Nationality and sexuality: homophobic discourse and the ‘national threat’ in contemporary Latvia

ABSTRACT. This article seeks to understand why attitudes towards homosexuality in Latvia appear to be more intolerant than in all other EU member states. It argues that, while the impact of religion, the legacy of communism and post‐communist transition have all played a role in shaping attitudes towards homosexuality in Central and Eastern Europe, these factors do not explain sufficiently the divergence among post‐communist states and, in particular, do not account for Latvia's extreme position. While acknowledging that intolerance towards non‐heteronormative sexuality cannot be explained by a single factor but is the cumulative effect of a range of social influences, this study argues that homosexuality is particularly reviled in Latvia because it has been constructed discursively as a threat to the continued existence of the nation in its desired ethnic form and to the core values defining Latvian national identity.     

History perceptions and national identity among Latvian youth: Entrapped between narratives of Latvia and Russia?

This article examines the extent to which history forms national identity among Latvian youth. Being a multiethnic country, Latvia provides a unique opportunity to study the role of history in nation-building among dominant and minority ethnic groups. The majority of Latvia's ethnic minorities are Russian-speaking; therefore, a peculiarity of the Latvian case is the influence of the historical narratives promoted by Russia. The research problem of the paper is the formation of national identity when a foreign country promotes distorted historical narratives to discredit a state. The empirical findings are based on 30 in-depth interviews with young people. The main conclusion is that history plays a rather limited direct role in forming national identity among youth in Latvia. The influence of Russia's historical narratives is observable but not as strong as expected in the context of Russia's influence activities.     

Ageing well: the time–spaces of possibility for older female Latvian migrants in the UK

In this article, we explore the relationships between ageing, place and migration based on life history interviews with 37 female Latvian migrants in the UK. Reflecting an approach that sees migration as both embodied and emplaced, we conceptualise ageing and migration as entwined becomings that reconfigure the possibilities of a ‘better life’ in different time–spaces. Our approach combines time-geography with a well-being-based approach to migration constraints and outcomes. Our stress is on vitality – the ways in which migrants are able to mobilise resources and enact agency even in an environment where some aspects of life and working conditions are restrictive and exploitative. Hence, older Latvian women are able to transgress negative perceptions of ageing in their home country and achieve a measure of empowerment, both economic and psychosocial by moving to the UK.     

Does a turbulent history lead to turbulent life expectancy trends? Evidence from the Baltic States

After the time of the Great Duchy of Lithuania and that of their inclusion to Russian Empire, the three Baltic countries got their first independence after WWI, but WWII forced them to enter the Soviet Union for almost five decades before getting their second independence and resuming with market economy, to finally join the European Union. Such strong historical changes caused major impacts (either positive or negative) on the implementation of the health transition in the region, quite interesting to document, but they also produced dramatic changes in the quality and the accuracy of information required to compute mortality indicators. The aim of this article is to briefly summarize existing knowledge on mortality in the Baltic region for the past two centuries, but focusing more precisely on the consequences of getting in and then getting out of the Soviet system in terms of health and survival.     

Sexual citizenship in Latvia: geographies of the Latvian closet

This study examines sexual citizenship in Latvia. It investigates the process by which political narratives have heterosexed the nation since regaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. My aim in exploring this process is to develop a deeper understanding of non-heteronormative identities and counter-hegemonic spaces in this heterosexist society. Drawing on discourse analysis of political media statements I argue that despite the legalizing of homosexuality, political narratives have continued to sex the nation as heterosexual, forging the national closet. I then explore how these narratives become experienced in lives of sexual minorities through the state's failure to prevent sexual discrimination. Drawing on participant observation and a decoding of the urban landscape, I investigate how the Latvian closet is materialized in the bodies and places of the everyday lives of ‘gay’ men living in the capital, Riga. Examined in this way insights are given to the spatial forms of political resistance to heterosexism in Latvia and how it differs from western models.     

Language,history and the nation: an historical approach to evaluating language and cultural claims

ABSTRACT. In contrast to the abstract commitment to individual rights found in liberal critics of Bill 101 and the equally ahistorical approach of multicultural theorists like Bhikhu Parekh, this paper proposes that the particular historical circumstances surrounding the current minority status of different groups is crucial in evaluating the legitimacy of one cultural group to promote its cultural needs over another group within existing states. When the culture of a group residing within a particular state is secure in a neighbouring jurisdiction, the issue at stake is not necessarily the survival of a unique culture but the cultural needs of particular individuals. It does not follow that they have no legitimate claims against the state. However, in examining the language policies in Quebec and the newly independent Baltic states, it is argued that they are different in kind to the rights due to long‐standing communities struggling for linguistic survival.     

The boundary dispute between Chile and Argentina

In November 1920, James Young Simpson, Professor of Natural Science in New College, Edinburgh and Trinity College, Glasgow, was invited by the governments of Latvia and Lithuania to chair a commission which would settle the disputed border between the two newly‐independent states. Upon his return to Edinburgh in May 1921, Simpson deposited the papers and final report on the commission's decision with the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, of which he was an active member. This article will explain why and how Simpson came to be involved in diplomatic decisions so remote from his home life and work, and will analyse the significance of the results of Simpson's efforts on the arbitration commission.     

"Trouble in the East": The New Entrants and Challenges to the European Ideal

Two political geographers examine significant ways in which northern-tier states of the EU-10 entrants in 2004 have challenged conceptions of European integration. The paper first focuses on the institution of exclusionary citizenship regimes, particularly in Latvia and Estonia, that created a new caste of "non-citizens" within the EU's boundaries. It then turns to the strained Polish-EU relations involving inter alia the war in Iraq, pro-Americanism, and alleged violation of human rights through the purported existence of CIA detention and interrogation facilities. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F02, O15, O18, 2 figures, 1 table, 72 references.     

‘Raging Rumors’: American Diplomats’ Reportage from Latvia and Estonia, 1938–1940

‘Raging Rumors’ examines how the Soviet invasion and annexation unfolded in Latvia and Estonia. The reportage of American diplomats documents Nazi and Soviet aggression and the loss of neutrality for Latvia and Estonia. American diplomats at post recorded what they witnessed, but also what they were told by their contacts, thus providing readers with Latvian and Estonian governmental perspectives and world views. As spectators with a front-row seat watching how the Second World War began, the American diplomats reported back to Washington. This article sheds light on what transpired in Latvia and Estonia, how Latvians and Estonians perceived of their situation, and how the US government engaged and failed to engage in the Baltic.     

Workers, migrants, aliens or citizens? State constructions and discourses of identity among post-war European labour migrants in Britain

In this paper, I address a series of questions about migrant identities, assessing the continuities and contradictions between state discourses and those of migrants themselves. I address these questions through the lens of a largely neglected group of migrants, who were recruited by the British State in the immediately post-war period in response to post-war labour shortages. Whereas the recruitment of considerable numbers of labour migrants from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom from the late 1940s onwards is a well-documented part of the response to post-war labour shortages, earlier schemes to recruit people from refugee camps in Germany are less known. In this paper, I focus on women from Latvia, one of the Baltic states, who provide a particularly interesting insight into questions of identity as they both challenge common distinctions and assumptions in theories of migration—they came as independent single women for example. They are also a hybrid category in the sense they were both refugees and economic migrants with no previous attachments to the UK, unlike the other main groups of economic migrants at the time and earlier—Irish and Caribbean people—and the somewhat later migration from the Indian sub-continent. In this paper I show how these women challenged assumptions built into state policies at the time about assimilation and mothering future Britons through a strong and continuing commitment to the recreation of an imagined Latvian community in exile and the refusal of British identity.