HISTORICAL MEMORY IN PRESERVING ETHNO-RELIGIOUS IDENTITY: FOREIGN EXPERIENCE IN MANAGING MIGRATION AND CULTURAL SECURITY

Abstract

Purpose: The object of this paper is to develop the concept of historical memory as a resource for preserving the ethnoreligious identity and cultural security. Design/methodology/approach: The methodological apparatus of research is based on civilizational and constructivist approaches that allow us to understand the specifics and role of identity in the modern world, as well as the concept of civilizational confrontation in modern migration processes. As a part of the study, we used the concept of "cultural trauma" to understand the influence of historical events on modern relations between Muslims and Europeans. Result: It was found that the low level of Muslim migrants' integration into Western society is determined by social-psychological and cultural-historical factors. The social-psychological factor is associated with an individual's need for group identity, which creates a zone of comfort and security. Muslim migrants' integration into European society is difficult because their ethnoreligious identity is exacerbated in conditions of migration. The cultural-historical factor is associated with discrepancies in civilizational models (Islamic and Western), the relations between them being conflict-ridden for a long period of time. Application: This suggests that historical memory has a significant impact on the relations of modern Islamic and European cultures. Historical memory, preserving the plots of eternal rivalry and confrontation of Islamic and Western civilizations, affects the process of their rapprochement: firstly because the injuries of past are very difficult to get rid of; secondly, memory, as a collective past or as knowledge of this past, is the basis of social identity. Originality/value: The study proves that the negative stereotypes prevailing in people's historical memory determine their perception of the present and the future. Consolidation of the "image of the enemy" in historical memory promotes the spread of Islamophobia in European society and radical Islamism in the Muslim world. The anti-Western ideology of radical Islamism undermines the historically present process of cultural interaction in the development of Western and Islamic civilizations.