GIVING ETHNIC DIVERSITY ITS SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL MEANING – EXAMPLES FROM SLOVAKIA

Ethnic diversity represents one of the most accurate ways of exploring regional identity, with its temporal and spatial variations. In the methodological framework of emerging diversity studies, this paper approached the elementary forms of ethnic diversity change in regions of Slovakia in 1880 – 2011 using census data and simple, yet expressive and exact, diversification indices and intercensal change. The regions of Slovakia are shown in a broad time-space analysis, with data adapted to one regional structure. Although ethnic diversity is only a minor part of a superdiversity approach and, as such, is insufficient to express the identity of a region and its population, historical and spatial data can work to provide a useful overview for the broader social analysis of a region.