2026/07/22 by Remus Anghel, Ovidiu Oltean
Social Sciences · #Migration, Refugees, and Integration #Diaspora, migration, transnational identity #Central European national history
paper · doi:10.1017/nps.2026.10154
Abstract The article engages the recent literature on whiteness and East-West ethnic hierarchies in Europe with an Eastern European perspective. We analyze how German ethnicity expresses symbolic superiority in a multicultural region of Romania by tracing how non-ethnic Germans affiliate with the local German minority and sustain German associational life. Such dynamics unfold within institutions of the German minority but are amplified by mobility to Germany, transnational ties, and significant German investments. We focus on how a notion of a “better society” derives not only from regional economic development due to German investments and local German political leadership, but especially from civic initiatives associated with ethnic German minority actors. We thus show how such hierarchies of superiority become articulated from below, as non-Germans attach worth, opportunity, and social improvement to a presumed more progressive “German societal model.”