Ethnic, national and local identities at Russia’s Baltic borders

Borders are areas where ethnic, national and local identities meet. Borders also have the capacity to divide people and whole populations into different geographical, political and economic spheres. Furthermore, changes in border lines and regimes affect deep changes on the everyday lives of local people. Such changes are visible in all border areas of the former Soviet Union. In the Baltic case, Estonia and Latvia are since 2004 member states of both the European Union and NATO, and the borders in question have become the EU’s new borders towards Russia and Russia’s new land borders facing NATO countries. What kinds of identifications develop in such a situation? Have ethnic identities become more salient? Is there any room for local or regional identities, across the state boundaries? Such questions are explored in this paper, based on the author’s recent and on-going ethnographic fieldwork in the Baltic border area