2017 Vol. 9 №2

The European migration crisis has divided the population of Germany along the lines of the country’s migration policy and the attitude to immigrants. The antiimmigrant sentiment, supported by the rhetoric of the extreme right-wing parties and the criticism of current policies, have been growing in the society. This article reviews theoretical approaches to the study of public attitude to migrants proceeding from the effect that immigration has on the socioeconomic development of the host society. The authors propose a mechanism for analysing the political life of a society to develop viable approaches to managing the migration shock and mitigating its effect. The article considers the attitudes of the German population to immigration and immigrants in terms of the transformation of electoral preferences under the influence of the migration crisis. Recent data on the electoral standing of the Alternative for Germany party are used to develop a typology of states, based on the level of support for this party from the local population and on other measures of the migration situation and socioeconomic development. The authors identify northeastern regions with a high probability of popular support for the extreme right views on the migration crisis and northern and southwestern states that are most and least susceptible to the extreme right influence.

Being an area of development of Russia’s northwest border regions, tourism requires the extending of border regions’ appeal. A unique resource of the northwestern border regions are the current and historical state borders and border facilities. Successful international experience of creating and developing tourist attractions and destinations using the unique geographical position of sites and territories may help to unlock the potential of Russia’s north-western border regions. This article interprets the tourism resource of borders — which often remains overlooked and unfulfilled — as an opportunity for tourism and recreation development in the border regions of Russia’s North-West. The author summarises international practices of using the potential of state borders as a resource and analyses the creation of tourist attractions and destinations in the Nordic countries. The article explores the degree the state border potential is developed as a tourism resource in Russia’s North-West. The author analyses opportunities and gives recommendations for a better use of this potential by the tourist industry to increase the contribution of tourism to regional economies.

Globalisation is creating a global culinary space where culinary traditions of different countries interact and compete. The author sets out to explore characteristic features of the culinary space of nine Baltic States as part of the global culinary space. The author uses empirical data on the number of restaurants serving different national cuisines in the main cities of the region. The Baltic culinary space incorporates the world’s leading cuisines (Italian, Japanese, Chinese, etc.) as well as the local cuisines of the BSR countries. The world’s leading cuisines prove to be more influential in the region than the local ones. Some countries of the Baltic Sea region (Russia, Poland, Sweden, Latvia, and Denmark) have culinary sovereignty, since their residents prefer national cuisines. In some other countries of the region (Finland, Estonia, and Lithuania), the public favours the world’s leading cuisines — Italian, Japanese and American — over the local ones. The non-capital Baltic cities of Poland and Germany, as well as St. Petersburg, display a greater sense of culinary patriotism than Warsaw, Berlin, and Moscow respectively. This article attempts to explore the features of the Baltic culinary space. The author considers the environmental and socio- historical factors key determinants of the countries’ cuisines.