociocultural and political processes, the straddling of ethno-cultural boundaries and the dilution of cultural beliefs, values system, practices and language often reinforce the notion that they belong to the peripheries of the nationalities. This in turn can generate crises of marginalization of such communities as is the case of the Yoruba’s of the old Ilorin Province. Through the circumstance of history and the geographical location of Ilorin at the fringe of the Yoruba nation, the people of the Old Ilorin Province have come to be seen as a community that is of less importance to the socio-cultural, political and economic development of the Yoruba nation at large. Thus, the issue of where to place Ilorin has remained an enigma for the people of the community and the Yoruba nation. This has generated a crisis of identity and belonging for the Yoruba of the old Ilorin Province. To this end, this study examined how frontier communities experience and navigate the complexity of identity politics and belonging using Ilorin as a point of reference. The study made use of archival, historical documents and other qualitative data to weave its narration of the crisis of identity and belonging facing the Yoruba of the old Ilorin Province as a common phenomenon in Africa because of colonial legacy.

The partition of 1947 is the most tragic and remarkable incident in the history of modern South Asia in creating new political identities. It separated peoples of common ethno-cultural and religious origins with artificial political borderlines imposed on their historical homelands that transformed the traditional socio-political arrangement of this region into a regional international nation-state system. Consequently, two independent states, India and Pakistan, came into being as a result of partition based on the two-nation theory. Millions of the inhabitants had to be displaced and migrated from their birth lands. In the changed circumstances, the natural identity of the individual by birth has been replaced by the political identity of the state. Due to these changes, many people remain stateless and become refugees. It appears as an unending source of crisis in this region such as identity and citizenship crises, communal politics, linguistic and cultural conflicts, communal riots, force-displacement, border killings, etc. These issues are well addressed in the three partition films - Chitra Nadir Pare (Quiet Flows the River Chitra), Swapnabhumi (The Promised Land) and Seemantorekha (The Borderline) produced by Tanvir Mokammel, an internationally acclaimed auteur filmmaker in Bangladesh. His deep insight into post-partition impact has been reflected in these films. How a filmmaker perceives partition is revisited and analyzed in this paper by an idea of contemporary political philosophy known as ‘geo-cultural identity theory’.

This paper contains a comparative analysis of the presentation of the national identity of Spain and Germany by the far-right populist parties Vox España and Alternative für Deutschland. It shows how each party views national identity as being in a serious crisis arising from the betrayal by old-line parties which has led to the increased influence of the EU, the consequent reduction of national sovereignty, a deleterious impact on their own and on European culture, and a harmful influence on the family. The parties repudiate many of the provisions of the EU treaties. They are equally opposed to the presence of Islam in Christian Europe, viewing it as a menace to values shared by all European nations. These analyses lead to an examination of the performance of crisis by means of deliberate provocation and the use of electronic media. It shows how these parties from very different parts of Europe share remarkably close positions and use the technological achievements of the twenty-first century to attack the late-twentieth-century political and social achievements of the European Union in order to replace them with the nineteenth-century idea of the distinct ethno-cultural nation fully sovereign in its own nation-state.

Based on the materials of ethno-sociological and ethno demographic studies from the Soviet and post-Soviet times, carried out by Russian and Moldavian scientists, the article presents a dynamic, socio-cultural image of a Gagauz woman. Different aspects of a modern woman’s life are considered: her life values, attitude to labour, education, wealth, marriage and family. The article also raises questions about religion, ethnic identity, language skills, labour migration of Gagauz women, the transformation of gender stereotypes in Gagauz society. Powerful globalization processes, socio-economic and spiritual crisis, a high level of impoverishment among the population, as well as the pandemic, have greatly affected the worldview system of people. In the Gagauz society, which is now at the stage of transitioning from a traditional to a modern type of society, the most important moral values and spiritual and moral orientations of women have embodied traditional as well as innovative features. The dynamics of the Gagauz women’s spiritual world is strongly influenced by social transformations related to international labour migration that has to a great extent changed the habitual gender roles in the Gagauz family, the existing models and stereotypes of men’s and women’s behavior, their statuses and relationships.

The historical approach to the formation of the origin concept for the Old Russian state and the ethno-cultural history of the Russian people allows for fervent discussions. They can be resolved by a culturological approach and the understanding of the cultureforming role of Orthodoxy as a key factor in the formation, preservation and transmission of the folk tradition through many centuries. Since the very emergence of the Russian land, the Orthodox tradition has been preserving the continuous transmission of values, worldview, and attitudes to many phenomena of the cultural life of the Russian population. However, after Peter the Great, and even more after the Soviet period marked by controlled destruction and substitution of the tradition, one can talk about the crisis of the Russian identity and the search for the living tradition and its place in contemporary life. In modern Russia, three approaches to the replication of the folk tradition can be observed. The fi rst one is conditioned by the activity of cultural institutions and dates back to the Soviet period of the Russian tradition destruction and the formation of the new Soviet people’s identity. The second one is implemented through the activity of the youth folklore movement of “practicing folklorists” who are guided by the materials of folklorist and ethnographic research and fi eld data. The third one is represented by an alternative identity formed through the practices of neo-pagan associations and the activity of organizers of holidays, festivities, and seminars who share this worldview. The latter approach is characterized by the rejection of the Christian bases and content of folk festivals that have survived till present in the research data. Maslenitsa and Kupala have always been Christian holidays and have been perceived as such among those with a Christian worldview. However, representatives of the third approach deny this, going to obvious falsifi cations and forgeries. Their worldview leads not only to the distortion of the value bases of Russian ethno-cultural tradition, but also to an anti-state ideology.

The article is devoted to the analysis of contemporary ethnopolitical processes in the Altai Republic. It is based on a polyparadigm approach and a wide range of sources. In the 1980–1990s, a number of organizations emerged in the Altai Republic; they represented the interests of the region’s minorities: the Kumandins, Chelkans, Tubalars, Teleuts. These groups, which were assessed as subethnoses in the academic and social-journalistic discourse, had crisis parameters in the preservation of languages and cultures, but demonstrated a high level of political activity. In the 2000s, the Kumandins, Chelkans, Tubalars, and Teleuts’ political choice was made in favor of the status of indigenous small peoples, which did not prevent them from considering themselves as a part of the Altai community as a whole. The authors’ study showed that the priorities of ethnic structuring of the Altai’s ethnopolitical space in the 2000s combined with integration trends. The realization of the rights of the indigenous peoples of the Altai Republic formed a new socio-cultural and ethno-political reality. The characteristic features of this reality are: activation of the national and ecological-cultural movement of indigenous small peoples and mobilization of ethnicity, cultural and linguistic identity; multi-level nature of identity. By analyzing the socio-cultural and ethno-political practices of the indigenous small peoples of the Altai Republic, the article demonstrates that despite all the difficulties associated with preserving the unity of the republican community, the movement of the region’s indigenous minorities has built a system of effective dialogue with the state and the regional community, taking into account Russian and international political and legal support.

The objective of the article is to identify, describe, and explain the essence of terrorism as a general civilizational criminal phenomenon, the characteristics of dimensions of its reproduction and the formation of its concept on this basis. The results of the study provided the grounds for several conclusions. First, ethno-religious terrorism is manifested as a cultural phenomenon, a special segment of the inhumane discourse of hostility and aggressive social practices. It appears as a reaction to the systemic planetary crisis of managing economics, culture, consumption of natural resources, and becomes possible in the result of the massive loss of identity, fragmentation of the world-view. Secondly, we have established that the specified type of terrorism is a segment of aggressive and violent crime, in the collective and psychological basis of which there is the religious and ideological and/or ethnic domination in the systems of socio-political practice, which is achieved through intimidation as a result of committed murders, destruction or damage to property, objects of nature and offenses of a preventive nature (financial, human resources, information, and other provision). Thirdly, ethno-religious terrorism exists within three dimensions: individual (the act of sacrifice, catharsis), group (integration, social orientation) and general (administrative practice, political criminal activity, the postmodern phenomenon of the culture). The applied value of the study is that the suggested vision of the nature and dimensions of ethno-religious terrorism can be used to improve the systemic principles of counteracting its reproduction. The latter should be reflected in the improvement of the provisions of the United Nations Global Counterterrorism Strategy through the consolidation of a coherent, coordinated system of level differentiation of anti-terrorist activities’ directions and measures. We note that without changing the basic approaches within the cultural, political, and economic aspects of the interaction of nations and peoples of the world with regard to their diversity and parity, proper autonomy, without stopping the global tendency towards marginalization, it is impossible to effectively counteract to ethno-religious terrorism. Value/originality. The new vision of a complex, multidimensional nature of ethno-religious terrorism has been formed in the work. Its nature is grounded as a civilizational phenomenon reflected on the level of discourse, mass social practices, global managerial strategies. It forms an empirically grounded theoretical basis for increasing the effectiveness of counteracting ethno-religious terrorism in Europe and the world in the whole.

The article discusses the peculiarities of the formation of religious identity in the dynamics of geopolitical processes in Ukraine, which depend on historical conditions, features of the economic and socio-political structure, democratic and cultural traditions of society, the level of legal and moral development of its members and the ambitions of its leaders. It is proved that religion is a decisive factor in the ethnic life of Ukrainians, and the controversial role of Christianity in ethno-identification and ethno-consolidation processes is noted. The modern world-wide political, economic and spiritual crisis imposes its imprint on Ukraine as well. As one of the transitional countries of the post-socialist space, our state has not yet found a single-minded vector of its own development, in particular, the ecclesiastical. Ukraine is only on the verge of forming a united national idea and crystallizing its own self-identification on the religious marker. Religion is the basic semantic-forming component of a unified national identity. Today, religious and ethnic identities are closely intertwined. Therefore, the problem of the ethnorelain factor always attracts significant attention of leading scholars, statesmen and church hierarchs. In Ukraine, a significant number of religious groups completely coincide with the boundaries of a separate ethnic group. The lack of civic consensus on the country's foreign policy, cultural identity, separate sovereign positions of the Ukrainian state, the diverse views of the past and the future at the present makes it impossible to formulate unanimous interests, which negatively affects external and internal policies. Compared with the Soviet period, religious identity today is a relatively new category. On opposition to the state-civilian benchmark for many Ukrainians, religion is on the forefront. Undeniably, Orthodoxy played a very important role in the formation of the Ukrainian nation and our religious identity. However, today, multiconfessional diversity and inability or reluctance to negotiate, to be tolerant, break Ukraine into several regions. The negative tendency of loss of awareness of Ukrainians of the unity of religion, nation, common spirit is traced. The formation of religious identity is a long process of formation of society as a whole, and is a consequence of the historical formation of Ukraine as a nation. Religious identification is the reproduction of accumulated social and religious experience in all spheres. World and domestic scholars are unequivocal in the conclusions that the central place in the formation of national identity belongs to religiousness. Religious beliefs that have an indelible imprint of an ethnic group living on a particular territory are precisely the center of the formation of a new national-religious identity of Ukrainian society.

In the article the author determines the formation of a functional correlation between the institutions of civil society and ethnic nationalism in Austria-Hungary. It is established that civil society in the Austro-Hungarian Empire began to form clearly after the democratic reforms of the sixties of the XIX century. It is proved that civil society has undergone stratification in various national and linguistic spaces in the form of educational, scientific, economic, and creative organizations. Civil society on the periphery of the empire has acquired a stable ethno-cultural character.The findings indicate that the acute crisis of identity in Austro-Hungary developed on the basis of two actively functioning sources: the old conflict environment of local historical and state identities and new formations that arose as a result of the cultural and political expansion of ethnic groups belonging to nations that were treated as young and stateless. The problems of economic, social, mental autonomy and cultural coexistence could not receive an authentic representation only in terms of administrative and political decentralization or integration, since in each national-ethnic event they had a spiritual and cultural content and socio-humanitarian content. In the early twentieth century. in Austria-Hungary there was a situation of unstable equilibrium of the composite society, which was characterized by the asynchrony of historical development.The ethnic factor played a dissonant role in the social life of Austria-Hungary. Most ethno-national groups were in different segments of the formation of political nations, in different socio-cultural contexts, which led to difficulties in the formation of classical institutions of civil societies and its formation as homogeneous. The period of modernization of the Austrian empire proved that liberalism and nationalism are historically linked precisely with the principle of people's sovereignty. Keywords: Austro-Hungarian Empire, multiethnicity, liberalization, civil society, national movements

Abstract Like most conflicts across the world, the Niger Delta crisis has generated a body of works now labelled Niger Delta literature. These cultural art forms, which are not only programmatic in thrust but also carry a dissenting temper that is laden with counter hegemonic rhetoric, are primarily geared towards underpinning a brutish kind of colonization and corporate greed which has become the stamp of toxic dreaming and dubious progress in Nigeria. This literature draws attention to the debility of the Niger Delta people and to the fact that they are trapped under double hegemons – the Nigerian government and transnational oil firms – that have strategically transformed or reduced this precarious geography and its inhabitants to mere commodities. A close reading of texts on the Niger Delta makes one aware of the politics and structure of the Nigerian economy and the corporate cost of petroculture; moreover, issues of ethno-regional identity, the inequity in the distribution of resources, the near absence of government presence in the Niger Delta and the continuous decay of state infrastructures provide a fertile ground for explaining the resentment expressed by these heavily marginalized people. By protesting their marginality, these poets frame a kind of identity that “others” the Niger Delta people, thereby holding the state accountable for its deplorable conditions and the abysmal underdevelopment of the region considering the quantity of wealth it generates for the Nigerian federation. Paying significant attention to the relationship between the representations of landscape and processes of political and economic transformation and how the landscape becomes the defining index for identity formation in the poetry of Tanure Ojaide and Ibiware Ikiriko, I argue that these poets point to the way in which colonialism and environmental devastation are interlocking systems of domination within the Nigerian nation.

The article shows the stadium-civilization origins of the current system of global quasi-liberal monetarism (neo-liberalism) as an ideological basis of the social system, which is caused by a numberof socio-economic crises, including the financial collapse of the late ХХ – early ХХІ century. The fundamental inability of such a model of global development to overcome the fundamental destructivetrends, which sharply increased after the Second World War, was substantiated. The real meaning of various technologically deterministic social utopias, which from the positions of post-industrialtechnological determinism also offer various recipes to overcome global problems of our time is revealed. It is shown that the real staged alternative to the crisis mainstream, aimed at humanizing themodern world, should be based on radical reformatting of the current global trend towards the revival of the national state on the basis of the restoration of ethno-national identity in its cultural and socialand economic dimensions, as well as radical reformatting of various regional associations , including the EU, on the basis of a cumulative functional complement of national and supra-state institutesopposite only superficially inconsistent to global cosmopolitism and ethnoreligious fundamentalism.

This article examines the features of modern migration processes and their impact on the ethnic culture of Dungans. In the conditions of political instability and economic crisis, the ethnic Dungans of the region are forced to leave their homes in search of a better life in a foreign cultural environment. Movements are primarily directed to the internal territories of the former USSR states, but there are also trends for emigration from the region to the countries of Europe and America. Compact residence of a small Dungan ethnic group slows the process of cultural assimilation, while dispersed residence in a foreign-ethnic environment leads not only to the development of new cultural attributes, professional achievements, and material well-being in the new environment but also to transformation and then to assimilation. The authors mainly relied on interviews as a special method of research in oral history when studying ethnic history and the history of interethnic contacts. Recent studies in places where Dungans live compactly demonstrate a high increase in migration trends, among them in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, which may accelerate the loss of specific cultural features in the future, including the loss of language as one of the main distinguishing features of ethno-cultural identity

As a nation-state, Slovenia represents an increasingly rare case wherein 80 percent of the country identifies as ethnically homogeneous. Even in the face of this fact, Slovenia's ethno-national identity has been called into question since its independence. The European refugee crisis has brought this questioning into sharp focus as the admittance, care and transfer of refugees has caused burdens not only economically and logistically, but also in terms of what it means to be Slovenian and European at the same time. In a place with little history of provision of care for large-scale refugee populations, the cultural and political frameworks of Slovene society do not possess the crisis response capacity that its Northern European neighbors might. In fact, Slovenia's record on human rights is not as stellar as is often presented to the world at large. This paper argues that Slovenia's place in Mitteleuropa serves as a hindrance to it as a place of social care and reaffirms certain historical conditions that render it a transitory space between The Other and the ‘real’ Europe. It relies upon field observations of how Slovenia organized its response to the crisis in the autumn of 2015 and criticizes those responses as reaffirming both the post-socialist transition and the neoliberal intent of its national infrastructure and political economy.

The subject of this article is the problem of identity of the characters in the novel “In Search of the Primordial Land” by the regional Khanty writer Eremey Aipin. The goal is to describe the key vectors of reflections of the main characters on personal and national identity. The author aims to analyze the path of spiritual and social becoming, as well as finding true identity in the world and society of the protagonists of the novel — “man of the kin” Matvey Taishin and the hero “without kith or kin” Roman Romanov. The study leans on the interdisciplinary comprehensive approach, with the use of cultural-historical, typological, ethno-cultural, axiological and imagological methods of analysis. The scientific novelty lies in examination of the characters of the literary work from the perspective of their identity and identification. Analysis is conducted on the two ways of finding true identity by the characters in the small and big world. Path of “man of the kin” is the cognition of capabilities of staying in the world, strengthening of inviolable faith as the essential link in the chain of life, nature, Cosmos, and humanity. Path of the hero “without kith or kin” is a series of initiations (according to V. Y. Propp), as a result of which he gradually assimilates to the “earthly world”, having acquired the experience of merging with society. It is proven that solution of the questions on personal, social and national identity of the characters of the novel is interrelated with the author's traditionalistic worldview. The conclusion is made that in a crisis historical situation, the characters of the novel intuitively tilt towards ancient cultural memory of humanity, seeing its as a basis for reconstruction of identity.

The culture of tolerance is the subject of post-classical knowledge of conscious phenomena that influence the processes being a person and its ethno-national identity. There is a formation of a political nation that meets the requirements of European society and the spirit of ethno-social shifts, resulting in the formation of the corresponding meanings of network culture and global identity. The civilized spirit of freedom is the property of the content of the history philosophers and the realities of socio-cultural changes of being. The formation of a discursive space of tolerance establishes the contemporary meaning and meaning of a particular socio-cultural life, when the culture of tolerance was shaped by Europe at an early age of its civilization, and, through this, a combination of external structures with its internal world is achieved. Without the «philosophy of hope» there is no optimization of the reliability of the specialists training. In this context, the priority of the humanitarian aspect of the educational space is overcoming - and fragmentation of the reform process, also as the education and upbringing that embraced the makers of the product intelligence. Understand that all the priorities of educational reform have not only authoritative policies, but a positive meaning emerges only when the regions is headed by authoritative bearers of the patriotic-professional direction. And they find common actions with the Ministry of Education and Science, the intellect-environment, students, etc. Only through the achievement of a European level of academic freedoms, one can touch on the «pragmatics of the educational noosphere» the community will help the formation of reformers-officials to conduct dialogue in the sense of what this word has as a «difficult transitional state», after which there appears «civil enlightenment», the ability to find an understanding with society, in spite of the violent ignorance of radicals from the East or the West.The feeling of future specialists before the exit of the «crisis society» from the state of «permanent rebellion» is born despite the «hybridization of humanitarian situation».

В последние два десятилетия Франция стала страной западного мира, где происходит, пожалуй, наибольшее количество актов индивидуального террора, который связан с мусульманской миграцией и часто выступает под религиозными лозунгами. Очерчивая общие причины современного терроризма, автор сосредотачивается на анализе причин и триггерах, прямых ситуационных факторах, провоцирующих терроризм в современной Франции. В качестве основной причины называется недостаточная, неэффективная интеграция мигрантов, у которых, как следствие складывается кризисная идентичность, ранимость и повышенная реактивность на некоторые категории событий, которые представляются оскорблением. In the past two decades, France has become a country in the Western world with perhaps the largest number of acts of individual terror associated with Muslim migration and often carried out under religious slogans. Outlining the common causes of modern terrorism, the author focuses on the analysis of the causes and triggers of the ethno-cultural order, direct situational factors provoking terrorism in modern France. The main reason is the insufficient, ineffective integration of migrants, who, as a result, develop a crisis identity, vulnerability and increased reactivity to some categories of events that seem to be an insult.

Abstract The historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-nationalist, anti-Muslim fearmongering and political infighting within the European Union (EU). Perhaps no one was more influential in promulgating fear and anti-refugee sentiment than Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, whose inflammatory rhetoric and uncompromising, illiberal political stance helped escalate the refugee-crisis in a discursive battle of political wills, ideologies, and identity politics within the EU. This paper explores how Orbán employs political discourse practices and strategies to enact his right-wing populist (RWP) ideology and anti-immigrant ‘politics of fear’ (Wodak 2015) vis-à-vis EU politicians’ pro-migration discourses. Adopting a broad critical discourse-analytic approach, we demonstrate Orbán’s iterative production of discourses of threat and defense underlying discourses of fear (law and order, cultural/religious difference), and discourses of oppositional political identities and ideologies through fractal recursion. We argue that recursive performance of RWP stances creates a recognizable political style characteristic of Orbán’s RWP political persona or type.

The paper deals with the problem of identity in modern interpretations of the phenomenon in the context of postmodernism and metamodernism.In today’s information society, there is an increasing interest in issues related to the existence of man: the meaning of his life, freedom and responsibility, understanding of oneself as a subject of social action, etc. Among them, a special attention should be paid to the topic of identity of an individual as preserving oneself in the form of a semantic and value integrity throughout one’s own life.In recent years, a version of the crisis of identity as a deformation of its integrity has become popular. Social reality, which had previously formed a stable system of values and cultural traditions with its stability, has undergone profound changes. It became more dynamic, the informational aspect of its existence came out on top, the outlook on the value of family, marriage, career, profession, education and, ultimately, the meaning of the person himself has changed. They began to talk about him as a person without values, as a «leaving nature».In the concept of postmodernism, the problem of identity sounded through the theme of its crisis state as erosion of ideological and value orientations grounding on the fact that in the era of information globalism, a person loses his ethno-cultural certainty. He becomes a «citizen of the world», and therefore is open to the values and traditions of other cultures. This deforms one’s identity, blurs its integrity and reports a certain unpredictability of social acts and actions.The philosophical reflection of metamodernism, or post-postmodernism, turns the problem of identity into another plane. A new image of the world, created with the help of the World Wide Web, has formed a virtual reality as an information communication space. In this regard, the value of the subject of communication developed through the ability to build a productive dialogue with the community on the other side of the screen and the ability to adapt quickly to the changing information situation. These qualities were a condition for a person to realize his own value as a carrier of adequate self-perception in the system of information dialogue. They also became the basis for a new reading of the subject’s identity as a formed ability for information communication, the purpose of which is the productive nature of mutual understanding of the interacting parties.Thus, in the reflection of modern philosophizing, a new meaning, or rather, reformation of identity, appears as the correspondence of one’s communicative skills to the needs of today’s time.

The article deals with the transformation of the status and priorities of Russian-speaking writers who find themselves in a diaspora. The cultural background of literature in Russian was originally historical Russia within the Russian statehood. In the 20th century, this literature divided into the literature of the metropolis and the literature of the Russian-speaking diaspora. Since the end of the XX century, due to historical and political perturbations, literature in Russian is produced in different countries of the world, resulting not only from literary migrations, but also from autonomous literary processes in these regions and countries. It is possible to speak of both global communications in the Russian-speaking world and the existence of local Russian-speaking literary communities. Literature is created by Russian-speaking writers on different cultural bases, it acquires specific features depending on this basis, but also in conjunction with memories of the Russian literary tradition and global literary trends. The subject of the study is not the diaspora community as such, but the historical and cultural situation in which Russian-language literature, originally based primarily within certain state boundaries, goes beyond them and exists independently of those state institutions that have traditionally been associated with it in one way or another. The article characterizes the cultural phenomenon of diaspora as “ethnic marginality”, an ethno-cultural community functioning in a non-ethnic context, and considers the main historical and cultural stages of the relationship between the metropolis and the diaspora. Particular attention is paid to the crisis situation in the writer's work. Being in an alien socio-cultural environment, the writer acquired a special cross-cultural writing experience as a condition and creative reflection, caused by a change of environment and the loss of the familiar, usual values of the native culture, and by questions about one's identity, when previous experiences became an attribute of memory and reflection.

From the end of September 2020 to November 2021, the Year of Germany was held in the Russian Federation. At present, while summing up its results, it seems only relevant to do some work on the study of the multifaceted ethnolinguistic community of Russian Germans, especially its Moscow diaspora. In this article, two key points are considered: the history of representatives of the community to the present day and the empirical part of the study that analyzes indepth interviews of respondents from among young Russian Germans under the age of 35, living in Moscow. The main purpose of the work was to find out what state this ethno-linguistic community is in today: to consider the problem of self-identification of its members, to trace their native language level and interest in studying and preserving the cultural heritage of their ancestors. The study of various sources has shown that throughout the history of the life of Germans in our country, the attitude towards them has repeatedly changed: from positive to hostile, to more neutral; from praising this community as that of competent specialists and innovators in many fields to persecution and repression during the first half of the twentieth century, and, eventually, refusal to be recognized as a full-fledged community. As a result of these actions on the part of the Soviet government, the community of Russian Germans found themselves in a state of identity crisis facing the problem of the gradual disappearance of their linguistic and cultural landscape. Interestingly, the interviews compiled on the basis of a form created within the framework of the “Languages of Moscow” project helped to find out that in Moscow, historically one of the most important centers of initial settlement of Germans in Russia, their community is not visible any more due to the low level of presence of native Moscow Germans. At the same time, there is a chance for its growth since many respondents consider it to be important to pass on their rich cultural and linguistic heritage to their descendants and continue to develop it on the territory of Russia. So, we believe that the current work has a potential for further and deeper research of the ethno-linguistic community, in particular with the focus on the diaspora of Russian Germans who emigrated to Germany (namely rusacks).

This article explores the different approaches to study of conflict resolution strategyfrom a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives. It argues that conflict resolution strategy aspolitical integration resource is a necessary tool for overcoming deep-rooted ethnic conflictsin the instable region of North Caucasus. The author considers structural factors of protractedconflicts and emphasizes a destabilizing role of the re-politicization of ethnicity of a regionsociety in crisis. The concept of ethnic “identity-based” conflicts is the heuristic theoreticalmodel of exploring causes for increased ethno-confessional tensions in the North Caucasus.The article focuses on the ability of conflict resolution theory to de-escalate growing ethnoconfessionaltensions and transform protracted ethnic conflicts. Interdisciplinary approach toanalyzing conflict resolution strategy as political integration resource, while combining conflicttheory and neo-functionalistic paradigm, is the methodological basis of this research. The needto stimulate political integration is caused by moral and structural causes: from the ethical pointof view, the creation of an inclusive society is the fundamental societal goal; structural factorsare related to the need to reduce inequalities and differences leading to social fragmentationand escalation of ethnic conflicts. Among the socio-political conditions of the North Caucasianconflicts, the author calls social inequalities, civil identity crisis, authoritarian and ethnopolitical“renaissance”, economic polarization, “ideological combat” between the secular modernizationand fundamentalism. Discussing conflict resolution strategy as political integration resource,it is necessary to consider the following: 1) North Caucasian integration is a macro-politicalproject, the content of which is determined by issues of social security of multiethnic Russia;2) development of the North Caucasus after the end of armed ethnic conflicts shows theinadmissibility of structural demodernization, fundamentalism and cultural isolationism. Today,the North Caucasus remains a crucially geopolitical macro-region, as it forms the southernvolatile frontier of Russia. In this case, conflict resolution strategy must serve as preventive tool onthe conflict environment by way of providing structural solutions for deep-rooted socio-culturalproblems, transforming and rationalizing regional ethnic contradictions.

Introduction. The purpose of this study is to reveal the specificity of the relationship between ethnogenesis and cultural Genesis in the philosophical works of L. N. ENU, which requires solving a number of interrelated tasks: to define the concept of "ethnogenesis and cultural Genesis", to establish their correlation, dependence and interdependence; to analyze the phenomenon of passionarity and its role in cultural Genesis; to characterize the specificity of ethnogeny two superethnoi (Kievan Rus and Muscovy) in the process of ethnic history.Materials and methods. The material of the research is the works of the outstanding thinker of the twentieth century L. N. Gumilev, including those devoted to the problems of ethno - and cultural Genesis. Traditional methods for historical and philosophical research are used: historical-logical, comparative, system-structural.Results. As a result of the study, it was found that "ethnogenesis" and "cultural Genesis" in The philosophical work of L. N. Gumilev are concepts lying in "different planes", so ethnic diversity only to a certain extent determines the diversity of cultures. At the same time, it is important that ethnogenesis is a necessary condition of cultural Genesis, because the ethnos is preserved and protected by the accumulated culture.According to Gumilev, the most important element of cultural Genesis is passionarity-a phenomenon that determines the intensity of cultural development at different stages of ethnogenesis: thus, the growth of passionarity generates an original culture, the decline allows the ethnic group to borrow from other ethnic groups in order to preserve and develop their own.The author reveals the features of studying the culture of ethnic groups indicated By L. N. Gumilev, which would allow to create an integral and consistent picture of the cultural achievements of a particular ethnic group: thus, the diachronic approach is the most preferable, while the synchronous analysis of culture can lead to errors in understanding and assessing the place and role of this ethnic group in history.Finally, the author characterizes the thinker's attitude to the contemporary history of Russia and his understanding of the further development of the Russian state, the main condition of which is the preservation of the ethnic and cultural identity of the Russian superethnos.Discussion and Conclusions. For L. N. Gumilev it is obvious that ethnogenesis is a necessary condition for the development of cultural Genesis. No crisis can completely destroy, destroy culture. The ethnos is protected and preserved by the accumulated culture. But the logic of ethnic history differs significantly from the logic of cultural history. Given the specifics of the ethnogenesis of the Russian superethnos, the thinker defines the stages of the ethnic history of Russia, which by the end of the twentieth century enters the "phase of quiet life", but, warns Gumilev, the events of the 90s have clearly shown that the main condition for further development is the preservation of our ethnic and cultural originality and identity.

The article analyzes the phenomenon of interethnic tolerance in Bukovyna during the period of 1861-1914 on the example from the history of the Bukovynian Jews. The importance of the concept of «Bukovynism», by which modern scholars consider the phenomenon of interethnic and interconfessional tolerance in Bukovyna, is mentioned. It is proved that mutual understanding in the political and socio-cultural space of Bukovyna was achieved due to the efforts of the Austrian administration during 1861-1914. Among the factors contributing to the establishment of political consensus here, the author names such as the reform of the political system of the Austrian empire in the 1960s of the XIXth century, high intensity of the ethno-cultural communications in Bukovyna (interlingual interference) and the migration policy of the central authorities, as a result of which there was formed the German-Jewish political symbiosis with the «new socio-economic ideology»of the «Middle European economic people». The Jews, who in the second half of the XIXth century reached a marked level of political influence on the processes of socio-economic life of Bukovyna, at the beginning of the XXth century, found themselves, according to the author, in a unique situation, in which they almost did not feel the manifestations of the policy of anti-Semitism, which became noticeable in other provinces of Austria-Hungary, as well as in Vienna; the Bukovyna Jews proved to be more bearers of imperial loyalty than the Germans themselves; they managed to preserve their traditional culture, focused, first of all, in shtetls (the Jewish towns) and at the same time remained a “demographic reserve” in the production of the cultural values in Bukovyna. Instead, during the given historical period the Bukovynian Jews did not avoid the negative phenomena in their political life, which were connected, first of all, with the processes of modernization of the Habsburg Empire (urbanization, nationalism of imperial ethnic groups) and strengthening of the Viennese anti-Semitism at the beginning of the XXth century. The Austrian administration in Bukovyna stubbornly denied the Jews as an independent ethno-group, and in the economic life of the region gradually introduced the principles of segregation of the Jews. But such negative phenomena almost did not affect the situation of the Jews of Bukovyna, which, until the beginning of the World War, remained generally satisfactory, and showed, on the one hand, that the general-imperial economic crisis of the 1870s in Bukovyna did not acquire such sharpness, as in other regions of the country, and on the other hand, that alternatives to tolerant relations in the processes of harmonious development of multinational societies do not exist. Key words: Bukovynism, tolerance, identity, Jews, Bukovуna

The cross-border status of Transcarpathia, its multiethnicity is reflected in various spheres of life, including mass communication activities. The article actualizes the issue of the functioning of online media of the ethnic communities in the westernmost region of Ukraine in the context of the development of multicultural information space in the structure of the Ukrainian national media field. The role of ethnic media in informing and supporting traditions and customs, preservation of ethnic consciousness and cultural diversity is emphasized. Special attention is paid to the ethno-national aspect of communication and the important role of Transcarpathian media in the development of native-language communication, which is represented by a wide range of ethnic media (Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Roma, German, Jewish, etc.). The model of multicultural communication developed in Transcarpathia contributes to the development, including civic identity, a sense of social responsibility for everything that happens in the country, and encourages the local journalistic community to cultivate tolerance, prevent interethnic conflicts, and counter information threats. Taking into account the complete implementation of the functions of Transcarpathian intercultural communication, the degree of effectiveness of their activities, the article also notes crisis processes in the modern media sphere of Transcarpathia. Some of them are caused by foreign policy circumstances, the war with Russia and informational aggression, problems of intergovernmental interaction, and therefore require special attention, correctness, and competence of journalists. Moreover, the issues of interethnic relations (especially in the educational and linguistic spheres) are strategic, related to national security, harmonious relations between Ukraine and neighboring Western states. Meanwhile, the online media of Transcarpathian ethnic groups are actively integrated into the intercultural communication system, occupying and maintaining their own segment in it.

The subject of this research is the “pagan” images in modern mass culture in the context of the novels “American Gods” by the English writer Neil Gaiman and “Mahogany Man” by the contemporary Russian writer Andrey Rubanov. The goal of this article lies in the analysis of the US and Russian experience of assimilation and integration of pagan heritage in the context of mass culture of consumer society. Research methodology employs the methods offered by Eric Hobsbawm in his theory of “inventing traditions”. Thus, the author perceives pagan motifs as one of the “invented traditions” of the modern literature of consumer society. The scientific novelty lies in the comparative analysis of actualization of pagan images in the English and Russian literature of consumer society in the novels “American Gods” by N. Gaiman and “Mahogany Man” by A. Rubanov.  Analysis is conducted on the “pagan” images in the context of ethno-futuristic discourse defined as an alternative to modern serial identities of consumer society. It is demonstrated that in the literary texts of mass culture, pagan motifs have multiple and heterogeneous origins and cultural genealogies, localized in the classical heritage and popular culture simultaneously. The author believes that pagan images in the prose of mass culture actualize the problems of identity crisis, as well as the erosion of ethnic traditional cultures in globalizing society. It is suggested that visualization of literary texts may become the key trend in the development of pagan images in the mass literature of consumer society.

In the current crisis the development of domestic tourism is very important. Further promotion of ethno tourism may be a promising and popular trend in the domestic market of tourist services of the regions. In the study, the author exam- ined the characteristics of nature, history, culture and religion of indigenous peoples of Mari land as the most important factors of tourism development in the region. The article presents the analysis of state of ethno tourism in the Mari El Republic. The author outlines the main directions of its development in the region that dip into the cultural environment: ethnographic museums, hotels and recreational facilities with an ethnic flavor, ethno-villages, and rural guest houses. The expert survey in order to identify the prospects for the development of ethno tourism in Mari El has been conducted. The contradictions in the law, inadequate infrastructure in the country, weak advertising campaign to attract tourists to the region, sometimes a lack of interest of local authorities in the development of tourism are the main difficulties in the ethno tourism development. The author suggests ways of further development of ethno tourism in Mari El. It is neces- sary to develop a targeted program for the development of tourism in t Mari El, with an emphasis on ethno tourism.

The given article studies linguo-specificity of the German linguo-cultural concept TORSCHLUSSPANIK that covers a wide semantic space of human psycho-emotional state, which is concentrated around the semantic center “midlife crisis”. The revelation of the semantic content of this concept is conducted by verifying the methodology which is a sequence of research procedures. The scientific reliability of this methodology is ensured by Corpus Linguistics data to empirically reinforce linguistic methods proper. Procedure steps of the given methodology are used to identify cross-language equivalents of the concepts names in the comparative linguo-cultural studies in general, because cross-language equivalence allows studying semantic equivalence within the corresponding conceptual world pictures (CWP) which makes it possible to reveal specific vs. unique senses of the compared concepts. The conducted analysis proves that the reproduction of the fragment in the German CWP representing the concept TORSCHLUSSPANIK is possible in Ukrainian only with the help of actualizing sense equivalents of the given concept – FEAR, MIDDLE AGE, AGING, TIME, LIFE and DEATH. This way their symbolic and mythological meanings are specifically actualized. It was determined in the article, that ethno-specificity of the concept TORSCHLUSSPANIK arose due to the particular combination of meanings that represent a wide emotional palette of Germans, for whom psycho-emotional depressive state of “midlife crisis” is reinforced by the emotion of fear. In its turn, the latter is intensified by the emotion of disappointment at being late, not realising smth, failing to do smth etc. It is remarkable that disappointment is usually accompanied by anger, anxiety, guilt, hostility, malevolence, envy, jealousy and shame.

The purpose of this study is to critically examine the nature of interethnic interactions in the Republic of Kazakhstan through the lens of the cultural aspect at the institutional level, as well as to identify the model of interethnic relations in Kazakhstan. As research methods, the study involved diachronic and synchronistic methods corresponding to cultural studies, which allowed considering the current state of interethnic relations in the country by aspects and systemically, considering historical-geographical, socio-economic, cultural, and linguistic contexts. The study also employed a psychological approach, which allowed considering the development of interethnic relations from the standpoint of subjective cultural mechanisms. As a result, a descriptive model of interethnic relations in the Republic of Kazakhstan was formulated, and the study identified the crisis moments affecting the full-fledged development of coexisting ethno-religious microsociums, native people and immigrants, in the multilingual and multicultural system of the republic.

The goal of the research is to increase the civic competence of students in educational institutions by involving ethno-cultural traditions. All over the world, national problems have aggravated, conflicts have arisen, for the solution of which new forms of intercultural and interethnic interactions are needed. Within the framework of the study, the situation was analyzed, the cultural traditions and values of the Armenian, as well as of peoples’ living in Armenia were studied, a two-stage sociological study was carried out, its results were analyzed and relevant recommendations were made. From the analysis of the results it became clear that the study of the traditions and habits leads to the development of the culture of one's own people և other nations and love, responsibility and an attitude towards the Motherland and the Country is formed. Society has an objective need to form a competent citizen, who will be able to implement civil rights and obligationsin the best way, who will have civil position and participation in the processes taking place in the country. The ethnocultural habits directly contribute to the formation of students' civic competence, and the incusion of them into educational institutions will create potential opportunities for that. In order to build civic competence, first it is need to deveop skills among learners and educators who, in different life conditions (including crisis and risk), in various educational situations (as well as self-educational), will be able to make decisions, identify problems and propose solutions, as well as take targeted and responsible actions, developing creative and critical thinking.

The article considers the conflict factors of interethnic relations in the Russian Federation. The survey of experts, qualified professionals in the spheres of ethno-extremism and interethnic conflicts, the data of opinion polls, analysis of academic papers and relevant mass media allowed the author to identify factors that can have a negative impact on interethnic relations and provoke ethnic conflicts in the next five to seven years. The first group of factors that are highly dangerous in terms of their impact includes economic crisis, low living standards, corruption, migration, proliferation of international Islamic extremism, activities of foreign states, struggles for power and access to federal money between governing elites and ethnic groups in national republics, ineffective educational and cultural policies. The second group of negative factors with a medium impact on interethnic situation consists of activities of interethnic and ethno-religious organizations, organized crime (including ethnic), decrease in the share of Russians in the population, ineffective ethnic policy and poor performance of law enforcement agencies. The third group of factors with a modest impact consists of foreign policy and systematic violations of the rights and freedoms of citizens.

This article delves into the dynamics of ethno-confessional factors influencing Russian-Turkish relations, exploring the Russian and Turkic worlds as geopolitical constructs within the Eurasian sphere. Employing a synthesis of critical and classical geopolitics methodologies, the study emphasizes the civilizational aspect as a pivotal element in the intricate interplay of competition and cooperation between Russia and Turkey in the Eurasian context. The research methodology integrates a civilizational perspective with critical geopolitics. The authors examine various strategies utilized by Turkey and Russia to implement ethnoconfessional policies in their quest for geopolitical influence. These strategies encompass the creation of narratives around 'fraternal nations', the promotion of shared historical, cultural, religious, linguistic, and heroic narratives; the cultivation of pro-Russian and pro-Turkish national elites; and the exploitation of ethno-national factors during domestic political crises. This analysis traces these phenomena from historical imperial contexts to contemporary interstate relations.Furthermore, the article underscores the significant impact of individual leadership in shaping the concept of the Turkic world, with a particular focus on the current President of the Turkish Republic, R.T. Erdogan. Erdogan is portrayed as a key figure actively advocating for and reinforcing the unity and identity of the Turkic world.

The purpose of the article is to identify the risks of geo-economic fragmentation and deglobalization of integration during the period of the sanctions economy, their manifestation at the level of national economic entities, determination of overcoming factors. The subject of the study is the processes of adaptation of Russian business to the conditions of the global crisis of the pandemic period and anti-Russian sanctions, measures of state regulation of import substitution measures and reduction of supply chain gaps and partnerships. The main risks of globalization and integration of a socio-cultural nature are identified: distrust of government institutions, cross-cultural and ethno-humanitarian gaps, economic pessimism. One of the factors of containment of deglobalization gaps has been identified, which consists in the “weak ties” of existing partnerships, their relational capital. Examples of sustainable partnerships in business, science and education led to the conclusion that it is necessary to shift the emphasis in the training of managerial personnel to meritocratic principles of corporate theory, taking into account the interests of all stakeholders of companies and public sector organizations.

This issue features a range of articles that explore different cultural and environmental forms of sustainability in the face of crises, including climate change and conflict, revealing how craft reconnects and sustains us as humans. Within the theme of Place and cultural identity, Ana Nolasco discusses the significance of Madeira Island embroidery, by drawing upon interviews conducted during a six-year postdoctoral study across the Portuguese-speaking archipelagos. Neetu Singh and Vanshika Gupta’s Craft and Industry Report shines light on the craft of Mata Ni Pachedi, originated by the nomadic Vagahri community of Gujarat. The Remarkable Image, contributed by Prasanna P. and Asokan T., captures a skilled weaver as he contributes to the preservation of handloom crafts in Uraiyur. In ‘Estonian blues’, Julia Valle_Noronha and Piret Puppart explore how the use of natural dyes can positively impact education, society and the environment, through a case study of the ‘Ethno’ course at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Making as a response is prioritised by Tarja Kroger and Sirpa Kokko, who explore the crafting triggered in Finland by the war in Ukraine and the meanings attached to processes and artefacts encompassed within 40 writings. Niina Väänänen and Katja Vilhunen’s analyse surveyed Finnish hobbyists’ views on sustainable crafts, highlighting intangible influences on wellbeing, cultural and environmental responsibility. Valle-Noronha’s review of REPAIR, held at Aalto University, Finland as part of the PLATE2023 conference, reinforces the notion of responsive making within multiple product and service contexts. D Wood reviews the HOME/MAKING conference held at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada in May 2023, while Gemma Potter further explores our relationship with the domestic and familiar through her Portrait of the ceramicist Ingrid Murphy. Michelle Stephens reviews Interwoven: Exploring Materials and Structure (2022) by Maarit Saloainen, and Bogil Lee reviews A Philosophy of Textile: Between Practice and Theory (2020) by Catherine Dormor.

The article examines the features of political discourse within the framework of the military conflict in Ukraine. The relevance of the study is due to the need to identify communicative and speech strategies and their tactics in the positions of opposing sides to resolve the conflict. The purpose of the article is to analyze the strategies and tactics of the communicative behavior of politicians in a military conflict based on the material of reports at the thematic and linguistic levels. The work was carried out using the method of contextual analysis, descriptive method. The research material was the texts of speeches by the official representative of Russia to the UN General Assembly and the EU representative to the European Commission. The authors come to the conclusion that the communicative behavior of politicians within the framework of non-controversial speeches has its own characteristics at the thematic as well as at the linguistic level. The topic of Ursula von der Leyen’s speeches during this period is reduced to the general theme “The future of Europe”, where the main threat to the future may be “Russian aggression” along with the energy crisis. In the speeches of S.V. Lavrov’s main topic is “the policy of the “collective West”” and “The Ukrainian regime”. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that in official speeches there are emotional evaluative vocabulary, periphrases, evaluative adjectives, metaphorical models that implement such communicative and speech tactics as persuasion, condemnation, appeal to facts, support for the affected state, promises using the techniques of “reference to authorities”, “reinforcement”, “quoting”, “giving examples”, “introducing elements of informality” and others. The authors of the article show that the ethno-cultural specificity of the communicative behavior of politicians involved in the military conflict of countries on the part of European politicians is manifested in such features as “preservation of democracy”, “protection of democratic values” from autocrats. The Russian side in its speeches appeals to the preservation of traditional values calls for the fight against discrimination on religious grounds, with aggressive derussification.

National identities are often conceived of as factors that lend structure and stability to citizens’ political opinions on issues such as immigration. While citizens who define national membership in ethno-cultural terms are less likely to support immigration, those with a civic conception are more likely to do so. The authors propose that defining national identity along both ethno-cultural and civic lines may give rise to conflicting considerations, leading people to experience ambivalence, implying that national identities may serve less as a stabilizing force than suggested by previous research. Findings from heterogeneous choice models and a unique survey experiment show that German citizens with mixed conceptions of national identity had more variable and more malleable opinions than individuals with ideal-type conceptions during the 2015/2016 European refugee crisis. The findings point to an identity-based source of ambivalence and extend current understandings of how people form attitudes towards immigration.

In this article, I intend to highlight the fact that the realities that are being recorded at the morphological level of contemporary societies (the phenomenon of migration, wars, the dynamics of mobility and communication, the economic pace, the health crisis generated by Covid-19) are bringing to the fore the redefinition of religious identity. What is undeniably clear is that Western societies have become an ethnic and religious mosaic, a diversity that requires specific regulations in terms of norms in order to avoid conflict. However, this ethno-religious diversity also calls for an interpretation of the relationship between identities. The aim of my analysis is to argue as to whether or not religious identity is an inflexible, immobile reality, static in its representativeness towards and in relation to other identities representing different religious cultures. In this respect, I will insist on the role that migration plays in the construction of religious identity. Is religious identity decomposing in the context of the liquid flow of global society? Are the boundaries of such an identity, as structures of individual, social, cultural validation, desubstantiated in the daily experience of religious diversity and in the dynamics of current societal transformations?

Bangladesh is one of the world's most densely populated countries, with various ethnic communities scattered throughout the nation. The nomadic Bede are an ancient ethnic group that has traditionally lived, traveled, and earned their livelihood in Bengal's riverine systems. Snake charming is one of the main ways they make money. However, most of the Bedes are changing their inheriting characteristics of riverine system to a new habitat. The purpose of the study is to identify the actual scenario of the Bede community in selected areas of Bangladesh. The study revealed that Bedes are changing their traditional way of life by moving from boats to temporary land, where they live in a small collection of huts and makeshift homes for a long time. Few of them were still engaged in their traditional occupations, such as snake charming and selling ethno-medicines; however, the majority relied on the begging in the street by bluffing the street people or make the people fool or engage with other jobs to make ends meet. Although contemporary technology has brought new sorts of entertainment, decreasing the incentive for Bede’s to work, less Bedes may have been active in snake charming as a means of continuing their parental profession. Importantly, the young generations are not interested in their nomadic Bede life and few of them are doing snake-charming and other forms of traditional entertainment for a living. The mainstream of society does not accept them cordially due to their cultural, ritual, and occupational differences. As a whole, the Bede people lived below the poverty line, making them very vulnerable in the society and experiencing an identity crisis. The Bede community requires the government and human rights organizations' help to secure their house, make it easier for them to get work, and ensure their health and education so th5at they may survive as a people in the society's mainstream. This is a preliminary study that attempted to identify the reality of the Bede community in a small representative part of Bangladesh. Future study is needed to discover more information about the Bede community that lives around the country.

AbstractThe relation between social capital and socio‐economic wealth is a highly debated topic in development studies. This article aims at investigating the relationship between personal wealth and trust. It combines social capital with social categorization theory through a structural equation model based on a data set of over 1000 observations collected in the Republic of Latvia, on the basis of stratified sampling, in 2010, in the wake of a deep financial and economic crisis. Main results suggest evidence of an indirect relationship between wealth and interpersonal trust, with institutional trust and social engagement as mediating factors. This evidence is tested for residence place dimensions, ethno‐linguistic affiliation, education and income. Main results hold for poorer, less educated and rural respondents, whereas significant discrepancies arise for urban respondents. Finally, results highlight the interplay of socio‐economic dimensions and social and cultural identity. This suggests the existence of different dynamics of social capital accumulation at play, depending on various socio‐demographic and socio‐economic dimensions.

This text intends to be a summary of the oral communication that I made at the invitation of the YOCOCU Portugal Association, in the context of the European Heritage Days, in September 2021. I understood such participation as the possibility of giving a personal testimony of what are some of my most pressing current issues questions regarding the Management of Cultural Assets, having brought to the debate several questions, since, in a time of constant change, models tend to be reassessed and even changed. Since 2019, the world has been threatened by events that have shaken our certainties and introduced profound changes in our daily lives. The Covid 19 pandemic has forced us to carry out the digital technological transition more quickly, which will certainly affect the various sectors of cultural heritage, from preservation to fruition. As I write this short text, a war is taking place in Europe that will change world geopolitics, and whose devastating consequences are still not fully guessed. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict of 2022 thus allows us, unfortunately, to witness the destruction of thousands of lives, the setting up of emergency plans for the protection of cultural assets, which demonstrates the resilience of a people, but equally, perhaps, to the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. Terrorism and war represent, nowadays, opportunities to annihilate the cultural identity of a community or people, through the destruction of cultural assets, which has been increasing since the 1990s, when some archaeologists warned of what would be the “ethno-archaeological destruction of built heritage” during the conflict in Bosnia (Renfrew & Bahn, 1991, p.511). The evolution of heritage studies, however, led us more recently to discover that cultural identity can also be a factor of social cohesion and the recovery of peace and conciliation between peoples (Viejo Rose, 2021, p. 11).

Key words: ethnic norms, ethnic values, stressful realities, structure of self-consciousness, national self-consciousness, ethnic identity The situation formed in our society after the war and the epidemic, the socio-economic, financial, informational, and environmental rapid changes lead to a change in ethnic self-consciousness. It is also necessary to add the processes of transformation and globalization of ethno-cultural values in the current period, because they also play a major role in shaping the ethnic self-consciousness of the younger generation. The established realities necessarily predetermine a person’s self-consciousness and, shaped under their influence, realized by a person, and manifested in crisis and stressful situations in accordance with the characteristic individual reactions. The ethnic meaning emerges in the space of consciousness and self-consciousness, because in order to gain truth, a person does not directly refer to the objects of the ethnic world, but to their meanings, ideas about them. And in this situation, a person's cognitive ideas about the characteristics of his/her own group, as well as self-consciousness as a member based on his/her ethnodifferentiating characteristics and affective experiences, are very important. These ideas include a person’s sense of belonging to the group, an assessment of his or her personal qualities, and an attitude toward membership, all of which are used to determine the types of behavioral responses to a crisis under changing conditions. Currently, the study of ethnic self-consciousness conceals new possibilities for explaining the objectively existing relationship of the individual with the outside world. After all, it is the ethnicity that in the conditions of the current crisis is recognized by the scientists as a historically relevant “reference point” of human behavior, while ethnology is perecived as a basic science in the methodology of analysis and forecasting of this behavior. It must be acknowledged that the time has come for a global reevaluation of this complex psychological phenomenon regarding the realization of the world’s true multi-ethnicity, the idea of forming a world community and planetary thinking. Under these circumstances, it is increasingly important to realize the ongoing changes in the ethnic self-consciousness of an individual in a multicultural world.

Introduction Most developed countries, including Australia, have a strong focus on national, state and local strategies for emergency management and response in the face of disasters and crises. This framework can include coping with catastrophic dislocation, service disruption, injury or loss of life in the face of natural disasters such as major fires, floods, earthquakes or other large-impact natural events, as well as dealing with similar catastrophes resulting from human actions such as bombs, biological agents, cyber-attacks targeting essential services such as communications networks, or other crises affecting large populations. Emergency management frameworks for crisis and disaster response are distinguished by their focus on the domestic context for such events; that is, how to manage and assist the ways in which civilian populations, who are for the most part inexperienced and untrained in dealing with crises and disasters, are able to respond and behave in such situations so as to minimise the impacts of a catastrophic event. Even in countries like Australia that demonstrate a strong public commitment to cultural pluralism and social cohesion, ethno-cultural diversity can be seen as a risk or threat to national security and values at times of political, natural, economic and/or social tensions and crises. Australian government policymakers have recently focused, with increasing intensity, on “community resilience” as a key element in countering extremism and enhancing emergency preparedness and response. In some sense, this is the result of a tacit acknowledgement by government agencies that there are limits to what they can do for domestic communities should such a catastrophic event occur, and accordingly, the focus in recent times has shifted to how governments can best help people to help themselves in such situations, a key element of the contemporary “resilience” approach. Yet despite the robustly multicultural nature of Australian society, explicit engagement with Australia’s cultural diversity flickers only fleetingly on this agenda, which continues to pursue approaches to community resilience in the absence of understandings about how these terms and formations may themselves need to be diversified to maximise engagement by all citizens in a multicultural polity. There have been some recent efforts in Australia to move in this direction, for example the Australian Emergency Management Institute (AEMI)’s recent suite of projects with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities (2006-2010) and the current Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee-supported project on “Harnessing Resilience Capital in Culturally Diverse Communities to Counter Violent Extremism” (Grossman and Tahiri), which I discuss in a longer forthcoming version of this essay (Grossman). Yet the understanding of ethno-cultural identity and difference that underlies much policy thinking on resilience remains problematic for the way in which it invests in a view of the cultural dimensions of community resilience as relic rather than resource – valorising the preservation of and respect for cultural norms and traditions, but silent on what different ethno-cultural communities might contribute toward expanded definitions of both “community” and “resilience” by virtue of the transformative potential and existing cultural capital they bring with them into new national and also translocal settings. For example, a primary conclusion of the joint program between AEMI and the Australian Multicultural Commission is that CALD communities are largely “vulnerable” in the context of disasters and emergency management and need to be better integrated into majority-culture models of theorising and embedding community resilience. This focus on stronger national integration and the “vulnerability” of culturally diverse ethno-cultural communities in the Australian context echoes the work of scholars beyond Australia such as McGhee, Mouritsen (Reflections, Citizenship) and Joppke. They argue that the “civic turn” in debates around resurgent contemporary nationalism and multicultural immigration policies privileges civic integration over genuine two-way multiculturalism. This approach sidesteps the transculturational (Ortiz; Welsch; Mignolo; Bennesaieh; Robins; Stein) aspects of contemporary social identities and exchange by paying lip-service to cultural diversity while affirming a neo-liberal construct of civic values and principles as a universalising goal of Western democratic states within a global market economy. It also suggests a superficial tribute to cultural diversity that does not embed diversity comprehensively at the levels of either conceptualising or resourcing different elements of Australian transcultural communities within the generalised framework of “community resilience.” And by emphasising cultural difference as vulnerability rather than as resource or asset, it fails to acknowledge the varieties of resilience capital that many culturally diverse individuals and communities may bring with them when they resettle in new environments, by ignoring the question of what “resilience” actually means to those from culturally diverse communities. In so doing, it also avoids the critical task of incorporating intercultural definitional diversity around the concepts of both “community” and “resilience” used to promote social cohesion and the capacity to recover from disasters and crises. How we might do differently in thinking about the broader challenges for multiculturalism itself as a resilient transnational concept and practice? The Concept of Resilience The meanings of resilience vary by disciplinary perspective. While there is no universally accepted definition of the concept, it is widely acknowledged that resilience refers to the capacity of an individual to do well in spite of exposure to acute trauma or sustained adversity (Liebenberg 219). Originating in the Latin word resilio, meaning ‘to jump back’, there is general consensus that resilience pertains to an individual’s, community’s or system’s ability to adapt to and ‘bounce back’ from a disruptive event (Mohaupt 63, Longstaff et al. 3). Over the past decade there has been a dramatic rise in interest in the clinical, community and family sciences concerning resilience to a broad range of adversities (Weine 62). While debate continues over which discipline can be credited with first employing resilience as a concept, Mohaupt argues that most of the literature on resilience cites social psychology and psychiatry as the origin for the concept beginning in the mid-20th century. The pioneer researchers of what became known as resilience research studied the impact on children living in dysfunctional families. For example, the findings of work by Garmezy, Werner and Smith and Rutter showed that about one third of children in these studies were coping very well despite considerable adversities and traumas. In asking what it was that prevented the children in their research from being negatively influenced by their home environments, such research provided the basis for future research on resilience. Such work was also ground-breaking for identifying the so-called ‘protective factors’ or resources that individuals can operationalise when dealing with adversity. In essence, protective factors are those conditions in the individual that protect them from the risk of dysfunction and enable recovery from trauma. They mitigate the effects of stressors or risk factors, that is, those conditions that predispose one to harm (Hajek 15). Protective factors include the inborn traits or qualities within an individual, those defining an individual’s environment, and also the interaction between the two. Together, these factors give people the strength, skills and motivation to cope in difficult situations and re-establish (a version of) ‘normal’ life (Gunnestad). Identifying protective factors is important in terms of understanding the particular resources a given sociocultural group has at its disposal, but it is also vital to consider the interconnections between various protective mechanisms, how they might influence each other, and to what degree. An individual, for instance, might display resilience or adaptive functioning in a particular domain (e.g. emotional functioning) but experience significant deficits in another (e.g. academic achievement) (Hunter 2). It is also essential to scrutinise how the interaction between protective factors and risk factors creates patterns of resilience. Finally, a comprehensive understanding of the interrelated nature of protective mechanisms and risk factors is imperative for designing effective interventions and tailored preventive strategies (Weine 65). In short, contemporary thinking about resilience suggests it is neither entirely personal nor strictly social, but an interactive and iterative combination of the two. It is a quality of the environment as much as the individual. For Ungar, resilience is the complex entanglements between “individuals and their social ecologies [that] will determine the degree of positive outcomes experienced” (3). Thinking about resilience as context-dependent is important because research that is too trait-based or actor-centred risks ignoring any structural or institutional forces. A more ecological interpretation of resilience, one that takes into a person’s context and environment into account, is vital in order to avoid blaming the victim for any hardships they face, or relieving state and institutional structures from their responsibilities in addressing social adversity, which can “emphasise self-help in line with a neo-conservative agenda instead of stimulating state responsibility” (Mohaupt 67). Nevertheless, Ungar posits that a coherent definition of resilience has yet to be developed that adequately ‘captures the dual focus of the individual and the individual’s social ecology and how the two must both be accounted for when determining the criteria for judging outcomes and discerning processes associated with resilience’ (7). Recent resilience research has consequently prompted a shift away from vulnerability towards protective processes — a shift that highlights the sustained capabilities of individuals and communities under threat or at risk. Locating ‘Culture’ in the Literature on Resilience However, an understanding of the role of culture has remained elusive or marginalised within this trend; there has been comparatively little sustained investigation into the applicability of resilience constructs to non-western cultures, or how the resources available for survival might differ from those accessible to western populations (Ungar 4). As such, a growing body of researchers is calling for more rigorous inquiry into culturally determined outcomes that might be associated with resilience in non-western or multicultural cultures and contexts, for example where Indigenous and minority immigrant communities live side by side with their ‘mainstream’ neighbours in western settings (Ungar 2). ‘Cultural resilience’ considers the role that cultural background plays in determining the ability of individuals and communities to be resilient in the face of adversity. For Clauss-Ehlers, the term describes the degree to which the strengths of one’s culture promote the development of coping (198). Culturally-focused resilience suggests that people can manage and overcome stress and trauma based not on individual characteristics alone, but also from the support of broader sociocultural factors (culture, cultural values, language, customs, norms) (Clauss-Ehlers 324). The innate cultural strengths of a culture may or may not differ from the strengths of other cultures; the emphasis here is not so much comparatively inter-cultural as intensively intra-cultural (VanBreda 215). A culturally focused resilience model thus involves “a dynamic, interactive process in which the individual negotiates stress through a combination of character traits, cultural background, cultural values, and facilitating factors in the sociocultural environment” (Clauss-Ehlers 199). In understanding ways of ‘coping and hoping, surviving and thriving’, it is thus crucial to consider how culturally and linguistically diverse minorities navigate the cultural understandings and assumptions of both their countries of origin and those of their current domicile (Ungar 12). Gunnestad claims that people who master the rules and norms of their new culture without abandoning their own language, values and social support are more resilient than those who tenaciously maintain their own culture at the expense of adjusting to their new environment. They are also more resilient than those who forego their own culture and assimilate with the host society (14). Accordingly, if the combination of both valuing one’s culture as well as learning about the culture of the new system produces greater resilience and adaptive capacities, serious problems can arise when a majority tries to acculturate a minority to the mainstream by taking away or not recognising important parts of the minority culture. In terms of resilience, if cultural factors are denied or diminished in accounting for and strengthening resilience – in other words, if people are stripped of what they possess by way of resilience built through cultural knowledge, disposition and networks – they do in fact become vulnerable, because ‘they do not automatically gain those cultural strengths that the majority has acquired over generations’ (Gunnestad 14). Mobilising ‘Culture’ in Australian Approaches to Community Resilience The realpolitik of how concepts of resilience and culture are mobilised is highly relevant here. As noted above, when ethnocultural difference is positioned as a risk or a threat to national identity, security and values, this is precisely the moment when vigorously, even aggressively, nationalised definitions of ‘community’ and ‘identity’ that minoritise or disavow cultural diversities come to the fore in public discourse. The Australian evocation of nationalism and national identity, particularly in the way it has framed policy discussion on managing national responses to disasters and threats, has arguably been more muted than some of the European hysteria witnessed recently around cultural diversity and national life. Yet we still struggle with the idea that newcomers to Australia might fall on the surplus rather than the deficit side of the ledger when it comes to identifying and harnessing resilience capital. A brief example of this trend is explored here. From 2006 to 2010, the Australian Emergency Management Institute embarked on an ambitious government-funded four-year program devoted to strengthening community resilience in relation to disasters with specific reference to engaging CALD communities across Australia. The program, Inclusive Emergency Management with CALD Communities, was part of a wider Australian National Action Plan to Build Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security in the wake of the London terrorist bombings in July 2005. Involving CALD community organisations as well as various emergency and disaster management agencies, the program ran various workshops and agency-community partnership pilots, developed national school education resources, and commissioned an evaluation of the program’s effectiveness (Farrow et al.). While my critique here is certainly not aimed at emergency management or disaster response agencies and personnel themselves – dedicated professionals who often achieve remarkable results in emergency and disaster response under extraordinarily difficult circumstances – it is nevertheless important to highlight how the assumptions underlying elements of AEMI’s experience and outcomes reflect the persistent ways in which ethnocultural diversity is rendered as a problem to be surmounted or a liability to be redressed, rather than as an asset to be built upon or a resource to be valued and mobilised. AEMI’s explicit effort to engage with CALD communities in building overall community resilience was important in its tacit acknowledgement that emergency and disaster services were (and often remain) under-resourced and under-prepared in dealing with the complexities of cultural diversity in emergency situations. Despite these good intentions, however, while the program produced some positive outcomes and contributed to crucial relationship building between CALD communities and emergency services within various jurisdictions, it also continued to frame the challenge of working with cultural diversity as a problem of increased vulnerability during disasters for recently arrived and refugee background CALD individuals and communities. This highlights a common feature in community resilience-building initiatives, which is to focus on those who are already ‘robust’ versus those who are ‘vulnerable’ in relation to resilience indicators, and whose needs may require different or additional resources in order to be met. At one level, this is a pragmatic resourcing issue: national agencies understandably want to put their people, energy and dollars where they are most needed in pursuit of a steady-state unified national response at times of crisis. Nor should it be argued that at least some CALD groups, particularly those from new arrival and refugee communities, are not vulnerable in at least some of the ways and for some of the reasons suggested in the program evaluation. However, the consistent focus on CALD communities as ‘vulnerable’ and ‘in need’ is problematic, as well as partial. It casts members of these communities as structurally and inherently less able and less resilient in the context of disasters and emergencies: in some sense, as those who, already ‘victims’ of chronic social deficits such as low English proficiency, social isolation and a mysterious unidentified set of ‘cultural factors’, can become doubly victimised in acute crisis and disaster scenarios. In what is by now a familiar trope, the description of CALD communities as ‘vulnerable’ precludes asking questions about what they do have, what they do know, and what they do or can contribute to how we respond to disaster and emergency events in our communities. A more profound problem in this sphere revolves around working out how best to engage CALD communities and individuals within existing approaches to disaster and emergency preparedness and response. This reflects a fundamental but unavoidable limitation of disaster preparedness models: they are innately spatially and geographically bounded, and consequently understand ‘communities’ in these terms, rather than expanding definitions of ‘community’ to include the dimensions of community-as-social-relations. While some good engagement outcomes were achieved locally around cross-cultural knowledge for emergency services workers, the AEMI program fell short of asking some of the harder questions about how emergency and disaster service scaffolding and resilience-building approaches might themselves need to change or transform, using a cross-cutting model of ‘communities’ as both geographic places and multicultural spaces (Bartowiak-Théron and Crehan) in order to be more effective in national scenarios in which cultural diversity should be taken for granted. Toward Acknowledgement of Resilience Capital Most significantly, the AEMI program did not produce any recognition of the ways in which CALD communities already possess resilience capital, or consider how this might be drawn on in formulating stronger community initiatives around disaster and threats preparedness for the future. Of course, not all individuals within such communities, nor all communities across varying circumstances, will demonstrate resilience, and we need to be careful of either overgeneralising or romanticising the kinds and degrees of ‘resilience capital’ that may exist within them. Nevertheless, at least some have developed ways of withstanding crises and adapting to new conditions of living. This is particularly so in connection with individual and group behaviours around resource sharing, care-giving and social responsibility under adverse circumstances (Grossman and Tahiri) – all of which are directly relevant to emergency and disaster response. While some of these resilient behaviours may have been nurtured or enhanced by particular experiences and environments, they can, as the discussion of recent literature above suggests, also be rooted more deeply in cultural norms, habits and beliefs. Whatever their origins, for culturally diverse societies to achieve genuine resilience in the face of both natural and human-made disasters, it is critical to call on the ‘social memory’ (Folke et al.) of communities faced with responding to emergencies and crises. Such wellsprings of social memory ‘come from the diversity of individuals and institutions that draw on reservoirs of practices, knowledge, values, and worldviews and is crucial for preparing the system for change, building resilience, and for coping with surprise’ (Adger et al.). Consequently, if we accept the challenge of mapping an approach to cultural diversity as resource rather than relic into our thinking around strengthening community resilience, there are significant gains to be made. For a whole range of reasons, no diversity-sensitive model or measure of resilience should invest in static understandings of ethnicities and cultures; all around the world, ethnocultural identities and communities are in a constant and sometimes accelerated state of dynamism, reconfiguration and flux. But to ignore the resilience capital and potential protective factors that ethnocultural diversity can offer to the strengthening of community resilience more broadly is to miss important opportunities that can help suture the existing disconnects between proactive approaches to intercultural connectedness and social inclusion on the one hand, and reactive approaches to threats, national security and disaster response on the other, undermining the effort to advance effectively on either front. This means that dominant social institutions and structures must be willing to contemplate their own transformation as the result of transcultural engagement, rather than merely insisting, as is often the case, that ‘other’ cultures and communities conform to existing hegemonic paradigms of being and of living. In many ways, this is the most critical step of all. A resilience model and strategy that questions its own culturally informed yet taken-for-granted assumptions and premises, goes out into communities to test and refine these, and returns to redesign its approach based on the new knowledge it acquires, would reflect genuine progress toward an effective transculturational approach to community resilience in culturally diverse contexts.References Adger, W. Neil, Terry P. Hughes, Carl Folke, Stephen R. Carpenter and Johan Rockström. “Social-Ecological Resilience to Coastal Disasters.” Science 309.5737 (2005): 1036-1039. ‹http://www.sciencemag.org/content/309/5737/1036.full> Bartowiak-Théron, Isabelle, and Anna Corbo Crehan. “The Changing Nature of Communities: Implications for Police and Community Policing.” Community Policing in Australia: Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) Reports, Research and Policy Series 111 (2010): 8-15. Benessaieh, Afef. “Multiculturalism, Interculturality, Transculturality.” Ed. A. Benessaieh. Transcultural Americas/Ameriques Transculturelles. Ottawa: U of Ottawa Press/Les Presses de l’Unversite d’Ottawa, 2010. 11-38. Clauss-Ehlers, Caroline S. “Sociocultural Factors, Resilience and Coping: Support for a Culturally Sensitive Measure of Resilience.” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 29 (2008): 197-212. Clauss-Ehlers, Caroline S. “Cultural Resilience.” Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology. Ed. C. S. Clauss-Ehlers. New York: Springer, 2010. 324-326. Farrow, David, Anthea Rutter and Rosalind Hurworth. Evaluation of the Inclusive Emergency Management with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Communities Program. Parkville, Vic.: Centre for Program Evaluation, U of Melbourne, July 2009. ‹http://www.ag.gov.au/www/emaweb/rwpattach.nsf/VAP/(9A5D88DBA63D32A661E6369859739356)~Final+Evaluation+Report+-+July+2009.pdf/$file/Final+Evaluation+Report+-+July+2009.pdf>.Folke, Carl, Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and Jon Norberg. “Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 30 (2005): 441-73. ‹http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.energy.30.050504.144511>. Garmezy, Norman. “The Study of Competence in Children at Risk for Severe Psychopathology.” The Child in His Family: Children at Psychiatric Risk. Vol. 3. Eds. E. J. Anthony and C. Koupernick. New York: Wiley, 1974. 77-97. Grossman, Michele. “Resilient Multiculturalism? Diversifying Australian Approaches to Community Resilience and Cultural Difference”. Global Perspectives on Multiculturalism in the 21st Century. Eds. B. E. de B’beri and F. Mansouri. London: Routledge, 2014. Grossman, Michele, and Hussein Tahiri. Harnessing Resilience Capital in Culturally Diverse Communities to Counter Violent Extremism. Canberra: Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee, forthcoming 2014. Grossman, Michele. “Cultural Resilience and Strengthening Communities”. Safeguarding Australia Summit, Canberra. 23 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.safeguardingaustraliasummit.org.au/uploader/resources/Michele_Grossman.pdf>. Gunnestad, Arve. “Resilience in a Cross-Cultural Perspective: How Resilience Is Generated in Different Cultures.” Journal of Intercultural Communication 11 (2006). ‹http://www.immi.se/intercultural/nr11/gunnestad.htm>. Hajek, Lisa J. “Belonging and Resilience: A Phenomenological Study.” Unpublished Master of Science thesis, U of Wisconsin-Stout. Menomonie, Wisconsin, 2003. Hunter, Cathryn. “Is Resilience Still a Useful Concept When Working with Children and Young People?” Child Family Community Australia (CFA) Paper 2. Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2012.Joppke, Christian. "Beyond National Models: Civic Integration Policies for Immigrants in Western Europe". West European Politics 30.1 (2007): 1-22. Liebenberg, Linda, Michael Ungar, and Fons van de Vijver. “Validation of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure-28 (CYRM-28) among Canadian Youth.” Research on Social Work Practice 22.2 (2012): 219-226. Longstaff, Patricia H., Nicholas J. Armstrong, Keli Perrin, Whitney May Parker, and Matthew A. Hidek. “Building Resilient Communities: A Preliminary Framework for Assessment.” Homeland Security Affairs 6.3 (2010): 1-23. ‹http://www.hsaj.org/?fullarticle=6.3.6>. McGhee, Derek. The End of Multiculturalism? Terrorism, Integration and Human Rights. Maidenhead: Open U P, 2008.Mignolo, Walter. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton U P, 2000. Mohaupt, Sarah. “Review Article: Resilience and Social Exclusion.” Social Policy and Society 8 (2009): 63-71.Mouritsen, Per. "The Culture of Citizenship: A Reflection on Civic Integration in Europe." Ed. R. Zapata-Barrero. Citizenship Policies in the Age of Diversity: Europe at the Crossroad." Barcelona: CIDOB Foundation, 2009: 23-35. Mouritsen, Per. “Political Responses to Cultural Conflict: Reflections on the Ambiguities of the Civic Turn.” Ed. P. Mouritsen and K.E. Jørgensen. Constituting Communities. Political Solutions to Cultural Conflict, London: Palgrave, 2008. 1-30. Ortiz, Fernando. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Trans. Harriet de Onís. Intr. Fernando Coronil and Bronislaw Malinowski. Durham, NC: Duke U P, 1995 [1940]. Robins, Kevin. The Challenge of Transcultural Diversities: Final Report on the Transversal Study on Cultural Policy and Cultural Diversity. Culture and Cultural Heritage Department. Strasbourg: Council of European Publishing, 2006. Rutter, Michael. “Protective Factors in Children’s Responses to Stress and Disadvantage.” Annals of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore 8 (1979): 324-38. Stein, Mark. “The Location of Transculture.” Transcultural English Studies: Fictions, Theories, Realities. Eds. F. Schulze-Engler and S. Helff. Cross/Cultures 102/ANSEL Papers 12. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009. 251-266. Ungar, Michael. “Resilience across Cultures.” British Journal of Social Work 38.2 (2008): 218-235. First published online 2006: 1-18. In-text references refer to the online Advance Access edition ‹http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2006/10/18/bjsw.bcl343.full.pdf>. VanBreda, Adrian DuPlessis. Resilience Theory: A Literature Review. Erasmuskloof: South African Military Health Service, Military Psychological Institute, Social Work Research & Development, 2001. Weine, Stevan. “Building Resilience to Violent Extremism in Muslim Diaspora Communities in the United States.” Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict 5.1 (2012): 60-73. Welsch, Wolfgang. “Transculturality: The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today.” Spaces of Culture: City, Nation World. Eds. M. Featherstone and S. Lash. London: Sage, 1999. 194-213. Werner, Emmy E., and Ruth S. Smith. Vulnerable But Invincible: A Longitudinal Study of\ Resilience and Youth. New York: McGraw Hill, 1982. NotesThe concept of ‘resilience capital’ I offer here is in line with one strand of contemporary theorising around resilience – that of resilience as social or socio-ecological capital – but moves beyond the idea of enhancing general social connectedness and community cohesion by emphasising the ways in which culturally diverse communities may already be robustly networked and resourceful within micro-communal settings, with new resources and knowledge both to draw on and to offer other communities or the ‘national community’ at large. In effect, ‘resilience capital’ speaks to the importance of finding ‘the communities within the community’ (Bartowiak-Théron and Crehan 11) and recognising their capacity to contribute to broad-scale resilience and recovery.I am indebted for the discussion of the literature on resilience here to Dr Peta Stephenson, Centre for Cultural Diversity and Wellbeing, Victoria University, who is working on a related project (M. Grossman and H. Tahiri, Harnessing Resilience Capital in Culturally Diverse Communities to Counter Violent Extremism, forthcoming 2014).

Introduction I am a transmigrant who has moved back and forth between the West and the Rest. I was born and raised in a Muslim family in a predominantly Muslim country, Bangladesh, but I spent several years of my childhood in Pakistan. After my marriage, I lived in the United States for a year and a half, the Middle East for 5 years, Australia for three years, back to the Middle East for another 5 years, then, finally, in Australia for the last 12 years. I speak Bengali (my mother tongue), Urdu (which I learnt in Pakistan), a bit of Arabic (learnt in the Middle East); but English has always been my medium of instruction. So where is home? Is it my place of origin, the Muslim umma, or my land of settlement? Or is it my ‘root’ or my ‘route’ (Blunt and Dowling)? Blunt and Dowling (199) observe that the lives of transmigrants are often interpreted in terms of their ‘roots’ and ‘routes’, which are two frameworks for thinking about home, homeland and diaspora. Whereas ‘roots’ might imply an original homeland from which people have scattered, and to which they might seek to return, ‘routes’ focuses on mobile, multiple and transcultural geographies of home. However, both ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ are attached to emotion and identity, and both invoke a sense of place, belonging or alienation that is intrinsically tied to a sense of self (Blunt and Dowling 196-219). In this paper, I equate home with my root (place of birth) and route (transnational homing) within the context of the ‘diaspora and belonging’. First I define the diaspora and possible criteria of belonging. Next I describe my transnational homing within the framework of diaspora and belonging. Finally, I consider how Australia can be a ‘home’ for me and other Muslim Australians. The Diaspora and Belonging Blunt and Dowling (199) define diaspora as “scattering of people over space and transnational connections between people and the places”. Cohen emphasised the ethno-cultural aspects of the diaspora setting; that is, how migrants identify and position themselves in other nations in terms of their (different) ethnic and cultural orientation. Hall argues that the diasporic subjects form a cultural identity through transformation and difference. Speaking of the Hindu diaspora in the UK and Caribbean, Vertovec (21-23) contends that the migrants’ contact with their original ‘home’ or diaspora depends on four factors: migration processes and factors of settlement, cultural composition, structural and political power, and community development. With regard to the first factor, migration processes and factors of settlement, Vertovec explains that if the migrants are political or economic refugees, or on a temporary visa, they are likely to live in a ‘myth of return’. In the cultural composition context, Vertovec argues that religion, language, region of origin, caste, and degree of cultural homogenisation are factors in which migrants are bound to their homeland. Concerning the social structure and political power issue, Vertovec suggests that the extent and nature of racial and ethnic pluralism or social stigma, class composition, degree of institutionalised racism, involvement in party politics (or active citizenship) determine migrants’ connection to their new or old home. Finally, community development, including membership in organisations (political, union, religious, cultural, leisure), leadership qualities, and ethnic convergence or conflict (trends towards intra-communal or inter-ethnic/inter-religious co-operation) would also affect the migrants’ sense of belonging. Using these scholarly ideas as triggers, I will examine my home and belonging over the last few decades. My Home In an initial stage of my transmigrant history, my home was my root (place of birth, Dhaka, Bangladesh). Subsequently, my routes (settlement in different countries) reshaped my homes. In all respects, the ethno-cultural factors have played a big part in my definition of ‘home’. But on some occasions my ethnic identification has been overridden by my religious identification and vice versa. By ethnic identity, I mean my language (mother tongue) and my connection to my people (Bangladeshi). By my religious identity, I mean my Muslim religion, and my spiritual connection to the umma, a Muslim nation transcending all boundaries. Umma refers to the Muslim identity and unity within a larger Muslim group across national boundaries. The only thing the members of the umma have in common is their Islamic belief (Spencer and Wollman 169-170). In my childhood my father, a banker, was relocated to Karachi, Pakistan (then West Pakistan). Although I lived in Pakistan for much of my childhood, I have never considered it to be my home, even though it is predominantly a Muslim country. In this case, my home was my root (Bangladesh) where my grandparents and extended family lived. Every year I used to visit my grandparents who resided in a small town in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Thus my connection with my home was sustained through my extended family, ethnic traditions, language (Bengali/Bangla), and the occasional visits to the landscape of Bangladesh. Smith (9-11) notes that people build their connection or identity to their homeland through their historic land, common historical memories, myths, symbols and traditions. Though Pakistan and Bangladesh had common histories, their traditions of language, dress and ethnic culture were very different. For example, the celebration of the Bengali New Year (Pohela Baishakh), folk dance, folk music and folk tales, drama, poetry, lyrics of poets Rabindranath Tagore (Rabindra Sangeet) and Nazrul Islam (Nazrul Geeti) are distinct in the cultural heritage of Bangladesh. Special musical instruments such as the banshi (a bamboo flute), dhol (drums), ektara (a single-stringed instrument) and dotara (a four-stringed instrument) are unique to Bangladeshi culture. The Bangladeshi cuisine (rice and freshwater fish) is also different from Pakistan where people mainly eat flat round bread (roti) and meat (gosh). However, my bonding factor to Bangladesh was my relatives, particularly my grandparents as they made me feel one of ‘us’. Their affection for me was irreplaceable. The train journey from Dhaka (capital city) to their town, Noakhali, was captivating. The hustle and bustle at the train station and the lush green paddy fields along the train journey reminded me that this was my ‘home’. Though I spoke the official language (Urdu) in Pakistan and had a few Pakistani friends in Karachi, they could never replace my feelings for my friends, extended relatives and cousins who lived in Bangladesh. I could not relate to the landscape or dry weather of Pakistan. More importantly, some Pakistani women (our neighbours) were critical of my mother’s traditional dress (saree), and described it as revealing because it showed a bit of her back. They took pride in their traditional dress (shalwar, kameez, dopatta), which they considered to be more covered and ‘Islamic’. So, because of our traditional dress (saree) and perhaps other differences, we were regarded as the ‘Other’. In 1970 my father was relocated back to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and I was glad to go home. It should be noted that both Pakistan and Bangladesh were separated from India in 1947 – first as one nation; then, in 1971, Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan. The conflict between Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) and Pakistan (then West Pakistan) originated for economic and political reasons. At this time I was a high school student and witnessed acts of genocide committed by the Pakistani regime against the Bangladeshis (March-December 1971). My memories of these acts are vivid and still very painful. After my marriage, I moved from Bangladesh to the United States. In this instance, my new route (Austin, Texas, USA), as it happened, did not become my home. Here the ethno-cultural and Islamic cultural factors took precedence. I spoke the English language, made some American friends, and studied history at the University of Texas. I appreciated the warm friendship extended to me in the US, but experienced a degree of culture shock. I did not appreciate the pub life, alcohol consumption, and what I perceived to be the lack of family bonds (children moving out at the age of 18, families only meeting occasionally on birthdays and Christmas). Furthermore, I could not relate to de facto relationships and acceptance of sex before marriage. However, to me ‘home’ meant a family orientation and living in close contact with family. Besides the cultural divide, my husband and I were living in the US on student visas and, as Vertovec (21-23) noted, temporary visa status can deter people from their sense of belonging to the host country. In retrospect I can see that we lived in the ‘myth of return’. However, our next move for a better life was not to our root (Bangladesh), but another route to the Muslim world of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. My husband moved to Dhahran not because it was a Muslim world but because it gave him better economic opportunities. However, I thought this new destination would become my home – the home that was coined by Anderson as the imagined nation, or my Muslim umma. Anderson argues that the imagined communities are “to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (6; Wood 61). Hall (122) asserts: identity is actually formed through unconscious processes over time, rather than being innate in consciousness at birth. There is always something ‘imaginary’ or fantasized about its unity. It always remains incomplete, is always ‘in process’, always ‘being formed’. As discussed above, when I had returned home to Bangladesh from Pakistan – both Muslim countries – my primary connection to my home country was my ethnic identity, language and traditions. My ethnic identity overshadowed the religious identity. But when I moved to Saudi Arabia, where my ethnic identity differed from that of the mainstream Arabs and Bedouin/nomadic Arabs, my connection to this new land was through my Islamic cultural and religious identity. Admittedly, this connection to the umma was more psychological than physical, but I was now in close proximity to Mecca, and to my home of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Mecca is an important city in Saudi Arabia for Muslims because it is the holy city of Islam, the home to the Ka’aba (the religious centre of Islam), and the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad [Peace Be Upon Him]. It is also the destination of the Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islamic faith. Therefore, Mecca is home to significant events in Islamic history, as well as being an important present day centre for the Islamic faith. We lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for 5 years. Though it was a 2.5 hours flight away, I treasured Mecca’s proximity and regarded Dhahran as my second and spiritual home. Saudi Arabia had a restricted lifestyle for women, but I liked it because it was a Muslim country that gave me the opportunity to perform umrah Hajj (pilgrimage). However, Saudi Arabia did not allow citizenship to expatriates. Saudi Arabia’s government was keen to protect the status quo and did not want to compromise its cultural values or standard of living by allowing foreigners to become a permanent part of society. In exceptional circumstances only, the King granted citizenship to a foreigner for outstanding service to the state over a number of years. Children of foreigners born in Saudi Arabia did not have rights of local citizenship; they automatically assumed the nationality of their parents. If it was available, Saudi citizenship would assure expatriates a secure and permanent living in Saudi Arabia; as it was, there was a fear among the non-Saudis that they would have to leave the country once their job contract expired. Under the circumstances, though my spiritual connection to Mecca was strong, my husband was convinced that Saudi Arabia did not provide any job security. So, in 1987 when Australia offered migration to highly skilled people, my husband decided to migrate to Australia for a better and more secure economic life. I agreed to his decision, but quite reluctantly because we were again moving to a non-Muslim part of the world, which would be culturally different and far away from my original homeland (Bangladesh). In Australia, we lived first in Brisbane, then Adelaide, and after three years we took our Australian citizenship. At that stage I loved the Barossa Valley and Victor Harbour in South Australia, and the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast in Queensland, but did not feel at home in Australia. We bought a house in Adelaide and I was a full time home-maker but was always apprehensive that my children (two boys) would lose their culture in this non-Muslim world. In 1990 we once again moved back to the Muslim world, this time to Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. My connection to this route was again spiritual. I valued the fact that we would live in a Muslim country and our children would be brought up in a Muslim environment. But my husband’s move was purely financial as he got a lucrative job offer in Muscat. We had another son in Oman. We enjoyed the luxurious lifestyle provided by my husband’s workplace and the service provided by the housemaid. I loved the beaches and freedom to drive my car, and I appreciated the friendly Omani people. I also enjoyed our frequent trips (4 hours flight) to my root, Dhaka, Bangladesh. So our children were raised within our ethnic and Islamic culture, remained close to my root (family in Dhaka), though they attended a British school in Muscat. But by the time I started considering Oman to be my second home, we had to leave once again for a place that could provide us with a more secure future. Oman was like Saudi Arabia; it employed expatriates only on a contract basis, and did not give them citizenship (not even fellow Muslims). So after 5 years it was time to move back to Australia. It was with great reluctance that I moved with my husband to Brisbane in 1995 because once again we were to face a different cultural context. As mentioned earlier, we lived in Brisbane in the late 1980s; I liked the weather, the landscape, but did not consider it home for cultural reasons. Our boys started attending expensive private schools and we bought a house in a prestigious Western suburb in Brisbane. Soon after arriving I started my tertiary education at the University of Queensland, and finished an MA in Historical Studies in Indian History in 1998. Still Australia was not my home. I kept thinking that we would return to my previous routes or the ‘imagined’ homeland somewhere in the Middle East, in close proximity to my root (Bangladesh), where we could remain economically secure in a Muslim country. But gradually I began to feel that Australia was becoming my ‘home’. I had gradually become involved in professional and community activities (with university colleagues, the Bangladeshi community and Muslim women’s organisations), and in retrospect I could see that this was an early stage of my ‘self-actualisation’ (Maslow). Through my involvement with diverse people, I felt emotionally connected with the concerns, hopes and dreams of my Muslim-Australian friends. Subsequently, I also felt connected with my mainstream Australian friends whose emotions and fears (9/11 incident, Bali bombing and 7/7 tragedy) were similar to mine. In late 1998 I started my PhD studies on the immigration history of Australia, with a particular focus on the historical settlement of Muslims in Australia. This entailed retrieving archival files and interviewing people, mostly Muslims and some mainstream Australians, and enquiring into relevant migration issues. I also became more active in community issues, and was not constrained by my circumstances. By circumstances, I mean that even though I belonged to a patriarchally structured Muslim family, where my husband was the main breadwinner, main decision-maker, my independence and research activities (entailing frequent interstate trips for data collection, and public speaking) were not frowned upon or forbidden (Khan 14-15); fortunately, my husband appreciated my passion for research and gave me his trust and support. This, along with the Muslim community’s support (interviews), and the wider community’s recognition (for example, the publication of my letters in Australian newspapers, interviews on radio and television) enabled me to develop my self-esteem and built up my bicultural identity as a Muslim in a predominantly Christian country and as a Bangladeshi-Australian. In 2005, for the sake of a better job opportunity, my husband moved to the UK, but this time I asserted that I would not move again. I felt that here in Australia (now in Perth) I had a job, an identity and a home. This time my husband was able to secure a good job back in Australia and was only away for a year. I no longer dream of finding a home in the Middle East. Through my bicultural identity here in Australia I feel connected to the wider community and to the Muslim umma. However, my attachment to the umma has become ambivalent. I feel proud of my Australian-Muslim identity but I am concerned about the jihadi ideology of militant Muslims. By jihadi ideology, I mean the extremist ideology of the al-Qaeda terrorist group (Farrar 2007). The Muslim umma now incorporates both moderate and radical Muslims. The radical Muslims (though only a tiny minority of 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide) pose a threat to their moderate counterparts as well as to non-Muslims. In the UK, some second- and third-generation Muslims identify themselves with the umma rather than their parents’ homelands or their country of birth (Husain). It should not be a matter of concern if these young Muslims adopt a ‘pure’ Muslim identity, providing at the same time they are loyal to their country of residence. But when they resort to terrorism with their ‘pure’ Muslim identity (e.g., the 7/7 London bombers) they defame my religion Islam, and undermine my spiritual connection to the umma. As a 1st generation immigrant, the defining criteria of my ‘homeliness’ in Australia are my ethno-cultural and religious identity (which includes my family), my active citizenship, and my community development/contribution through my research work – all of which allow me a sense of efficacy in my life. My ethnic and religious identities generally co-exist equally, but when I see some Muslims kill my fellow Australians (such as the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005) my Australian identity takes precedence. I feel for the victims and condemn the perpetrators. On the other hand, when I see politics play a role over the human rights issues (e.g., the Tampa incident), my religious identity begs me to comment on it (see Kabir, Muslims in Australia 295-305). Problematising ‘Home’ for Muslim Australians In the European context, Grillo (863) and Werbner (904), and in the Australian context, Kabir (Muslims in Australia) and Poynting and Mason, have identified the diversity within Islam (national, ethnic, religious etc). Werbner (904) notes that in spite of the “wishful talk of the emergence of a ‘British Islam’, even today there are Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Arab mosques, as well as Turkish and Shia’a mosques”; thus British Muslims retain their separate identities. Similarly, in Australia, the existence of separate mosques for the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Arab and Shia’a peoples indicates that Australian Muslims have also kept their ethnic identities discrete (Saeed 64-77). However, in times of crisis, such as the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989, and the 1990-1991 Gulf crises, both British and Australian Muslims were quick to unite and express their Islamic identity by way of resistance (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 160-162; Poynting and Mason 68-70). In both British and Australian contexts, I argue that a peaceful rally or resistance is indicative of active citizenship of Muslims as it reveals their sense of belonging (also Werbner 905). So when a transmigrant Muslim wants to make a peaceful demonstration, the Western world should be encouraged, not threatened – as long as the transmigrant’s allegiances lie also with the host country. In the European context, Grillo (868) writes: when I asked Mehmet if he was planning to stay in Germany he answered without hesitation: ‘Yes, of course’. And then, after a little break, he added ‘as long as we can live here as Muslims’. In this context, I support Mehmet’s desire to live as a Muslim in a non-Muslim world as long as this is peaceful. Paradoxically, living a Muslim life through ijtihad can be either socially progressive or destructive. The Canadian Muslim feminist Irshad Manji relies on ijtihad, but so does Osama bin Laden! Manji emphasises that ijtihad can be, on the one hand, the adaptation of Islam using independent reasoning, hybridity and the contesting of ‘traditional’ family values (c.f. Doogue and Kirkwood 275-276, 314); and, on the other, ijtihad can take the form of conservative, patriarchal and militant Islamic values. The al-Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden espouses the jihadi ideology of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), an Egyptian who early in his career might have been described as a Muslim modernist who believed that Islam and Western secular ideals could be reconciled. But he discarded that idea after going to the US in 1948-50; there he was treated as ‘different’ and that treatment turned him against the West. He came back to Egypt and embraced a much more rigid and militaristic form of Islam (Esposito 136). Other scholars, such as Cesari, have identified a third orientation – a ‘secularised Islam’, which stresses general beliefs in the values of Islam and an Islamic identity, without too much concern for practices. Grillo (871) observed Islam in the West emphasised diversity. He stressed that, “some [Muslims were] more quietest, some more secular, some more clamorous, some more negotiatory”, while some were exclusively characterised by Islamic identity, such as wearing the burqa (elaborate veils), hijabs (headscarves), beards by men and total abstinence from drinking alcohol. So Mehmet, cited above, could be living a Muslim life within the spectrum of these possibilities, ranging from an integrating mode to a strict, militant Muslim manner. In the UK context, Zubaida (96) contends that marginalised, culturally-impoverished youth are the people for whom radical, militant Islamism may have an appeal, though it must be noted that the 7/7 bombers belonged to affluent families (O’Sullivan 14; Husain). In Australia, Muslim Australians are facing three challenges. First, the Muslim unemployment rate: it was three times higher than the national total in 1996 and 2001 (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 266-278; Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 63). Second, some spiritual leaders have used extreme rhetoric to appeal to marginalised youth; in January 2007, the Australian-born imam of Lebanese background, Sheikh Feiz Mohammad, was alleged to have employed a DVD format to urge children to kill the enemies of Islam and to have praised martyrs with a violent interpretation of jihad (Chulov 2). Third, the proposed citizenship test has the potential to make new migrants’ – particularly Muslims’ – settlement in Australia stressful (Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79); in May 2007, fuelled by perceptions that some migrants – especially Muslims – were not integrating quickly enough, the Howard government introduced a citizenship test bill that proposes to test applicants on their English language skills and knowledge of Australian history and ‘values’. I contend that being able to demonstrate knowledge of history and having English language skills is no guarantee that a migrant will be a good citizen. Through my transmigrant history, I have learnt that developing a bond with a new place takes time, acceptance and a gradual change of identity, which are less likely to happen when facing assimilationist constraints. I spoke English and studied history in the United States, but I did not consider it my home. I did not speak the Arabic language, and did not study Middle Eastern history while I was in the Middle East, but I felt connected to it for cultural and religious reasons. Through my knowledge of history and English language proficiency I did not make Australia my home when I first migrated to Australia. Australia became my home when I started interacting with other Australians, which was made possible by having the time at my disposal and by fortunate circumstances, which included a fairly high level of efficacy and affluence. If I had been rejected because of my lack of knowledge of ‘Australian values’, or had encountered discrimination in the job market, I would have been much less willing to embrace my host country and call it home. I believe a stringent citizenship test is more likely to alienate would-be citizens than to induce their adoption of values and loyalty to their new home. Conclusion Blunt (5) observes that current studies of home often investigate mobile geographies of dwelling and how it shapes one’s identity and belonging. Such geographies of home negotiate from the domestic to the global context, thus mobilising the home beyond a fixed, bounded and confining location. Similarly, in this paper I have discussed how my mobile geography, from the domestic (root) to global (route), has shaped my identity. Though I received a degree of culture shock in the United States, loved the Middle East, and was at first quite resistant to the idea of making Australia my second home, the confidence I acquired in residing in these ‘several homes’ were cumulative and eventually enabled me to regard Australia as my ‘home’. I loved the Middle East, but I did not pursue an active involvement with the Arab community because I was a busy mother. Also I lacked the communication skill (fluency in Arabic) with the local residents who lived outside the expatriates’ campus. I am no longer a cultural freak. I am no longer the same Bangladeshi woman who saw her ethnic and Islamic culture as superior to all other cultures. I have learnt to appreciate Australian values, such as tolerance, ‘a fair go’ and multiculturalism (see Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79). My bicultural identity is my strength. With my ethnic and religious identity, I can relate to the concerns of the Muslim community and other Australian ethnic and religious minorities. And with my Australian identity I have developed ‘a voice’ to pursue active citizenship. Thus my biculturalism has enabled me to retain and merge my former home with my present and permanent home of Australia. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, New York: Verso, 1983. Australian Bureau of Statistics: Census of Housing and Population, 1996 and 2001. Blunt, Alison. Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. Home. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Cesari, Jocelyne. “Muslim Minorities in Europe: The Silent Revolution.” In John L. Esposito and Burgat, eds., Modernising Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in Europe and the Middle East. London: Hurst, 2003. 251-269. Chulov, Martin. “Treatment Has Sheik Wary of Returning Home.” Weekend Australian 6-7 Jan. 2007: 2. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: University of Washington, 1997. Doogue, Geraldine, and Peter Kirkwood. Tomorrow’s Islam: Uniting Old-Age Beliefs and a Modern World. Sydney: ABC Books, 2005. Esposito, John. The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? 3rd ed. New York, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Farrar, Max. “When the Bombs Go Off: Rethinking and Managing Diversity Strategies in Leeds, UK.” International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations 6.5 (2007): 63-68. Grillo, Ralph. “Islam and Transnationalism.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30.5 (Sep. 2004): 861-878. Hall, Stuart. Polity Reader in Cultural Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. Huntington, Samuel, P. The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of World Order. London: Touchstone, 1998. Husain, Ed. The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw inside and Why I Left. London: Penguin, 2007. Kabir, Nahid. Muslims in Australia: Immigration, Race Relations and Cultural History. London: Kegan Paul, 2005. ———. “What Does It Mean to Be Un-Australian: Views of Australian Muslim Students in 2006.” People and Place 15.1 (2007): 62-79. Khan, Shahnaz. Aversion and Desire: Negotiating Muslim Female Identity in the Diaspora. Toronto: Women’s Press, 2002. Manji, Irshad. The Trouble with Islam Today. Canada:Vintage, 2005. Maslow, Abraham. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper, 1954. O’Sullivan, J. “The Real British Disease.” Quadrant (Jan.-Feb. 2006): 14-20. Poynting, Scott, and Victoria Mason. “The Resistible Rise of Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim Racism in the UK and Australia before 11 September 2001.” Journal of Sociology 43.1 (2007): 61-86. Saeed, Abdallah. Islam in Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003. Smith, Anthony D. National Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991. Spencer, Philip, and Howard Wollman. Nationalism: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage, 2002. Vertovec, Stevens. The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns. London: Routledge. 2000. Werbner, Pnina, “Theorising Complex Diasporas: Purity and Hybridity in the South Asian Public Sphere in Britain.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30.5 (2004): 895-911. Wood, Dennis. “The Diaspora, Community and the Vagrant Space.” In Cynthia Vanden Driesen and Ralph Crane, eds., Diaspora: The Australasian Experience. New Delhi: Prestige, 2005. 59-64. Zubaida, Sami. “Islam in Europe: Unity or Diversity.” Critical Quarterly 45.1-2 (2003): 88-98. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kabir, Nahid. "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>. APA Style Kabir, N. (Aug. 2007) "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>.

With worldwide progress, development and diversification come tensions between individual, local, national and global identities, and the fight for equality and justice and against discrimination for all peoples. Iran is no different, but little has been written about the historical, current and future identities of Iran’s ethnic groups. This study looks at the Azeris, Kurds, Arabs and Baloch alongside the Persian ethnic identity, which is predominant in modern Iran and which many claim is upheld politically and socially as the ideal for a future, collective Iranian ethnic identity, promoting discrimination against different ethnic identities. The study used grounded theory to conduct and analyse in-depth questionnaires across 13 Iranian provinces in relation to religious, local and national identities; inter-ethnic cultural borders; hindrances to progressive movements; the purging of certain ethnic cultures; and possible steps to resolve crises. Some data in this article is extracted the author’s recently published book, From Border to Border: Comprehensive research study on identity and ethnicity in Iran. It presents practical steps to achieving stable, equitable and sustainable cultural, social, economic, legal and political conditions in Iran, based on the results of the questionnaires. Such steps include realising economic, socio-cultural and political justice and indiscriminate social welfare, promoting interethnic solidarity and justice in the media, separating the legal and political systems from religious and ethno-centric thought in acknowledgement of the diversity of religious identities in Iran, and implementing the pending articles of the Constitution.

BackgroundThe socio-cultural response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the level of adherence to evidence-based guidelines played a crucial role in determining the morbidity and mortality outcomes during the pandemic. This review aims to evaluate the impact of stigma and psycho-socio-cultural challenges on efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify ways to mitigate such challenges in future pandemics.MethodsUsing keywords including COVID-19, coronavirus, stigma, psychosocial challenges, and others, the authors searched seven major databases with a time limitation of July 2021, which yielded 2,038 results. Out of these, 15 papers were included in this review.ResultsThe findings of the review indicated that several psychosocial, socio-economic, and ethno-cultural factors are linked to the transmission and control of COVID-19. The research revealed that stigma and related psychosocial challenges and others, such as anxiety, fear, and stigma-driven social isolation, have resulted in significant mental health problems.DiscussionThe review underscores the negative impact of stigma on COVID-19 patients, survivors, and the general population. Addressing stigma and psychosocial challenges is crucial to effectively manage the current pandemic and to prevent similar challenges during future public health crises.

This paper discusses Sinan Antoon’s novel Ya Maryam and its representation of contemporary Iraq in the wake of the tragic events that took place after the American occupation of Iraq in 2003. It sheds light on the sectarian crisis and the violent and atrocious events that turned Iraq into a minefield. The novel is more descriptive than prescriptive, not only allowing us to see the gloomy and violent reality of the present but also the tolerant past through the interplay between memory, history, and contemporaneity. Drawing on Pierre Nora’s conceptualization of memory and moving beyond the opposition between history and memory, we argue that Antoon’s use of intimate places and photographs allows him to bring both history and memory together as complementary records of the modern history of Iraq and as witness to that history. Through the generation gap between an uncle and his young niece, Antoon brings together Iraq as a single unified country through the reconciliation of past Iraq portrayed through the uncle’s memory and present Iraq as seen in the eyes of the niece. This reconciliation aims to solidify the meaning of national identity that transcends religion and time and confirms the Iraqiness of all Iraqis. Though the novel ends graphically and tragically with the death of its main protagonist, Yousef, the trauma of his loss allows for the transformation of his niece and ends with the confirmation that Iraq is for all Iraqis irrespective of ethno-religious identity.