National Minorities in an Era of Externalization

This article investigates how two processes of externalization—deeper integration into European institutions, and the extension of citizenship and voting rights offered by neighboring kin-states—impact national minority politics using the critical case of the ethnic Hungarian political community in Romania. It finds that external citizenship and voting rights may help strengthen ethnic political identity, but also reorients resources away from minority political projects toward the kin-state and encourages intra-minority stratification. Access to European political spaces offers additional arenas through which minority political actors can make claims and gain allies, but is of limited use as a mobilizational resource.