PROCEEDINGS OF THE LATVIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Ethnic self-categorisation of the Russian-speaking youth in Latvia

https://doi.org/10.53231/LZAV.21.4.2
Keywords: categorisation, self-categorisation, ethnic minority, system of the ethnosocial stratification, Russian-speaking youth
Language: In Latvian

The article discusses the peculiarities of self-categorisation of Russian-speaking youth as an ethnic minority in Latvia. The author considers categorisation as a cognitive process for classification of objects and phenomena into separate groups (categories). Social categorisation and self-categorisation cannot only be described as identifying a person with a group, but must also be related to the place of this social, including ethnic, group in the system of social stratification. The article examines the question of the extent to which the self-categorisation of Russians as an ethnic minority is reproduced in the younger generation of this ethnic group. In 2000 and in 2019, the author of the article conducted a survey of students studying in Russian in three private universities in Riga, to find out the evolution of this self-categorisation. The data of the study show that in the perception of young Russian respondents, Latvian society is stratified into Latvians and ethnic minorities, whose identities have different social weight in the country. The data of the study show that the narrative form of respondents, when describing the future of the ethnic groups to which these respondents belong, is most often associated with identification with these groups, but not with Latvian citizens or residents.