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Introduction
This article looks at the role of institutions in shaping Polish ethnic minority identities, loyalties, and senses of belonging in two neighboring countries, Belarus and Lithuania. For long historical periods, parts of contemporary Lithuania and Belarus belonged to the same political units. In the early 1990s, Belarus and Lithuania became independent states with linked histories and minority communities now split by a border. Polish populations reside on both sides of the border between Belarus and Lithuania, which is why a comparative approach makes particular sense both theoretically and empirically. In particular, we consider how the different (geo)political paths chosen by Belarus and Lithuania after the collapse of the Soviet Union have shaped the institutional landscape in the two countries in regard to ethnic identities as well as the role of Poland as a kin-state in constructing Polishness in these two states. The difference in how Polishness is understood, maintained, and instrumentalized in both countries on the institutional and individual levels is determined by the difference in the broader political and social contexts of Belarusian and Lithuanian developments.
Our theoretical and empirical engagement with the role of institutions in the process of identity formation departs from the following research questions: What role do institutions play in maintaining ethnicity as a key element in people’s (self-)categorization? How do people engage with institutional influence on their identities? In other words, we aim to demonstrate how the construction of ethnicity is shaped by national policies and the ways some institutions plan their activities and survival. We argue that national and local institutions should be perceived as active agents in shaping ethnic identities and interethnic relations via different instruments, which are themselves shaped by supranational institutions, geopolitical situations, and national political contexts. At the same time, we also suggest that people do not take institutional policies and actions for granted but actively engage with their agendas.
Following Jenkins, we define the institutional order as “the human world seen as pattern and organization, as established ‘ways-of-doing-things’” (2008, 59). This definition distinguishes institutions from individual actions—“the individual order” (59)—and from interactions between people—“the interaction order” (59). Thus, the notion of institution we apply in our research includes the wide range of organizational objectivated activities such as nongovernmental organizations, education, political parties,...