Estonian Human Development Report

nificantly less social capital and interest in politics. The
situation improves only slightly as the generations become
younger – the social capital of young Russian speakers is
higher than that of their parents and grandparents and
they experience discrimination less often. At the same
time, compared to the average minority youth groups in
Europe, Russian-speaking young people in Estonia feel
rebuffed more often and they have weaker social networks
and political interests.
Therefore it can be said that in Estonia there is sufficiently
fertile ground for interethnic tensions and conflicts
in the form of general dissatisfaction. On the imaginary
“map” of European majority-minority relations,
Estonia is quite a tense area, and the change in generations
will not significantly ease the situation.
Taking jobs into consideration, it is important that
guarantees be provided for minorities to have equal opportunities
for work-related self-realization and the achievement
of a sense of material security. The given analysis
shows that young Russians with Estonian citizenship and
good Estonian language skills have higher salary expectations
than their Estonian contemporaries and are more
demanding regarding the correlation between work and
education, while they are considerably more pessimistic in
their assessment of the sufficiency of their skills for finding
acceptable jobs. The supposition that young Russian
speakers entertain a hope of emigrating to the West is also
not valid – only every fifth Russian-speaking young person
believes that he or she would find a suitable job abroad.
On the other hand, the actual position of this group in the
labour market indicates that, in the case of similar educational
levels and other equivalent preconditions, they lag
behind Estonians in labour market competition – the risk
of unemployment for non-Estonians has consistently been
greater than for Estonians, and, compared to Estonians,
there is a noticeable lag in their achieving employment in
top positions in the job market. Therefore potential dissatisfaction
with the opportunities in the labour market is
brewing among the younger generation.
In general, it is possible to say that the ethnic split in
Estonia will not decrease with the onset of the younger
generation. The young people who have been socialized
in the Republic of Estonia are somewhat more integrated
than their parents and grandparents – their social capital
is higher, a large number are politically more confident
and trusting, and they are generally more satisfied
with life. At the same time, problems can be foreseen in
the labour market – the expectations of the young people
are higher than their opportunities. Political participation
and support among these young people is also relatively
low, and they perceive discrimination more often
References
1. Estonian Integration Plan 2008–2013, http://www.rahvastikuminister.ee/public/L_imumiskava_2008_2013_VV_10_04_
08_nr_172.pdf
than minority youth in other European countries. Therefore
it is probable that a “third-generation problem” may
also develop in Estonia where the young people feel disappointed
and alienated and a protest identity starts to
develop based thereon.
Since these problems are not unique to Estonia, greater
attention should be paid to the measures that have been
implemented by other European Union member states
(especially the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, and
the new member states of Hungary and Romania) (see
Kallas, Kaldur 2008) in order to involve minorities and
immigrant groups in public life and to guarantee them
equal opportunities in their working lives. On the one
hand, several countries have implemented state supervision
and training in order to guarantee career opportunities
in public service and equal salary conditions for the
representatives of minorities. The United Kingdom particularly
stands out for its consistent monitoring of equal
opportunities and the implementation of special measures
to guarantee equal opportunities in the labour market,
and based on the aforementioned data, we see that satisfaction
assessments are also considerably higher there.
On the other hand, the involvement of the representatives
of minorities in the decision-making process at both the
national and local government levels is legislatively guaranteed
in the majority of European countries through
election codes, cultural autonomy or consultative minority
committees that operate in the parliaments. Unfortunately,
Estonia does not have such an effective system for
involving minorities that is guaranteed by law.
The year 2008 brought hope for positive developments
in Estonia’s minority policies as well – the new National
Integration Plan for 2008-2013 was approved, which for the
first time has clearly set a course to abolish differences in
the labour market and to systematically involve representatives
of the Russian-speaking minority in public life (see
Integration Plan 2008). At the end of the year, the Riigikogu
finally passed the long-awaited Equality of Treatment Act,
which enables cases of discrimination in public life and in
the labour market to be dealt with on more concrete terms.
At the end of the year, the first steps were also taken for the
creation of a common information field through television
by initiating more Russian-language TV programming on
ETV2. Since the above analysis pointed out a strong association
between life satisfaction and the assessments of the
performance of the state, one can only hope that these steps
will help to reduce the alienation between the Russian-language
minority and the Estonian state that deepened after
the crisis in April 2007 and thereby the assessment of the
representatives of minorities regarding their quality of life
will also improve.
2. Kallas, K., Kaldur, K. (2008). “Integratsioonipoliitika ja meetmed:
Heade praktikate uuring Sweden, Denmark ja The United
Kingdom näitel. Integration Foundation, Institute of Baltic
Studies Tallinn 2008, http://www.meis.ee/est/raamatukogu/
?view=view&ID=175
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