Conclusion

This special issue has dealt with an important challenge confronting not only the academic field active on minority issues, but also the ways in which minority policies, laws and international frameworks need to be (re)considered. An urgent challenge has emerged through ‘new migration’ and the rapidly increasing ethnic diversity, a new reality in most European nationstates. Again, we are standing at a breaking point, another milestone in the evolution of minority studies and how to consider the right of the increasing number of different minorities. The collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by the Yugoslav wars, each represented two important milestones, and are the forerunners to much of the existing academic, political and legal developments, knowledge and experiences with minority studies. Yet the current phenomenon—the ‘new migration’—seems to be representing a third milestone. It has rapidly made its way into minority studies, however with less understanding of what it really means and what the greater implications may be. Many things need to be rethought and newly understood, not least who and what constitutes a ‘minority’ today, but also how to equip national and European-level institutions, how to reconsider the term ‘minority rights’, and who should have access to special rights or enjoy special protection. These are only a few of the questions arising from contemporary developments, and as seen in the Introduction to this