This volume presents articles on the modern Armenian diaspora in post-socialist Europe, including the Baltic States, Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. Specialists from the fields of cultural anthropology, sociology, and area studies offer their insights into current developments of Armenian communities which, although located within common post-socialist time-space, differ from one another significantly in terms of their historical background, identity politics, and socio-cultural characteristics.

Die Ausgabe beschäftigt sich mit Menschen aus der früheren Sowjetunion in der Diaspora, ihren Migrationserfahrungen, ihrem täglichen Leben und ihren Sinngebungsprozessen. Untersucht werden die komplexen Geschichten, Gegenwartsrealitäten und Zukunftserwartungen, die alle durch verschiedene räumlich-zeitliche Ordnungen und ihre Wechselbeziehungen geprägt sind. Der Blick richtet sich dabei auf die produktiven Synergien zwischen Konzepten wie 'Diaspora' und 'Postsozialismus', die durch Migrationsprozesse begünstigt werden. Wie werden neue Verbindungen geknüpft und Trennungen überwunden? Wie werden vergangene Erfahrungen in postmigrantischen Kontexten neu eingebunden und rekonfiguriert? Durch die Zusammenführung verschiedener Perspektiven über unterschiedliche örtliche und zeitliche Zusammenhänge hinweg und die Anwendung verschiedener Methoden und disziplinärer Zugänge wird eine umfassende Analyse der Komplexität und der Mehrdeutigkeiten sowohl individueller Narrative als auch gesellschaftlicher Dynamiken ermöglicht.

Armenia receives one of the highest levels of international aid per capita in the Western world, and among the highest of the post-Soviet states. This ethnographic study, based on new primary research, looks at aid in the South Caucasus, and its role in Armenia's relationship with Europe. In particular, Skedsmo argues that the Aarhus Convention, which entitles citizens of Europe to access information and participation in decision-making in environmental matters has allowed Armenian citizens to adapt and control the direction of their country's political future in various ways – whether through protest activism or legal challenges. A new examination of aid and development, and the structures these create, Europe and Armenia will be an essential case study for scholars of development, for regional specialists in the post-soviet area (especially South Caucasus), social anthropologists, students of post socialism and development (postcolonialism). In addition, the book will be of interest for practitioners and European policy-makers, transnational organizations and others involved in development policies and projects in the region.

The development of post-socialist cities has become a major field of study among critical theorists from across the social sciences and humanities. Originally constructed under the dictates of central planners and designed to serve the demands of command economies, post-socialist urban centers currently develop at the nexus of varied and often competing economic, cultural, and political forces. Among these, nationalist aspirations, previously simmering beneath the official rhetoric of communist fraternity and veneer of architectural conformity, have emerged as dominant factors shaping the urban landscape. This book explores this burgeoning field of research through detailed cases studies relating to the cultural politics of architecture, urban planning, and identity in the post-socialist cities of Eurasia. This book was published as a special issue of Nationalities Papers.

What remains and becomes Armenian in a historically informed moment of increased mobility? Taking an anthropological approach with ethnographic data collected from Turkey and Armenia over the course of almost 10 years, this book focuses on themes of migration, human movement, community-making and the conditions that facilitate mobility and place-making. Looking at case studies ranging from bus and taxi drivers travelling between Armenia and Turkey to undocumented migrants deported from Turkey and now living in Armenian cities and Armenian residents of Istanbul, the author provides a vivid description of contemporary non-Muslim life in Turkey through the lives of Armenian Turkish citizens and undocumented migrants from Armenia, as well as Greek, Jewish and Kurdish communities. The author provides both a critical account of how historical and more contemporary forms of violence and structural discrimination have targeted Armenians in the country, and also focuses on the re-articulations and the appropriation of a sense of belonging by these and other minority communities.

In April 2018, Armenia experienced a remarkable popular uprising leading to the resignation of Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan and his replacement by protest leader Nikol Pashinyan. Evoking Czechoslovakia's similarly peaceful overthrow of communism 30 years previously, the uprising came to be known as Armenia's 'Velvet Revolution': a broad-based movement calling for clean government, democracy and economic reform. This volume examines how a popular protest movement, showcasing civil disobedience as a mass strategy for the first time in the post-Soviet space, overcame these unpromising circumstances. Situating the events in Armenia in their national, regional and global contexts, different contributions evaluate the causes driving Armenia's unexpected democratic turn, the reasons for regime vulnerability and the factors mediating a non-violent outcome. Drawing on comparative perspectives with democratic transitions across the world, this book will be essential reading for those interested in the regime dynamics, social movements and contested politics of contemporary Eurasia, as well as policy-makers and practitioners in the fields of democracy assistance and human rights in an increasingly multipolar world.

This contributed volume focuses on diasporans, their characteristics, networks, resources and activities in relation to international business and entrepreneurship. It presents an overview of diaspora concepts from an economic perspective, and analyzes the global-economic and societal effects and mechanisms, revealing both positive and negative aspects of diaspora activities. Providing insights into the socio-cultural influences, it discusses diaspora entrepreneurship and international business, the respective organisational models, investments and business types. Lastly it offers an assessment of managing diaspora resources and policymaking. This book was created by an interdisciplinary team of editors, co-authors and reviewers including historians, sociologists, psychologists, linguists and ethnologists, as well as experts in public policy, international business, marketing and entrepreneurship. This unique team (many of the authors are themselves diasporans with an extensive understanding of their topic) provides the first global academic platform on the subject, combining the latest empirical evidence from developing, emerging, transitional and developed countries with various combinations of diaspora flows that to date have received little attention.

An acclaimed historian examines postwar migration's fundamental role in shaping modern Europe Migration is perhaps the most pressing issue of our time, and it has completely decentered European politics in recent years. But as we consider the current refugee crisis, acclaimed historian Peter Gatrell reminds us that the history of Europe has always been one of people on the move. The end of World War II left Europe in a state of confusion with many Europeans virtually stateless. Later, as former colonial states gained national independence, colonists and their supporters migrated to often-unwelcoming metropoles. The collapse of communism in 1989 marked another fundamental turning point. Gatrell places migration at the center of post-war European history, and the aspirations of migrants themselves at the center of the story of migration. This is an urgent history that will reshape our understanding of modern Europe.

Ties to the homeland have always been a central focus of global diaspora and migration studies. How and why do the descendants of migrants maintain their attachment to the ancestral homeland? To what extent do emotional ties bind second and later generations of migrants to that place? Tsypylma Darieva examines various actors, channels and sites of transnational Armenian engagement that generate new pathways of diasporic ›roots‹ mobility. Drawing on long-term ethnographic observations in Armenia and in the USA, she examines transnational flows of people, money and ideas to show the social and political significance that roots mobility acquires when the mythical ›homeland‹ becomes a real place.

This book explores urban dynamics in Europe fifteen years after the fall of communism. The ‘urban mosaic’ of the title expresses the complexity and diversity of the processes and spatial outcomes in post-socialist cities. Emerging urban phenomena are illustrated with case studies, focusing on historical themes, cultural issues and the socialist legacy. Among the cities analyzed are Kazan, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Prague, Komarno, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, Sofia and Tirana.