One of the 18 regions of France, Corsica has a unique status among others - a territorial community. Located on an island in the Mediterranean Sea, it received this status on July 30, 1982, in a result of a protracted violent conflict between radical Corsican nationalists (represented by the terrorist movement of the National Liberation Front of Corsica) and the central French government. The received autonomy, however, did not satisfy the nationalists, and the struggle for independence from France continued in decades to follow. Economically, it is the poorest and most heavily subsidized French region. This is because tourism is the backbone of the economy of autonomy, and the remaining industries are poorly developed.
The titular group is Corsicans. Language is the key basis for distinguishing a titular ethnic group. At the same time, the Corsican language is close to French, they both belong to the Romance languages of the Indo-European language family. About 30% of the region's population speak Corsican. The ethnolinguistic situation in the region is associated with the growing public interest in the study of the Corsican language, which recently received an official regional status. While teaching the Corsican is compulsory, there exist different models of teaching.
The current situation on the island is characterized by ethnopolitical instability. Despite the fact that in 2011 the Front of the National Movement of Corsica announced the cessation of terrorist activities, the conflict shifted to the institutional terrain. Supporters of the expanded autonomy and independence of Corsica, the ethnic-regional party Pè a Corsica, won the regional parliamentary elections in 2015. In recent years, however, the conflict in the region has been modified: it increasingly takes an anti-Muslim fragrance in connection with the influx of Muslim immigrants to the island. This forces Corsican nationalists to shift their attention from confronting the central government to fighting the migration.
