Meanings Of Europe For Ethnic Minorities and Majorities

What does Europe mean for Europeans, of many parts of Europe or of places outside Europe where are social groups of European origin? The paper looks for to reply to these questions through a research carried out on fourteen samples of ethnic minorities and majorities of Europeans (about 2700 interviews of people), living in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italians and Slovenes, Friulians), in the Serb region of Vojvodina (Serbs and Hungarians, Slovaks), in the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv (Ukrainians and Russians, Belarussians, Jews), and in the Siberian region of Tjumen (Russians and Ukrainians, Caucasics, Tartars). To each sample the attitudes towards Europe and its meanings were requested. The main meanings (through attitudes) of Europe were: an area included between Atlantic Ocean and Urals, a Christian civilization, the European Union (EU),  a common family, the West, the overwhelming some peoples, a common culture, a vague idea. The paper considers the intensity and the relations of all these meanings between the macro-regions, between ethnic groups, and between minorities and majorities. The most important difference among the meanings is due to the macro-regions, first of all, and inside each region between minorities and majorities. Besides at the same level of macro-region also the structure of the meaning is very different. For example, the more important factor (Factor Analysis) in the Friuli Venezia Giulia is very simple (West, EU, common culture); on the contrary in Vojvodina the first factor is more complex. In the Kharkiv region the structure of the first factor Is simpler, but different than the Italian content (that is: Europe is overwhelming some peoples and vague idea); so as the most important factor (first) is simple for the groups of the Tjumen region, but the structure of the meanings of Europe is composed of West and vague idea.