Where Ethnoregionalism and Nationalism Meet

Abstract

Three decades ago, political science and legal studies took almost no interest in a small region in Central Europe called Upper Silesia. Today, the scholarly literature in many disciplines is growing due, among other things, to the references to the situation of Silesians made by the Advisory Committee of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in the Fourth Opinion on Poland. However, most of those studies do not include analysis of the most important political context: ethnopolitics in the Republic of Poland, its past and present. In this paper, we aim to explore the dynamic relations between Poles and Silesians and the consequences of those relations on public law. We also analyse the rise of the ethnoregionalist movement in Upper Silesia. Then, we analyse ethnopolitics in Poland in relation to Upper Silesia, especially in the context of Polish national identity.