Ethnonational Minorities

Ethnonational minorities are politicized groups within a society, where membership in a particular ethnic group(s) forms the basis for their members' mobilization in making collective claims on members of other groups that include a nation's political decision makers. All nations have populations of ethnic minorities—because groups of people from different cultural backgrounds, at different concentration levels, and at different historical periods have migrated the world over and been labeled ethnic by the host societies—but not all ethnic minorities are ethnonational minorities. Ethnonational minorities are present in society when and where claims made by ethnic minority groups become considered and, in many instances, incorporated in how a nation is governed.

Three key points are important for understanding ethnonational minorities and governance: (1) social geography, (2) claim-making, and (3) social rights practice. Social geography refers to the intersection of population size and geographic place, the implication being that the larger the population of the ethnic minority group, the more likely its eventual influence on government (because of potential voting power and demands for resources). Claim-making refers to the intersection of identity politics and contentious politics, through which members of ethnonational minority groups draw from a repertoire of strategies to get their grievances heard and sometimes resolved by governing officials. Finally, social rights practice refers to the process at the intersection of claim-making and citizenship rights in which claims made by ethnonational minorities become generalized to reflect the “public good” of a nation. This entry reviews these elements in describing ethnonational minorities.