Negotiating integration in a nationalizing state: Contested boundaries of belonging in Estonia

When Estonia re-gained independence in 1991, it denied automatic citizenship to most of its Soviet era migrants, primarily Russian speakers, who comprised one-third of the state's total population of 1.5 million. This dissertation asks two interrelated questions: Given Estonia's desire to "return to Europe" by joining the EU, how did the state attempt to reconcile its apparently discriminatory citizenship and cultural policies with liberal norms of civic equality and political enfranchisement? Why, given their political and social exclusion did "loyalty" emerge as the dominant response among Russian speakers, and how did they assert claims for greater inclusion? Drawing on official documents, ethnographic notes, and the transcripts of focus groups and semi-structured interviews, this dissertation explores how actors employ cultural codes and discursive strategies to negotiate and manipulate boundaries at different sites of membership and informal belonging. Both the Estonian state and Russian speakers employed a strategy known as "civil repair." While accepting the legitimacy of binary distinctions between "civil" and "un-civil" attitudes and practices, they sought to shift the symbolic boundary in such a way as to naturalize their claims for integration and inclusion at the supranational or national level.;Ironically, it is found that Estonia was able to gain entrance into the EU by claiming that the very policies that led to the social exclusion and loss of citizenship among many Russian speakers were, in fact, even more liberal than the policies of existing member states. Ordinary Russian speakers, in turn, were able to make claims for greater inclusion by placing themselves on the same side of civil/un-civil boundary as their Estonian counterparts, while distancing themselves from the "uncivil" Russians who continue to live in Russia.;Findings suggest that while heavy-handed practices of ethnic exclusion are no longer acceptable to an international audience, the cultural structure of nationalism has adapted itself to the discourse of liberalism. This is especially the case when "legitimate" criteria for exclusion, including language, become a proxy for nationality---a process less apparent in stable democracies than in countries in political transition.