Meanings of Europe for ethnic minorities and majorities

What does Europe mean for Europeans, for many parts of Europe or places out-side Europe where there are social groups of European origin? The paper attempts to answer these questions through research carried out on fourteen samples of ethnic minorities and ma-jorities of Europeans (2798 interviews) living in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italians, Slovenes, Friulians), in the Serb region of Vojvodina (Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks), in the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv (Ukrainians, Russians, Belarussians, Jews), and in the Siberian region of Tjumen (Russians, Ukrainians, Caucasians, Tartars). Each sample was asked about its attitudes to Europe and the meanings of Europa. The main meanings (through attitudes) of Europe were: an area included between the Atlantic Ocean and the Urals, a Christian civilization, the European Union (EU), a common family, the West, the subjugation of 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 the difference between minorities and majorities. At the same level of macro-region also the structure of the meaning is very differ-ent. For example, the most important factor (Factor Analysis) in Friuli Venezia Giulia is very simple (the 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 from the Italian content (that is: Europe is overwhelming some peoples and a vague idea); 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 the West and a vague idea.