Estonian Human Development Report

CHAPTER 4
Quality of Life and Integration
4.1. Introduction
The following chapter analyzes the problems related to integration
in Estonian society from the aspect of the quality of
life. The analysis is conducted by examining the level of life
satisfaction of ethnic minorities compared to other European
countries and focusing on specific problems by analyzing
two fields of activity – socio-political participation
and the labour market. As it appears from the following
analysis, the satisfaction among the indigenous population
and the ethnic minorities differs, which is a social problem
not only in Estonia but in several countries of “old Europe”.
Therefore, the Council of Europe Framework Convention
for the Protection of National Minorities (see Framework
Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and
Explanatory Report, http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitorings/minorities/1_AtGlance/PDF_Text_FCNM_et.pdf,
pp.
23–24), which establishes the general requirements for the
integration of ethnic minorities, places great importance on
the setting of goals to ensure that the members of society
belonging to ethnic minorities have opportunities equal to
the indigenous people for participating in public life and the
labour market. The opportunity for minorities to participate
in public life and the labour market in European countries
is guaranteed by very diverse legislative and administrative
measures. How these opportunities are realized depends on
the country’s policies, as well as, to a great extent, on the
people themselves, their activism and their will to realize
themselves in society. An examination of the current situation
in Estonia and the recollection of the social shock
that occurred during the so-called April Unrest prompt the
question that can be considered the central problem: are the
young people who have socialized during the two transition
decades into the “new Estonian society” more satisfied
and integrated than their parents and grandparents? Or are
new problems developing for the younger generation that
was born and has grown up in the Republic of Estonia upon
entering the Estonian labour market and public sphere?
Can a “third-generation problem” similar to the Western
European countries develop in Estonia, which could culminate
in protests by Russian young people?
4.2. Ethnic differentiations in
satisfaction evaluations: Estonia’s
distinctions in the European context
The following analysis continues the topic of the quality
of life and life satisfaction covered in Chapter 3 from
the aspect of ethnicity. The analysis, which was previously
based on percentage distributions, has been developed
further in this chapter (see Realo, Chapter 3), and the
importance of the factors comprising life satisfaction has
been compared with the help of relative statistical coefficients.
The analysis in this chapter confirms the previous
results indicating that the significant factors affecting the
formation of life satisfaction in Estonia involve the individual’s
age, citizenship, education, and material welfare.
This analysis shows that in the European context Estonia
is quite distinctive, because people’s satisfaction evaluations
are strongly related to their ethnic background and
citizenship – the 2006 European Social Survey data on 25
countries 18 indicated that both variables – ethnic affiliation
and citizenship – have a strong association with life
satisfaction (see Annex 4.2.1) 19 .
The following subchapter focuses primarily on the analysis
of life satisfaction by ethnic background. Although,
based on Annex 4.2.1, citizenship and ethnic self-determination
are equally important factors in ascertaining life
satisfaction, the association with citizenship can be greatly
explained by ethnic affiliation – i.e. the citizens of Russia
and other countries express their lower life satisfaction primarily
when they define themselves as an ethnic minority.
18
In order to make the survey findings more representative, the data are usually weighted. However, the deficiency of the European
Social Survey is that in the case of two countries – Latvia and Romania – the data weights were not given. When analyzing Estonia,
it is important to make comparisons with other post-socialist countries. Therefore, in this analysis data from all 25 of the countries
covered by 2006 Estonian Social Survey have been used. In the case of weighted and non-weighted data, there are differences of a few
percent in the satisfaction assessments. The trustworthiness of the analysis is confirmed by the fact that the statistical importance of
the association coefficient and the strength of the coefficient remain the same.
19
In Western countries, the ethnic factor is also important in Denmark, although the ethnic differences there are smaller than in
Estonia (The Cramer’s V value, which expresses the association with life satisfaction, is 0.153, in Estonia it is 0.209.)
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