Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

Recent major changes in rural development in Europe have brought about new demands made on rural space. As a result of the transformation of rural needs, a type of modern rurality typical of the shift from production to consumption has emerged. The most illustrative example of this shift in rural environment is the emergence of international tourism and second homes. This text focuses the attention on how contemporary forms of mobility and international tourism affect local identities. Emphasis is put on the ways new and old cultural identities are contested, negotiated and constructed. The aim is to analyse one of the contemporary forms of ‘voluntary’, temporary mobility – the phenomenon of second homes owned by the Dutch in Czech rural countryside. The focus is placed on factors that either facilitate or hinder interaction between the second home owners and other international tourists, and local residents in two Czech rural communities.

The aim of the article is to explore how the migrant identity (especially, of the first generation) is changing under the influence of migration. Accordingly in the first part of the article the transnationalism and the concept of transmigration in relation to migratory experience are discussed, the second part is focused on the questions of identity and its boundaries, and the third part is based on the interpretation of empirical data from anthropological fieldwork by paying attention to the background, language and festivals of the immigrants as particular markers of the identity construction of the Lithuanian migrants in Northern Ireland.

The article deals with the incorporation of Lithuanian immigrants into host societies and aims at identifying dominant strategies by which they are incorporated in England, Ireland, Norway and Spain. The main strategies of incorporation are identifying through the intensity of the immigrants’ social, economic, cultural and political linkages with the new society. Another focus is on the patterns of immigrants’ belonging. Based on the prevalence of linkage, four dominant strategies of Lithuanian immigrants’ incorporation into a new society are distinguished: conformist, representative, segregative, and navigational. Field data was obtained through semi-structured and focus group interviews with Lithuanian immigrants in 2007-2008.

The purpose of this article is to show the process by which Roma elite members actually construct political and cultural boundaries and at the same time propose a deterritorialised version of a Nation across state borders. As a result, the nation-building project and the process of ethnicisation promoted by Roma activists and members of the elite can be understood as a process of challenging borders and setting up boundaries. On the one hand, state borders may represent the barrier to surmount in order to accomplish an alliance based on a supposed ethnic category. On the other hand, the analysis of Roma identity and political strategies reveals the different forms of boundaries that may exist and how they may in fact be created and manipulated.

The article discusses the politicization of language, ethnicity and nationality issues in a border region between Estonia and Russia. The region’s recent past as part of the Soviet Union has a strong bearing on local peoples’ attitudes towards languages and language users in the neighbouring country and among the minorities. Russian-Estonian relations on all levels continue to be affected by the language situation of the former Soviet Union: the dominant status of Russian and the threatened position of Estonian. I discuss the debate around the altered status of the Estonian-language school located in the Russian Pskov region which borders with Estonia. This border region is interesting because of a very long-term co-existence and common history of both Estonian-speaking and Russian-speaking populations. The transformation of the Estonian school in Pechory from a minority language school into a foreign language school can be understood on one hand as a straight-forward response to pressures from declining numbers of pupils that schools in peripheral rural areas are facing everywhere. On the other hand, the case of this particular school can also be seen as an example of the increasing politicization and political use of language and ethnic issues in the Russian Federation.