Identity from a conceptual and empirical perspective: a case study of the multiply identifications of Slovak diaspora living in Serbia

ABSTRACT The current challenges stemming from migration, globalism, and the highly interconnected world, underline the importance of identities, not only for individuals but for social and political life too. For the past few decades, identity has become a significant concept in social sciences and an important political issue in many contemporary societies. Today collective identities seem to form a central concept in both theoretical and empirical studies of social movements, political mobilization and democratic legitimacy. This paper examines identity in multilevel contexts, from both conceptual and empirical perspectives. The paper seeks to critically analyse how the term ‘identity’ is used, defined and conceptualized in the social sciences, the national laws of Slovakia and Serbia; how it is built and constructed in Slovakia and how it is performed on the ground in diaspora. A mixed research design was applied, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. The study concludes that scholars today agree on what identity is in the social sciences, however academic, state and ordinary usages and understandings of the concept of identity vary in different contexts. Further, the study argues that Slovak national identity and other collective identities, together with Slovak-ness, are perceived in different ways at a state level and among ordinary people in the Slovak diaspora. Studying identity construction and identity performance on different levels, such as the state level and on the ground, both at home and in diaspora, can contribute to our understanding of the complexity of the identity concept and identification processes.