Recruiting for the nation?
Homeland politics and returning diaspora in Germany and Armenia.

The concept of diaspora had a “successful carrier” in the last 15 years in social, political and academic life. Within these discourses the international migration of people from one nation state to another, from continent to continent as well as old ethnic communities and expatriate minorities have been conceptualized in terms of “diaspora”, thus creating a new set of relationships between the notions “diaspora and homeland” or centre and periphery. Much has been said about the history of diaspora, construction of diasporic identities in host societies, but less attention has been paid to the homeland interests in the maintaining ties with the diaspora and even creating new external group of co-ethnics somewhere abroad. Today we are witnessing a new process of fulfilment of the dream “to return home” supported by the nation state. In that sense the wish of the new Armenian nation state to organize their relations with the diaspora and to mobilize the diaspora for their purposes is not unique. What is distinctive for the Armenian case is that the homeland seized to be only a holy land, and diaspora as a metaphor. Instead the homeland became a nation state and started to construct the ideology of fixed geographical and cultural boundaries related to the limits of inclusionexclusion categories.
In this paper I reflect on the politics of in-gathering in Germany and on what happened with the returned diaspora in the “homeland”. Then I will look at the Armenian case trying to juxtapose the recent diasporic movement in Armenia with the German experience. One can ask, why compare such different nations with completely dissimilar cultural, economical and historical experiences? In fact, the national settings are very different in terms of historical forms and the scale of migration, but they are very similar to each other in terms of logics and cultural symbols of incorporation of ethnic migrants into the new nation-state, and in the production of frameworks for new transnational actors. Here I am particularly interested in how and to what extent modern nation-states conceptualize the idea of “recruiting” new members across borders and how they refer to the “classical” primordial notion of blood ties and ancestral heritage. On the other hand, how these new members actually challenge the very idea of the national identity and produce alternative transnational social fields.

Russian German returnees

Let me start with the politics of “recruiting” in Germany. The specific orders and practices which I refer to in this paper as the politics of recruiting can be understood as the implementation of a set of legal and cultural frameworks for regulated transfer of a group of people from one nation-state to another under the notion of a shared origin and collective memory. The aim of this politics is to revitalize the ethnic belonging of imagined co-ethnics for the pragmatic purposes of the nation-state and in doing so to get the diaspora to resettle to the modern territory of the homeland.
Until recently, each year more than 200,000 so-called ethnic Germans or Aussiedler entered Germany with special claims to German citizenship and belonging. According to the German government, the Aussiedler are the returning remnants of a German diaspora that reaches across Eastern Europe into Central Asia and China. More than 3 million Russian Germans resettled to Germany with the idea of “returning” to their historical homeland, Vaterland. The history of the German diaspora in Russia can be traced back to the second half of the 18th century, when the Russian government of Catherine the Great invited German farmers to colonize and cultivate free territories of the Russian Empire. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing economic upheaval many ethnic Germans turned to a distant “imagined” homeland with the hope of preserving or improving their living standards and of living among equals in a “historical homeland”. The social status of returnees Aussiedler enables adult members of the diasporic German group scattered in the territory of the former Soviet Union to gain automatic access to the exclusive German citizenship through application of the right for resettlement at the German embassy. Upon arrival Aussiedler receive from the German state relocation expenses, social benefits, financial support for renting an apartment, all the standard types of insurance and finally, as I have already mentioned, German citizenship. Aussiedler benefit from their diasporic status because they are seen as already being German and they have the right to become German in spite of the high cultural diversity among Russian speaking Germans. Moreover, compared to other migrant groups living in Germany, Aussielder can be identified as people with a relatively high social and economic position in spite of a lack of German knowledge and a regular job. In spite of an official repudiation of dual citizenship, the German government has developed specific regulations allowing Russian Germans to keep or regain Russian passports and even to receive a double pension from both sides.
Aussiedler are received in Germany according to the terms of the German Federal Law of Expellees and Refugees of 1953. The category of German repatriates was introduced after WWII with the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany. This law was conceived in order to regulate the political consequences of the Second World War and the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern and Central Europe (Romania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia). As a result, within the national discourses on identity, official programs and in national narratives, the highly emotional metaphors and images of “flight” and “expulsion” have been established. These symbols of flight and expulsion enabled Germans to see themselves from a very different perspective after the Second World War: not only as perpetrators, but also as genuine victims of the war. And this is the crucial moment in the positive role of the German diaspora in construction of the modern German national identity. The German narratives of suffering, which describe the fates of those who had been expelled and suffered under the communist regime, were successfully incorporated into the post-war German national identity. The victimized national Self has been displayed in hundreds of Heimatmuseum (museums of places of birth) and in numerous memorials to Eastern Prussians, Masurians, Suddetendeutsche or Schlesier. Such invented rituals regulated both social relationships and interactions between newcomers and “natives”. The ideological emphasis on the rapid and successful social integration of expellees into the new federal German society allowed people to forget the migratory background of a significant number of Germans.
Comparing this logic of incorporation with the contemporary German immigrants or Aussiedler from Russian and Kazakhstan I argue that the previous symbolism of suffering as a collective sign of ethnic solidarity has lost its meaning. Until 1996 confirmation of the German descent in a passport was all one needed for the successful application for relocation, but since 1996, following the introduction of a language test, the markers of practiced cultural belonging are the predominant criteria for the recognition of German-ness: such as the knowledge of the language, or the demonstration of ethnic and religious heritage (presence of the Bible, German cooking recipes, German songs and Christmas customs).
Formally, Aussiedler are still treated as German ethno-national returnees, but today they are signified through the pragmatic view of national demographics. They represent Russian-German immigrants as a reproductive force, as a “positive national good” with a considerable number of young people. Germany´s demographic struggle is defined by the “fears” of the growing imbalance in the population with a high percentage of elderly people and a low birth rate. Moreover, on the everyday level they are not accepted by the receiving society as Germans. Aussiedler are perceived as pure economic migrants and even as foreigners in their own Vaterland. The local Germans imply that the Aussiedler are actually Russians: they speak Russian, eat Russian food and dress Russian. Because Aussiedler, being expected to embody essential elements of German identity, in fact represent its absence, they undermine the concept of German national identity itself. It seems that Aussiedler consistently fail to confirm the “ethnic codes” and expected cultural repertoire for reproducing the homogeneous German national “kin community”, even though this had in fact been the central factor in legitimizing their return. The Aussiedlers’ German identity has been denied by the receiving society, thus producing strong feelings of alienation among repatriates. As a result, today newcomers are involved in reactivating ties with their previous “homelands” Russia and Kazakhstan. This finds its expression in transnational entrepreneurship, marriage patterns, modes of communication and media consumption. The growing transnationalization of the world enables people to organize their life between two or three states and to maintain social cultural and economic relations across borders. My main point in this context is that the diasporic category once embraced as an extension of the ethno-national “Self” is today, with the real “repatriation” of the diaspora, no longer able to embody the essential principle of national identity, that of cultural descent and blood ties. The recruited ethnic diaspora challenges the core of national identity in the sense that nation-states have to make the category of membership more flexible, bringing it to a transnational level. The way the returnees revitalize their ties with the previous homeland in Russia on the level of families, kin and egocentric networks is more alternative, in other words the transnational mode of constructing relations is characterized by open and flexible visions of collective identity and belonging.

Armenian case

In Armenia we do deal with a diametrical different situation than in Germany, namely with a not really returning diaspora. Whereas Armenia is suffering under large scale emigration, Germany confronts the influx of immigrants. Germany tries to stop the influx of repatriates and Armenia tries to make Armenia attractive for newcomers from the diaspora. However, in the period between 1993 and 2005 according to the official statistics about 750 repatriates from Iran, USA, Canada and Europe settled in Armenia.
The central point in understanding the distinctive experience of the Armenians relates mostly to the fact that Armenians have a very specific form of relationship between two poles: symbolic center and periphery. The Armenian diaspora was hardly associated with a periphery and Armenia as a Soviet republic was never perceived as the symbolic center by the old Armenian diaspora. There is no one term or magic word bearing official and intimate reference to the homeland among Armenians, like Falastin for Palestinians which stands for everything for all generations. It is known that for the first generation of the Armenian diaspora the homeland was associated with the memory of descent from a specific village, city or region in the former Ottoman Empire, Middle East or Caucasus. Hayastan is associated with Hayastantsy, the term which is largely contrasted with the identity of diasporic Armenians.
But Armenia like other nation-states faces the challenges of a globalized world with its growing transfer of ideas, money and people, in other words a new travelling culture across borders. Looking at the recently growing number of returnees from the western countries in Armenia, not only seasonal tourists in April and September, but those who settle there because of business, studying or volunteer work, shows that in Armenia something has radically changed, namely that Armenia is slowly becoming a new homeland for diasporans. Whereas 10 years ago the travelling culture was mostly shaped by symbolic transfer of some relics, such as the reburial of famous Armenians from abroad (like the case with Andranik), or bringing back a jar of soil from the West to the new homeland in Armenia, today we are dealing with real persons and materiality, which demands a rethinking the notion of the Armenian homeland and its legal reframing. Armenia is dealing with the increasing significance of the real interaction between the diaspora and the homeland, where Armenia is finally accepted as the homeland territory and means center, also among Western Armenians. For these people the homeland is no longer an abstract place of longing and nostalgic myth, but rather a social reality with often frustrating encounters and conflicts. One can say that there is a cultural and social gap between the locals and the returnees. What happens to the young Armenian diasporans who seeking a more direct experience of the homeland than second-hand sources, have settled in Yerevan? According to some estimates, many newcomers are outsiders to the local Armenian culture and they speak a different language. Let me give an example. The volunteers who organize their first trip to Armenia through the AVC Armenian Volunteer Corps are warned that when talking to a local Armenian in English or Armenian, diasporans have to realize that although they are using the same language, words like “democratic” or “clean” or “soon” may take on a different meaning. As with the experiences of Aussiedler in Germany, English speaking Armenians in Yerevan are not perceived by locals as “real” Armenians, but rather as Amerikatzy with their own world, social relations, expensive houses, cafes and who do not want to serve in the Armenian Army.
In that sense one can ask how really crucial the idea is, for the homeland and the diaspora, of sharing the same culture and pursuing the notion of the homeland as a cultural homeland? It is quite illusory to try to create one category of cultural norms and values shared by both diasporans and locals. Rather we should be careful with the cultivation of one identity, one past and one culture, even if these have to be formulated for the needs of the present. We live in the time of the growing transnationalization of social life and loyalty that enables people to manage their lives and identities between two or three nation-states without relying on the conception of the state. These bridges are based not only on the institutional level but mostly on family, kin and private ties. Some anthropologists claim that the diasporic communities relocated in new mobile spaces are now negotiating their positions in the setting of what is called “post-national orders”. In rethinking the notion of territorial and cultural boundedness this approach has revealed that the spaces of citizenship formation have changed from national to transnational ones. In the age of globalization the world is today organized by overlapping, permeable and multifarious modes of interaction and connectedness.

Paradoxically the expansion of global linkages and transnational practices results in outbursts of essentialist nationalism in both poles. The places of origin are re-essentializing their ethnic national identity and in order to achieve this they extend the cultural dimension of citizenship across borders. Too rigid definition of cultural identity within the national order can lead to inversion of diaspora. The internal diversity among the Armenians is unique; we should appreciate the different experiences and histories of the homeland and of the diaspora. This diversity can enrich the Armenian global culture and history. We should look not only at how Armenians preserved their culture in the diaspora, but also where and how as the diaspora Armenians contributed to their host societies, look at moving stories and the entangled moments of global history, which (re)connect Armenia with its diaspora and the whole world.

Tsypylma Darieva (Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany)