Abstract
The paper deals with the creation and development of legislation supporting compatriots living abroad. The attention is paid primarily to the region of Central Europe, but a wider European context is also taken into consideration.
Care about ethnically related compatriots is historically derived from the feelings of cross-border solidarity based originally upon common confession and later on common ethnicity. Individual stages of the history of the last two hundred years are tackled; attention is drawn to approaches taken by individual states and national communities to implement an active policy regarding expatriates and their dispersion.
The paper focuses on the constitutional-law development after 1989 and the origination of so-called compatriot laws. Their background should be seen as the understanding of the nation expressed in the basic law of a state in question.
Constitutions of most Central and East-European states understand the nation as a combination of language and culture, or they attempt to combine the principle of a political and cultural nation.