Regional Identity of the Population of the Nisa Euroregion

In the territory, called for working purposes the Nisa Euroregion, there live all together 1.5 mil of Czech, German and Polish citizens. Co-existence of people here was largely affected by the post-war compulsory transfer of Germans from the Czech and Polish area of the Euroregion and by new settlers coming. These people came from different socio-cultural environments and in due time formed their own regional community and identity. The research project is aiming to find out the processes of post-war constitution (change) of regional identity and mentality of people. It studied how the process of constituting and changing territorial communities was manifested in value orientation and essential features of national and regional identity of people in each country concerned. At the same time, the project was aimed to learn the changes happening in these areas as a consequence of transformation (democratic, free market economy) of national societies (generation comparison) and to establish chances and conditions for multi-cultural co-existence within the Euroregion and for developing the common socio-cultural features of cross-boarder communities. These objectives were to be met through a biographic method. The project followed up international comparative research. The objective of the project (in cooperation with German and Polish researchers) was to produce an international comparative study on the issues of biographical and regional identity of the Euroregion Nisa people.