When ethnicity is “national”: mapping ethnicminorities in Europe’s framework convention for theprotection of national minorities

Abstract

[Abstract] Legal and policy categorizations of group belonging play an important role inanalysing lived experiences of discrimination, since the scope of minorityprotection requires individuals to prove their belonging to a minority group.This article maps the existing classifiers of minority identification as they areused in the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities,Europe’s most comprehensive treaty designed to protect the rights of nationalminorities. I engage with the concept of ethnicity as a “knot of distinction”,looking at which minorities qualify as “national” in different countries. When isethnicity used as a proxy for religion, when for race, and when for language?What categories are omitted? By inductively analysing the rationalespresented by different EU countries of which minorities are “national”, andbased on which grounds, this article reveals a messy, historically and politicallydriven picture, but one that can help us understand some regional patterns.