Lay Typologies of Ethnic Groups: Cross-Ethnic Comparison

This study examines the lay representation of the high school students about ethnic groups and their relationships with each other. Information about how students classify individuals by ethnicity will help to understand which groups they perceive like their own, and which they do not, and how they draw the line between "we" and "the others." The perception of the ethnic groups is particularly important in a multicultural environment, which is a characteristic of the contemporary Russian high schools. In the Russian case, the situation is compounded by the fact that it is not just a multicultural environment where representatives of different ethnic groups live together for a long time. It is an environment where the students of the non-titular ethnic groups are also migrants that are characterized by different cultural and socio-economic parameters. The key research question is: how do the high school students from different ethnic groups construct, understand and make sense of boundaries between ethnicities?