Ethnic boundary-making in a Latvian university

Abstract: This study explores experiences of division into ethnic groups of Latvians and Russians at Liepāja University in Latvia. The Soviet heritage has left a Russian minority that constitutes a quarter of the Latvian population. The Latvian and Russian groups are divided by opposed interpretations of the past Soviet domination in Latvia. Citizenship regulations and language practices forces the Russian group into an excluded position. In the education system nationalistic Latvian norms and values are excluding. To explore experiences of this group division, this study use a phenomenological approach and is built on nine in-depth interviews with students. Andreas Wimmers theory of ethnic boundary-making, which suggests five strategies for how an actor may react to ethnic boundaries, is used as model. The result suggests that the informants experience the division into ethnic groups at Liepāja University as important in order to relate to each other as either Latvian or Russian, but not of particular importance or influence in everyday interaction. The use of the Latvian language includes the Russian group in the Latvian majority through Wimmers expansion strategy while the use of the Russian language may exclude from the majority group through the contraction strategy.