PhD thesis
Project promoter: SLORI-Slovenski raziskovalni inštitut
Project performer: Zaira Vidali
Project implementation period: 2008-2013
Managing ethnic differences on a social, cultural, linguistic, political and economic level in contemporary society is, particularly in Europe/the European Union, a crucial question for keeping stability and peace and preventing conflicts arising from ethnicity or nationality.
Contemporary national States are, among other things, multicultural and multilingual societies. This depends on one hand on the revitalization and revalorization of minority and regional languages which are historically present in specific areas, and on the other on migrations and processes that bring to the formation of new minorities.
In this social and political frame, a question arises: how should the national administration (i.e. the structure on which the State is based, through which the State exercises its power over the citizens and offers them services) react to the social changes brought in by the concept of multiculturalism and multilingualism? The point is to understand how the State and the public administration, being the executor of its guidelines and plans, should manage the ethnic and linguistic differences.
The research project is divided into a theoretical and an empirical part. The first one presents the development of nationalism within the Italian State and the development of the national public administration. With the research, we will verify to which extent nationalism conditioned the structure of the Italian national public administration. Moreover, we will verify specifically for the case of Friuli Venezia Giulia and its three recognized minorities (Slovenian, Friulian and German speaking) to which extent the public administration is introducing methods and strategies for managing ethnic and linguistic diversity in contemporary society. In the empirical part of the research, in-depth interviews will be carried out with representatives of public administration bodies of the Region FVG, specifically the regional, the provincial and the local ones.
The objective is to verify which elements influence the management of diversity in public administration bodies in Friuli Venezia Giulia. We will also try to describe the methods for managing diversity that such bodies have developed on the various levels.