Democratization and nation-building through language rights during the process of Europeanization: Romania, Bulgaria and North Macedonia

Upon the ethnic conflicts within the territories of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the region of Western Balkans has encountered a sea of change that includes the growing importance of language rights and formation of new nations and states. Given the relation between languages and nations, it is apparent that the nation-building processes in the newly-independent Western Balkan states hold a prominent linguistic dimension due to their multi-ethnic demographic structures. Particularly when the states applied for full membership of the European Union and got involved in a comprehensively transformative Europeanization process, language rights adopted by the European Union made an appearance, which was more influential than it had been during any other enlargement rounds. From this point of view, the aim of this thesis is to reveal the role of language rights within the context of nation-building in the Western Balkans. In line with this objective, two enlargement rounds of the European Union will be evaluated comparatively. On one hand, as the two member states joining the European Union with 2007 Balkan enlargement, Bulgaria and Romania will be analyzed in terms of their language policies during their accession process between 1998-2006; on the other hand, as a candidate state of the current Western Balkan enlargement, North Macedonia will be assessed in regards to the language rights that are already in practice or conditioned to be in practice during its accession process between 2006-2020. Based on the findings from the enlargement rounds, the changing role of language rights will be brought to light within the frame of nation-building theory.