Sammendrag
Ethnicity has become a key, but contested analytical concept used to distinguish human groups in the wider social sciences and everyday life. It tends to refer to the classification of people and boundaries between groups that are based on shared ideas or myths of a common origin, descent and history. Ethnicity is often associated with minority (cultural, racial, religious) groups that are different than a majority, especially in everyday speech. However, it has become increasingly used to describe majority (e.g. ethnic Dutch or ethnic Norwegian) as well as minority members (e.g. immigrants) in contemporary multicultural societies.
Ethnicity is also, importantly, a relational concept about demarcations and involves the construction of similarities and differences between two or more groups in social interaction. An ethnic group is thus always defined in relation to some other group(s). This process involves how both members and non-members recognize (cultural) distinctions between groups, and further implies that they possess a certain degree of contact with each other.
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