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The purpose of this article is to explore the smallness and weakness of the Republic of North Macedonia by observing its foreign policy behavior since its independence to the present day. Instead of focusing on criteria that rely on internal determining factors, the aim of this paper is to investigate the size and power of a state by observing its external behavior. To fulfill this purpose, the article employs a case study methodology. Specifically, it uses the case of the Republic of North Macedonia to observe and evaluate its smallness and weakness based on the demonstrated foreign policy behavior of this state, especially in its efforts to deal with external challenges. The contextualized analysis is expected to contribute to an enhanced understanding of how the main patterns of a state's foreign policy behavior may dictate its size and power and consequently its place and role within the international system.

The main aim of the article is to analyze and assess the impact of government policyand the representation regime on the cultural identity of the Turkish community ofAfrican origin (Afro-Turks). The article examines the identity of Afro-Turks in thelate Ottoman Empire and in the Republic of Türkiye. From a methodological perspec-tive, the work employs the concept of Cemal Kafadar’s “lid model”. The author char-acterizes the cultural identity of Afro-Turks through Stuart Hall’s perspective, empha-sizing how it is shaped by historical constructs and contemporary conditions. Withthe proclamation of the Republic of Türkiye, the urban elites involved in the politi-cal project of forced westernization perceived Afro-Turks as a geographically periph-eral and marginalized community. The identity of Turks of African origin is shapedby a composite historical legacy, encompassing the impacts of colonialism, social dy-namics, and roles occupied within elite households. Although slavery was formallyabolished in the Republic of Türkiye in 1964, in practice, the institution of servitudein Anatolia differed significantly from the forms that were prevalent in the Westernworld. The traditions of Afro-Turks are currently preserved by the Africans Cultureand Solidarity Society, which was founded in Ayvalık in 2006. The government posi-tively evaluated the efforts of Afro-Turks to promote their culture beyond communityborders, seeing this as an opportunity to increase Turkish political activity in Africa.

In East-Central Europe, the past has always been a determining factor as a framework for interpretation: the social construction of the past often serves (served) current political purposes. It is no wonder that in the countries of the region, often different, sometimes contradictory interpretations of the past have emerged. In today’s European situation, however, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are perhaps most keenly faced by the transformation of Europe, with unclear, chaotic ideas dominating political and intellectual markets instead of previous (accepted) values – in the tension between old and new, Europe’s future is at stake. The question is: what role the states of Central and Eastern Europe play/can play, to what extent they will be able to place the neighbourhood policy alongside (perhaps in front of) the policy of remembrance and seek common answers to Europe’s great dilemmas.

This article aims to sum up the main results of a research project made in 2016 and 2017 about the situation of 1190 Romanian migrants in Western Europe and to give an overview about the push and pull factors, transnational family structures, as well as the challenges and difficulties of the Romanian survey respondents living in Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy. It also considers the role of personal networks which represent an important motor of migration and constitute the main motive for the choice of a certain destination region. These migration networks lead to the construction of transnational social spaces between Romania and the destination country and have high influence in the search for housing or jobs but can also influence the integration process abroad.

During the disintegration of multinational federations at the beginning of the 1990s, existing political units within the Yugoslav political space declared independence and ethnic groups residing in them sought to establish separate autonomous entities. This study specifically focuses on state-building policies in North Macedonia during the Yugoslav turmoil of dissolution with a “state within society” approach. It examines how post-communist Macedonian political leadership attempted to build a dominant state image on the territories of the former Yugoslav socialist republic. The article argues that if an autonomous, united, and centralized state perception fails to resonate with society, alternative state images may emerge within the same national territory- possibly even transcending legitimate borders. This study applied the “states as images” approach to the Macedonian-Albanian relations in North Macedonia during a limited period, from the dissolution of Yugoslavia to the 2001 conflict. It is posited that post-communist Macedonian political elites projected a Macedonian state image through practices. However, Albanians of Macedonia implemented policies on behalf of revived Ilirida perception, where they could unite with Kosovar Albanians in the future. The 2001 conflict demonstrated that the Ilirida state image had reached a war-making capacity, challenging the Macedonian state’s monopoly on violence. As a result, Macedonian authorities were compelled to negotiate and eventually transform the state into a Macedonian-Albanian image.

Extensive research has demonstrated that neighbourhood ethnic diversity is negatively associated with intra-neighbourhood social capital. This study explores the role of segregation and integration in this relationship. To do so it applies three-level hierarchical linear models to two sets of data from across Great Britain and within London, and examines how segregation across the wider-community in which a neighbourhood is nested impacts trust amongst neighbours. This study replicates the increasingly ubiquitous finding that neighbourhood diversity is negatively associated with neighbour-trust. However, we demonstrate that this relationship is highly dependent on the level of segregation across the wider-community in which a neighbourhood is nested. Increasing neighbourhood diversity only negatively impacts neighbour-trust when nested in more segregated wider-communities. Individuals living in diverse neighbourhoods nested within integrated wider-communities experience no trust-penalty. These findings show that segregation plays a critical role in the neighbourhood diversity/trust relationship, and that its absence from the literature biases our understanding of how ethnic diversity affects social cohesion.

In the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as well as in the states that emerged after its break-up, various types of conflict were evident at many levels. One such conflict has been sports rivalries, which, although intended to be separate from the prevailing political disputes, became a significant element in the escalating conflict between the federation’s nations and republics. This article aims to present and analyze the role of sport and its associated competitions in political conflict, both before and after Yugoslavia’s break-up.

In the study, ethnic nationalism in the Balkans, the Russian influence and the degree of NATO’s contribution to peace processes in the Balkans are scrutinized and the impact of NATO’s presence on regional peace and stability is analyzed. By using articles, books, journals and internet sources, the process of the Balkans’ and especially the Western Balkans’ full membership to the EU and integration with NATO, the Political, economic, ethnic dynamics of the region, and NATO’s struggle against ethnic issues as in the case of Serbia-Kosovo crisis are examined. In addition, ethnic nationalism, Russian influence in the region, as a result of change in the security environment is evaluated, and the role of NATO in the SerbiaKosovo crisis as an example of both political and ethnic conflict, is analyzed. By doing a detailed literature review in the study, it is concluded that NATO is not just a military alliance, but a stabilizing and security-enhancing actor in resolving conflicts in the Balkans, and that NATO increasingly plays an effective and important role in regional resolution processes, and that security and stability in the Balkans and especially in the Western Balkans cannot be fully achieved without NATO’s leadership and contributions.

Myrna Kostash’s term as writer in residence at Athabasca University began shortly after the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2022. In this essay, based on her writer-in-residence lecture at Athabasca University, Kostash offers a self-critical reflection on her body of work and considers how her visits to Ukraine and the ongoing war have nuanced her writing about and understanding of Ukrainian Canadian identity.

In this article, the attention is paid to the Bosnian war veterans´ organisations. In the post-Dayton period, veterans’ associations could be characterized as non-egalitarian structures with strong ethnic ascription reproducing ethnic cleavages and with wide patron-client bonds to the highest level of politics enjoying preferential positions in socio-political and economic life. Today, the majority of veterans´ organisations can be characterized as civic oriented NGOs rather inclusive with decreasing importance of the ethnicity as the defining principle, limited preferential political treatment, and with the potential to mobilize across ethnic lines and building cross-ethnic contacts and relations. I searched for mechanisms and processes that produced alternations in the veterans’ organisations role and behaviour. The tracing of the political, societal and economic context in and outside of Bosnia and in the population of veterans’ organisations discovered the existence of twelve mechanisms which combination and interplay “produced” the change in veterans’ organisation's role and behaviour.