In the modern world, there are practically no completely ethnically homogeneous countries. According to statistics, there are only twelve percent. Residents of other states have to coexist in one way or another within a single territory. Naturally, in such conditions, peaceful life will not always take shape - ethnic conflicts often arise . Let us dwell on their characteristics, reasons and classification in more detail.
In conflict studies, there is no single conceptual approach to highlighting the causes of their occurrence. Interethnic conflicts are analyzed in terms of socio-structural changes in contacting ethnic groups, the problems of their inequality in prestige, status or reward.
There are concepts that focus on behavioral mechanisms related to fears for the fate of the nation — and not only for the loss of cultural heritage, but also for the use of resources and property.
As a result, several classifications have developed.
In accordance with the approach of G. Lapidus, we can distinguish:
1. Conflicts that occur at the interstate level.
2. Collisions arising within the country:
- conflicts involving indigenous minorities;
- counteractions provoked by newcomer communities;
- conflicts arising with the involvement of forcibly imported minorities;
- countermeasures arising as a result of a review of existing relations between the autonomous republic and the government of the state.
In addition, conflicts related to the presence of community violence in Central Asia are a popular group in the classification. They were brought by the researcher G. Lapidus into a separate category, since the leading role in them was played not by the ethnic, but by the economic factor.
According to the complete classification of J. Etinger, ethnic conflicts can be of the following types:
1. Territorial, which are closely related to the reunification of previously fragmented ethnic groups. Their source is a political (often armed) conflict between a movement that has the support of a neighboring state and a government in power.
2. Conflicts caused by the desire of a small ethnic group to exercise their right to create an independent state.
3. Confrontations related to the restoration of the rights of deported peoples to any territory.
4. A military clash based on claims on the territory (or part of it) of a neighboring state.
5. Interethnic conflicts arising as a result of arbitrary territorial changes in the USSR.
6. Clashes of economic interests that are veiled by national contradictions. In reality, such interethnic conflicts provoke the ruling political elites, who are unhappy with the share allocated to them in the national “pie”.
7. Counteractions based on facts of a historical nature, and which are caused by the traditions of a long struggle.
8. Interethnic conflicts in Europe that arose as a result of the long-term stay of deported peoples in the territory of another republic.
9. Opposition, in which, for certain disputes (about the state language, about religious differences), serious disagreements between ethnic communities are most often hidden.
Consequently, interethnic conflict is the result of both objective and subjective reasons. In such a situation, it is often the appearance of a conflicting position or interests of the parties on a problem or task, as well as regarding goals, methods or means of resolving them in specific circumstances.