Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Date of Graduation

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Department of Political Science

Advisor(s)

John W. Hulsey

John Scherpereel

Yi Edward Yang

Abstract

Macedonia is a multiethnic country that gained independence peacefully from Yugoslavia. Tensions between the Albanian minority (which represents approximately a quarter of the population) and Macedonians led to an eight-month insurgency in 2001 started by a group of Albanian insurgents. The conclusion of the Ohrid Framework Agreement, designed to improve minority rights, ended the conflict. Besides ethnic tension, Macedonia has faced other challenges like grand corruption, unemployment, brain drain, and more. This study examines demographic and socio-economic variables affecting the subjective well-being (SWB) of eight well-educated and well-connected Albanians from Macedonia. Through a qualitative (i.e. Skype interviews) and quantitative (i.e. surveys) analysis, it can be concluded that the leading factors (i.e. unemployment, corruption, institutional trust, and membership in voluntary organizations) affecting their SWB are also those that also impact Macedonia’s general population. Although the participants had high interpersonal trust and high ethnic identity, the role of ethnicity’s impact on SWB is inconclusive.

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