2023-08-29, Yasar, Rusen, Bergmann, Fabian, Lloyd-Smith, Anika, Schmid, Sven-Patrick, Holzinger, Katharina, Kupisch, Tanja

The Sámi people stand out as the only Indigenous minority in an egalitarian European context, namely the Nordic Countries. Therefore, inequalities that they may face are worth closer inspection. Drawing on the distinction between inequalities among individuals (vertical) and between groups (horizontal), we investigate how different types of inequalities affect the Sámi today. We formulate a series of hypotheses on how social, economic, cultural, and political inequalities are linked with discrimination experience, and test these with original data from a population survey conducted in northern Norway and northern Sweden simultaneously in 2021. The findings show that Sámi ethnic background increases the probability of experiencing discrimination. While individual-level economic inequality is also pertinent, this does not directly materialise as between-group inequality. Instead, minority language use is a strong predictor of discrimination experience, revealing the socio-cultural nature of ethnic inequalities. Cross-country differences are only reflected in the effect of minority language use.

2023-02-21, Lloyd-Smith, Anika, Bergmann, Fabian, Sapir, Yair, Yasar, Rusen, Kupisch, Tanja

Every two weeks, one of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages dies. Yet what are the consequences of having to give up one’s native language? Speakers of minority languages worldwide face barriers to using their languages outside their homes, often with negative consequences for educational and economic success. A new survey of the Indigenous Sámi in Sweden and Norway suggests that language policies are key to perceptions of inequality. Speakers of the Sámi languages have lower perceptions of their societal standing than Sámi who have given up the language. Combined with insights from an in-depth study on Sámi language education, our findings suggest that policies should facilitate language maintenance in linguistic minorities. Supporting these languages may help to reduce feelings of discrimination.

2017, Yasar, Rusen

In two of the busiest migration corridors of the twentieth century, namely Mexico-US and Turkey-Germany, migrants can today be dual citizens. However, the acceptance of dual citizenship did not occur automatically; instead, it followed a period of legal statuses short of full citizenship. This paper conceptualises such statuses as quasi-citizenship, a transitional equilibrium between the absence of plural citizenship and the existence of transnational migration. Focusing on sending states, the emergence of emigrant quasi-citizenship is thus explained, first, in terms of whether the reciprocal regimes of emigration and immigration states diverge on the acceptance of plural citizenship. Second, the stance towards plural citizenship is explained in terms of the experience with emigration. It is then shown that, in the case of Mexico, the legacy of undesired emigration weakened the incentives to adapt the territorial conception of citizenship to expatriates, hence creating quasi-citizens, and in the case of Turkey, the higher political relevance of expatriates, who could have the host country citizenship, reinforced the external dimension of the ethno-cultural conception of citizenship.

2023-07-27, Kupisch, Tanja, Lloyd-Smith, Anika, Bergmann, Fabian, Yasar, Rusen

Angehörige der samischen Minderheiten in Norwegen und Schweden, die sich mit ihrer indigenen Kultur identifizieren, erfahren Diskriminierung, insbesondere wenn sie die samische Sprache in der Öffentlichkeit verwenden. Dies trifft zwar auf beide Länder zu, aber im Vergleich zeigt sich, dass die jeweilige Minderheitenpolitik das Ausmaß der Ungleichheit beeinflusst. Wenn – wie in Norwegen – mehr in die Förderung der samischen Sprache und Kultur investiert wird, führt dies zu einem höheren Maß an (Selbst-)Wertschätzung und Gleichheit.

2020, Yasar, Rusen

This chapter offers an overview of the evolution of Turkish nationality and citizenship, entangled with inward and outward population movements since the foundation of the Republic. While these movement created different pressures for nationality and citizenship policies, there has been a large room for political manoeuvre due to the duality between an ethno-cultural conception of Turkish nationality and an ostensibly civic-republican view of the Turkish nation. By virtue of this ambivalence, modern Turkish citizenship regime has adapted to shifting political priorities in response to changing demographic, economic and political circumstances in domestic and international spheres. In the early years of the republic, the overarching priority was nation-building and cultural homogenisation. In the 1960s and 1970s, upgrading human capital and securing financial capital inflows constituted an important part of the economic development strategy. After 1980, the focus shifted to the political empowerment of expatriates, with a view to increasing their influence in host countries and receiving their support in the home country. In this sense, the dominant approach has moved from a passive conservatism of single nationality towards active promotion of dual citizenship. The chapter traces this evolution and discusses the implications for current issues, giving special attention to the interplay between the pragmatic use of nationality and citizenship policies, and the ambivalent character of the citizenship regime.

2023-07-27, Kupisch, Tanja, Lloyd-Smith, Anika, Bergmann, Fabian, Yasar, Rusen

Members of the Sámi minorities in Norway and Sweden who identify with their native culture experience discrimination, especially when they use the Sámi language in public. While this is true in both countries, a comparison shows that specific minority policies affect the level of inequality. Spending more on the enhancement of Sámi language and culture—as Norway does—leads to a higher level of (self)esteem and equality

2018, Yasar, Rusen

Despite rising popularity of subjective well-being (SWB) as a proxy for utility, its relationship with income is still unresolved. Against the background of debates around the ‘Easterlin paradox’, this paper seeks a compromise between two positions: one that insists on individual relative income, and one that finds similarity between individual and aggregate levels. Proposing a model which puts the emphasis on the interaction between individual and aggregate-level factors, it argues that the effect of relative income on SWB varies across countries as a function of average income, in addition to a relatively small direct effect of the latter, in partial agreement with the two major positions. The model is tested cross-sectionally on the data from the latest wave of World Values Survey. The results from hierarchical mixed-effect models confirm the main argument. But further examination reveals that there is still unaccounted variation especially in middle-income economies.