Diaspora Identity, Past Traumas, and Generational Change

The last decades have seen a gradual turn toward constructivist explanations of diaspora identity, as “imagined transnational communities” (Redclift Reference Redclift2017, 504). This turn follows the broader scholarship on “imagined communities” (Anderson Reference Anderson1983) and the understanding of national, ethnic, and other “large groups” as constructed—in other words, held together, experienced, and performed through selectively chosen narratives and constantly (re)negotiated referents of identity that distinguish group membership against otherness (Volkan Reference Volkan1988). Diasporas are dispersed communities that share space with a host society but are simultaneously oriented toward a distant homeland (Brubaker Reference Brubaker2005), and this makes the elements that constitute diaspora identity and its boundary particularly important. Diasporic belonging involves continuous construction of identity in both space and time, as its members constantly negotiate belonging with homeland and host states (Cavoukian Reference Cavoukian2013; Tölölyan Reference Tölölyan, Smith and Stares2007) and relate to the diasporic community at large and to the distant homeland through imagining (Axel Reference Axel2002; Tsagarousianou Reference Tsagarousianou2004; Walle Reference Walle2013).

Diasporic identity can therefore be described as a fluid rather than fixed self-understanding that is constructed, reproduced, and transmitted across generations and spaces (Abramson Reference Abramson2017). As a process rather than a bounded entity, diasporas unite around collective and (re)negotiated narratives of sameness and the homeland (Mavroudi Reference Mavroudi2007). Mavroudi puts forward the notion of diaspora as a flexible process in which displaced people negotiate visions of community and homeland that, for political and cultural reasons, are represented as foundational to diasporic identity. Shared historical memories, cultural mediums, and symbols are central to this process, as “different persons must be able to nourish their imagination from the same source” (Boltanski Reference Boltanski1999, 50). Diasporic identity is “always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth” (Hall Reference Hall and Rutherford1990, 226), as its coherent and continuous biography is rooted in narratives that establish the spatio-temporal parameters of the community’s existence (Berenskoetter Reference Berenskoetter2014). Historical narratives and collective memories underlie diasporic notions of loss or the regaining of homeland, return, and more generally, belonging. Diasporas become seen as (re)created through shared imagination and collective memory (Alexander Reference Alexander2013; Ziemer Reference Ziemer2010), including through the revival of shared historical experience in imagining their homeland (Wilcock Reference Wilcock2018).

Collective memory, however, is distinct from the understanding of history as a more accurate, albeit elite-produced, factology of the past (see Macdonald Reference Macdonald2013). Since the introduction of collective memory as a concept by Halbwachs (Reference Halbwachs1950), in order to denote people’s identification with historical events as if they were personal experiences and the role of social groups in creating solidarity through remembering, the selective and subjective aspects of collective memory have been emphasized. Volkan (Reference Volkan1988) suggests that collective memories consist of “chosen glories” and “chosen traumas” that are shared, selected, and subjective representations of historical events and figures, which maintain the community’s sense of self. They become central to the group’s identity and unite its members through feelings of pride, humiliation, or mourning. The interpretation and remembering of subsequent events involve relating them to these collectively shared referents from the past. Collective memories therefore help communities unite through an “imprecise process of imagination” (Campbell Reference Campbell1998, 91).

For diasporas, the past is widely seen as defining their present as many of them trace their dispersion and sense of collective identity to traumatic events and narratives of loss. For the Armenian diaspora, the genocide of 1915 is widely recognized as the defining and foundational narrative (Kasbarian Reference Kasbarian2018; Laycock Reference Laycock2016) that explains its coming into being, as well as its trajectory in time and space. And yet, remembrance of the chosen trauma is a past of an “ahistorical kind” (Redclift Reference Redclift2017) as it becomes reworked for the present and can gain new meanings (Soysal Reference Soysal2000). Macdonald (Reference Macdonald2013) aptly describes this as “past presencing,” or how the past is present or is made present through experience, representation, performance, and imagining. “Past presencing” suggests that identities are rooted not simply in sharing a connection to a common history and remembering past events, but in the continuous and even implicit re-purposing and re-making of their meaning in the present. In the case of the Armenian diaspora and its relationship with traumatic memories of the past, “past presencing” can be observed in the modern-day mentality of victimhood (Ziemer Reference Ziemer2010) and survival against ever-present threats (Laycock Reference Laycock2016; Panossian Reference Panossian2002), which, as we shall demonstrate, permeate diasporic conceptions of identity, evaluation of subsequent events, and everyday behaviors.

“Past presencing” can also be observed in diaspora consolidation in a host state, as well as in its mobilization toward the homeland. Mavroudi (Reference Mavroudi2018) defines diaspora mobilization as helping the homeland in material ways (for example, through activism or acts of charity); however, multiple layers of diaspora identity and mobilization need to be recognized (Redclift Reference Redclift2017). Diaspora mobilization is often connected to narratives of (in)security and crises in the homeland; although not all such crises automatically lead to diaspora mobilization, which is often hampered by uncertainty over how to mobilize and issues of trust and corruption in the homeland (Koinova Reference Koinova2018; Mavroudi Reference Mavroudi2018). Pattie (Reference Pattie1999) suggests that the memory of the genocide continues to create a sense of responsibility to the Armenian community and therefore unites it through shared experience of loss made meaningful in the present. Besides being bound by shared historical experience, Wilcock (Reference Wilcock2018, 373) also interprets the impact of the past on diasporas’ present as a sense of duty arising from the “need to atone for leaving.”

Collective memory, as well as past presencing, largely depends on transgenerational transmission, or the passing on of memories and their meaning from one generation to the next. This way, trauma and loss can become a source of identity even for those who did not directly experience it (LaCapra Reference LaCapra2001), as they can form “indirect knowledge” of past events (Hoffman Reference Hoffman2004). Hirsch describes the result of this transmission as postmemory—experiences transmitted to the “‘generation after’ … by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up … so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right” (Hirsch Reference Hirsch2012, 5). Postmemory achieves the integration of collective memories with personal family histories, as traumatic events that become further distant in time are relived at both the communal and individual/family levels. Both Hirsch (Reference Hirsch2012) and Laycock (Reference Laycock2016), however, caution that new generations risk becoming overwhelmed and dominated by inherited memories, with limited capacity to produce their own identity story.

Indeed, new generations highlight diasporas’ uneasy relationship with change. Transgenerational transmission is largely focused on keeping the past present, so that foundational narratives of identity, such as chosen traumas and narratives of loss, continue to unite and mobilize the diasporic community. Diaspora organizations, homeland governments, and parents often seek to maintain these foundational narratives as the way to transmit and maintain diasporic identity for the next generations and cultivate attachments to homeland (see Abramson Reference Abramson2017; Darieva Reference Darieva2018; Mahieu Reference Mahieu2015). Yet, this task is complicated by other factors, such as the dynamic relationships between diasporas and homeland, diasporas and host states, and the changing mediums through which they relate. These changing environments contribute to concerns about the new generations failing to form postmemory and becoming disconnected from the memories and cultural roots that are central to diaspora identity. For example, Pattie (Reference Pattie1999, 85) documented concern among the older generation of the Armenian diaspora about the “loss” of diasporic youth to “different cultural worlds,” whereby the youth become selective, future-oriented, and lacking “cultural heirs” in the community. Kasbarian (Reference Kasbarian2018) similarly came across anxiety among Armenian diaspora leaders about the weakening role of the genocide as defining diasporic identity, particularly for younger generations. Brinkerhoff (Reference Brinkerhoff2012) observed that by moving beyond physical communities and structures into digital spaces, diasporic youth may more freely debate, challenge, and renegotiate key identity narratives, and as a result develop new ties rather than nourish old ones (also see Hiller and Franz Reference Hiller and Franz2004).

And yet, as Maier (Reference Maier1993) notes, communities need both to remember and to forget, otherwise they can become preoccupied with narratives of loss—the stage when the political life of a community is focused on sacralizing memory and pursing public recognition for its sufferings. The latter is particularly problematic, as the community risks becoming synonymous with victimhood in the eyes of others. Perception of subsequent events and interactions becomes confined to the experience of loss, even if this creates long-term problems. While mobilizing the community around shared trauma, preoccupation with loss can prevent it from moving on, not just politically, but in everyday self-definitions. To enable transformation, identity needs to be reoriented back to the future (Muldoon Reference Muldoon2017).

In this study, we focus on questions of how the past is made present, and how the new generationFootnote ⁴ of the Armenian diaspora reconcile the postmemory of events they did not witness with the desire to move on from the traumas of the past. Aspects of change can already be observed in how young women in the Armenian diaspora challenge conservative cultural values (Ziemer Reference Ziemer2010) and how other, non-Armenian diasporas become engaged in parallel, as opposed to shared, remembering and future-making (Wilcock Reference Wilcock2018). These questions can shed new light on diasporas’ capacity for change, and the role of new generations and memory in the process.

Genocide, Victimhood, and Moving On

The genocide of 1915 and the following years played a key role in the emergence of the Armenian diaspora, but is still not recognized by Turkey or most other countries. Genocide denial serves as a constant reminder of past collective trauma: as Ziemer notes, “being Armenian thereafter also meant being a survivor of the genocide and a member of a community of sufferers, whose suffering continues to be denied by the perpetrators and their allies” (2010, 294). As the “final stage of genocide” (Kasbarian Reference Kasbarian2018), denial gives the event a new meaning of a loss, the mourning of which is not yet complete. Memories of these events, followed by the ongoing controversies of recognitions and denials of the genocide by other countries,Footnote ⁵ are transmitted through generations and continue to play a crucial role in the construction of Armenian identity: “The genocide is a special topic, all our history is split into before and after. Diaspora appeared after the genocide” (Arsen, 28, Russia).

The unifying impact of the genocide through family histories, attachment to the homeland, and the desire for international recognition was felt strongly among the interviewees in Russia, France, and the UK. As another participant put it, “It is difficult not to feel Armenian because all these events directly shaped your own biography” (Vigen, 28, Russia). Rouzane from France further emphasizes that the legacy of the genocide has differentiated Armenian identity from simply national, religious, or ethnic unity and given it special significance:

The ongoing controversies about genocide recognition further contributed to how young diaspora Armenians saw the Armenian state and the diaspora. Armenia was portrayed in the interviews as a small nation surrounded by hostile powers and genocide recognition—as a bargaining chip in the global power politics. As René from France describes,

For René, and for many other participants, genocide denial is not determined by lack of evidence, but by external political interests. Genocide recognition was seen by some as a cause to be actively supported by the community as a whole, and not only the state, due to the existential significance of the genocide for the diaspora and the view that the state alone could not achieve recognition. A number of participants felt strongly about the need for recognition and were aware of or took part in various recognition campaigns. Therefore, while creating a disempowered vision of the Armenian state, the issue of genocide recognition mobilizes and empowers young people today in the diaspora community through what they see as a collective struggle for social and political justice, and not only the experience of loss.

However, it is problematic to limit Armenian diaspora identity to shared memories of past violence or to assume that these memories serve as equally powerful and unquestioned referents of identity for all members of the diaspora community. We suggest that the interrelationship between memories of the genocide and diaspora identity could be more multilayered and complex. The young Armenians we interviewed clearly knew and revered the past but expressed different attitudes to how the genocide should be remembered and spoken about, and they disagreed on the role it should play in the life and identity of the diaspora and its future generations. These attitudes ranged from actively campaigning for international genocide recognition and defining identity through the history of loss to suggestions that victimhood should not be the source of identity, as it confines Armenian-ness to the single unattractive global image of “those poor people who had been massacred” (Rouzane, 31, France). Instead, Armenian culture, knowledge of the Armenian language, or personal qualities (“Armenian warmth,” hospitality, national pride) were most frequently suggested as key alternative identity markers. Even within history, alternative, nontraumatic events could be found: as René noted, “They talk a lot about the Armenia of the 20th century, with the genocide, the USSR and the war against Azerbaijan, which is still unresolved today. But Armenians are also a people with a 3000-year-old history” (René, 33, France).

Armenian youth from all three locations expressed criticism about how the genocide is typically seen as identity-founding and suggested it was time to “move on” and define Armenian identity differently. For younger diaspora Armenians in particular, genocide remembrance is growing increasingly performative—responding to a certain obligation from older members of their community to take part in traditional commemoration activities, which “will not change anything.” Some, like Alice in France, recall resisting the stereotypical perception of Armenians and feeling the need for alternative unifying narratives:

Alice’s vision of the need for a redefined relationship between Armenian identity and the genocide was closely echoed by Anahid:

For interviewees with children, the dilemma of moving on meant not just redefining themselves, but the challenge of passing cultural identity on to the next generation without passing on the pain:

The young people we interviewed were usually cautious in expressing the idea of moving on and included reservations that people need to “talk about” and “recognize” the genocide. There was no uniform agreement on this among their peers, let alone older generations in their families. However, suggestions about moving on from the identity-defining role of the genocide or reluctance to pass on the painful aspects of their history to their own children emerged at least in passing in a considerable number of interviews, and were understood by several participants as representing a changing attitude in the diaspora to the role of the genocide in Armenian identity. As the genocide becomes more distant and less personal for new generations, its role as an identity-founding narrative may be tested. The consequences of the genocide, however, have already become an inherent part in the evaluation of other, more recent events in Armenia’s history and diasporic behaviors in the present. The genocide may therefore have a further-reaching, lasting, underlying impact on the perceptions of Armenia’s present, as well as its future.

The Karabakh Conflict and Diasporic Identity

Memories of the genocide are closely intertwined with those of the more recent Karabakh war of the 1990s between Armenia and Azerbaijan and subsequent escalations of violence on the frontline (notably including the Four Day War, April 1–5, 2016). Karabakh remains effectively under Armenian control (it is a self-proclaimed independent state, unrecognized by the international community), and each side periodically accuses the other of violating the ceasefire, keeping the crisis permanently on the regional political agenda. Three points of connection between the genocide and the Karabakh conflict strongly emerge from the interviews. First, the genocide and the Karabakh war share the same symbolic adversary: many of our interviewees regarded Azeris as Turks, and Azerbaijan as Turkey’s satellite state, directly blaming Turkey for the conflict and connecting the enemy in the Karabakh war to the genocide perpetrator. Azerbaijan and Turkey have close cultural and linguistic ties, and Turkey has supported Azerbaijan in the Karabakh dispute and has at times made demands on the status of Karabakh in negotiations to normalize relations with Armenia, leading Armenians to view this as the continuation of its anti-Armenian policies. Second, both events remain unresolved, with the ongoing struggle for the international recognition of the genocide and the volatility of the ceasefire in Karabakh. History—and unresolved history in particular, in which conflict, family history of emigration, and loss of homeland are bound together—becomes an important element of Armenian diaspora identity. Third, some of the interviewees explained specific attachment to Karabakh and the need to protect the Armenian victory there as a symbolic fight for survival and historical justice, which has been denied for too long. They noted that the importance of Karabakh to Armenians is directly connected to the genocide and represents a preoccupation with the loss of human life, land, and culture associated with the nation: “Armenians have lost so much land, and so many people, and Karabakh brings that back. Armenians feel that they are right in this, and I feel that too. So, it is important, it’s about justice” (Arman, 23, UK).

And yet, despite the temporal proximity of the war and the unresolved status of Karabakh, for many of the diaspora youth, the conflict seemed more distant and less significant as a unifying factor, compared to the genocide. It had less personal influence for many, and the interviewees who felt particularly strongly about the conflict were the ones who still had relatives in Armenia and Karabakh or knew friends who had gone to fight as volunteers. British and French Armenians in particular also noted that major Western media devoted little attention to the region, making it difficult to access news about the conflict.Footnote ⁶ Karabakh became a distant, invisible war with a clear past but uncertain present. The four-day escalation of April 2016 revived conversations about Karabakh, particularly online discussions among younger Armenians, some of whom considered possible ways to help their homeland at this time and mobilize as a community or knew others who thought of leaving for Armenia to support the military. But when speaking about the conflict and its unresolved status more generally, most were relatively dispassionate and conveyed uncertainty about what should be done.

While clearly accusing Azerbaijan and Turkey for starting the war, some of the participants blamed the unresolved status of the conflict on Armenia’s own state policies. In doing so, they drew a distinction between the courage and historical victimhood of the Armenian people and the ineffectiveness of the government. The existence of the independent Armenian state is an important factor in making the experience of the unresolved Karabakh conflict different from the genocide: in stark contrast to the genocide, where the Armenian community could campaign for genocide recognition as a clear goal while state capabilities were limited, the interviewees no longer saw themselves or community initiatives as capable of securing the status of Karabakh. As Seda from the UK noted,

For Seda, the diaspora community is both disempowered and unable to suggest effective solutions to the conflict from a distance. Similarly, Rafael from France sees a limited role for the diaspora in resolving the status of Karabakh, suggesting that community resources would be spent more effectively on campaigning for genocide recognition:

For both Seda and Rafael, as for many other participants, resolving the Karabakh conflict was seen as the responsibility of the state and as a political problem, with little room for Armenian diaspora initiatives. The state, however, was mostly criticized for not prioritizing people’s security in conflict negotiations and for not being hardline or decisive enough. Moreover, interviewees often approached Karabakh as part of a set of problems facing the Armenian government (such as corruption), and their critical or oppositional attitudes to state policies contributed to a certain sense of political disunity with the homeland (see Wilmers and Chernobrov Reference Wilmers and Chernobrov2019):

This vision, according to René, was not shared by state Armenians: while the diaspora was investing in the Armenian state and joining the struggle to restore their homeland, the locals were thinking of leaving. This makes René feel conflicted, as diasporic community mobilization in the face of the escalation appeared to be at odds with the (in)action and priorities of the state. The Karabakh conflict thus serves as an element of Armenia’s present that provides a mobilizing patriotic focal point for the diasporic community, and at the same time brings to the surface disillusionment with the state.

To conclude, the Karabakh conflict, although less commonly acknowledged by our interviewees as crucial to their sense of Armenian identity, closely interacts with memories of the genocide and contributes to their vision of homeland and mobilization as a community. Not least, Armenian control of Karabakh following the war is made important by the genocide, as a symbolic victory—a part of the homeland which has been won back. As an unresolved conflict, its memories and recent escalations contribute to narratives of survival. And yet, it also strengthens a sense of political disunity between the diaspora and the state, uncertainty about what should be done, and a feeling of community disempowerment, thus making it less unequivocal as a mobilizing historical referent of Armenian diasporic identity.

Genocide, Karabakh, and Everyday Past Presencing

Besides the openly acknowledged influence of the past on the sense of collective identity and the relationship with the Armenian state, memories of the genocide and the Karabakh war had a more (un)conscious influence, embedded in the participants’ everyday self-understandings and behaviors. The self/other categories contained in these memories were projected onto friendships, social networks, families, and overall integration in British, French, or Russian societies. Many of our participants, including some second- and third-generation migrants, admitted that many or most of their friends were also Armenian, and for some, assimilation into the host society meant the loss of Armenian culture—a symbolic failure to survive, to preserve the Armenian identity. In this sense, unresolved histories both united diasporic community members from within and contributed to the continuous and everyday reaffirmation of identity boundaries by excluding others:

The experience of loss draws young diasporic Armenians apart from their non-Armenian peers at a personal, and not only collective, level. Vazgen, born in the UK to an Armenian family who had fled the genocide to Syria and then moved to the UK in the late 1970s, comments:

Souren, Vazgen, and other participants noted the strong influence of the past on their behavior in the present, giving a new meaning—symbolic survival—to maintaining cultural, linguistic, or historical links with other Armenians. They vividly conjured the mass killing of the genocide as a factor in everyday interactions. Notions of survival, extermination, war, and killing emerged in how the participants spoke about their everyday lives, beyond remembering the genocide and the Karabakh war as historical events. For them, these were “histories that have stayed open” (Ahmed Reference Ahmed2004, 59) that still influence individual behaviors and, not least, are experienced as the diaspora’s expectation that new generations would “guard” Armenian identity and ensure its survival. For example, Marina from the UK spoke of feeling social and family pressure to preserve Armenian identity and cultural heritage through marriage:

The idea of women as “keepers of the culture” (Billson Reference Billson1995) suggests an expectation that identity, memory, and culture are preserved within the family. Marina, however, sees this as an outdated viewpoint, feeling that new generations should move on from this preoccupation with loss. But besides family, the memories of the genocide and the Karabakh war also influenced friendship circles, particularly for those whose families had emigrated because of the war. For example, almost none of the young interviewees in Russia had Turkish or Azerbaijani friends, and there seemed to be peer pressure not to be friends with the “enemy”: “When I became friends with other Armenians, we do not like Azeris…. Now at university I know an Armenian student who is friends with a student from Azerbaijan, and for me that’s a bit of a shock, because I haven’t been friends [with Azeris] …” (Mariam, 27, Russia). For another participant, the influence on friendships was even more extensive and affected people from other ethnic backgrounds too, depending on their attitude or involvement in the war: “I try to mix with Russian guys more, even try to avoid people from the Caucasus as some of them fought for Azerbaijan in the war” (Arsen, 28, Russia). It is worth noting the difference between the Russian and the French/British contexts here. Many of the French or British interviewees would not regularly encounter an Azeri, whereas in Moscow it would be normal for Armenians and Azeris, as Caucasians with similar migration patterns, to come across each other. Among older generations, there have been cases of good relations between the two communities in Moscow, including joint businesses. While avoiding Azeris in Moscow may be conscious postwar-generation behavior among the diaspora youth (some of whose families left Armenia in the wake of the 1990s Karabakh war), there was little evidence in the interviewees’ responses in France and the UK to suggest active avoidance of Turks in social encounters in the West, but rather, more general attitudes toward the nation.

Interviews with young diasporic Armenians therefore reveal evidence of past presencing. The meaning and memories of the Karabakh war are overshadowed by the memories and consequences of the genocide, but both these events influence the participants’ everyday behaviors beyond mere remembering. Such implicit past presencing, worked into friendships, family expectations, sense of purpose, and perception of subsequent events, is often at odds with the explicit, if cautious, desire to leave the traumatic past behind and redefine diasporic identity. This contradiction is further exposed in looking at the mediums through which this past is transmitted, relived, and renegotiated, to which we now turn.

Postmemory and New Ways of Relating to Past and Present

For our participants, both the genocide and the Karabakh war of the 1990s are events that they did not witness directly. Growing up after or at the time when Armenia gained independence, their understanding of these events largely depends on transgenerational transmission, or the passing on of memories and myths through family, community, and cultural mediums, and the formation of postmemory (Hirsch Reference Hirsch2012). Even the recent escalations of the Karabakh conflict were witnessed by the diaspora youth at a distance, although some remain more connected to the region than others. Nevertheless, the Karabakh war and the genocide played significant, though different, roles in how diaspora youth described their identity, related to the distant homeland, and experienced the present. Importantly, they described several avenues of how these postmemories became important for their sense of identity.

The transmission of collective memories among Armenians is typically linked to the “retelling of genocide” from generation to generation in the family (Ziemer Reference Ziemer2010), including the retelling of personal, family histories. For many diaspora Armenians, their families’ emigration is directly connected to the events of 1915 or to the 1990s Karabakh war.Footnote ⁷ The genocide or the Karabakh war are often the reason for their being there, outside of the homeland in the first place, making the memory of these events foundational to the notions of identity and “home” (Brah Reference Brah1996). Reflecting back on their own childhood, our interviewees often spoke about learning about the genocide and the Karabakh war from immediate family. However, and particularly with Karabakh, there were occasions when older generations never spoke to them directly about these traumatic events. When transmission did happen, some of it was unintentional (overhearing parents talking about the war) or without yet realizing the full meaning of it: “When I was small, perhaps 4–5 years old, my dad says he took me to a protest. I sat on his shoulders and cried: “Karabakh [phrase in Armenian],” which means “Karabakh is ours, Karabakh is Armenian” (Adrien, 32, France).

But while trans-generational transmission within the family is clearly very important, we also observed additional ways in which young Armenians engaged with their homeland’s past and present not available to previous generations: through Armenian societies and diaspora groups, through visits to Armenia (organized by schools, diaspora organizations, and sponsors), and through social media.

University was often the time when interviewees became more independent from their families, and the place where they became involved with Armenian societies and groups. Some spoke of (re)discovering Armenian history and identity, often beyond the attachments and memories shared within the family. As Vigen from Russia recounts, “My study at Moscow State [University] was the first time I encountered a normal, organized Armenian society. I saw all their announcements, and I started thinking that, I don’t know, I wanted to … be of help to the [Armenian] community on the whole, and I still feel that way” (Vigen, 28, Russia). Often coinciding with their time at high school or University, a surprising number of our interviewees in all three countries visited Armenia through various programs run by diaspora organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and the Armenian Ministry of Diaspora, who sponsored student exchanges and offered volunteer opportunities. Homeland tourism has been successfully employed by multiple homeland governments and diaspora structures in order to cultivate diasporic attachments (Abramson Reference Abramson2017). In the Armenian case, the post-independence period has seen the emergence of a variant of this phenomenon entailing assistance and exchange programs with the local population run independently of the state (Darieva Reference Darieva2018). For most of our interviewees, even if they had been to Armenia with their family before the sponsored visit, this type of visit was a new experience, which enabled a different kind of identity connection to be established:

While the sponsored visit enabled Mariam to connect with Armenia and other Armenians abroad in a more significant way, another interviewee described how the postmemories of the genocide and the practices of commemoration, previously transmitted to him in his family and the diaspora community in France, came alive and gained new personal significance upon his first visit to Yerevan:

The experiences of Mariam and Magar, also typical of other participants, demonstrate that reconnection of young diaspora Armenians with their homeland and transmission of collective memories also happen outside of the traditional confines of family and local diaspora community. These additional avenues for remembering and relating to the homeland’s past and present offered powerful new perceptions of identity as they linked the postmemories of genocide, war, and loss to places and communities that the young people could witness in person and in the present. Sponsored homeland visits and the coming of age that often coincided with a revived interest in the homeland show how the new generations begin to write their own identity stories independently from their families, yet how postmemories are relived in them.

Social media provides further opportunities for the young generation to develop and become active agents in their identity stories, interweaving the genocide and Karabakh into their understanding of themselves or, on the contrary, moving away from the established interpretations of events in the homeland. The connection of diasporic youth to events in the homeland and to each other is becoming increasingly digital, facilitated by news websites and social media. During the escalation of the Karabakh conflict in April 2016, many participants were kept informed through social media posts, including some who were not actively seeking information, but were simply subscribed to an Armenian group on Facebook: “All the Armenian diaspora have already liked an Armenian page, and on all of these pages you have articles, and the constant, not propaganda, but the constant news that was coming through, I mean it’s hard to ignore” (Anahid, 21, France). Social media brought geographically distant events close, while the plurivocal and interactive nature of online discussions facilitated both mobilization and contestation in relation to the homeland’s past and present.

For some, social media can become a space for activism—for online battles to affirm social and historical justice from a distance. In such cases, awareness of the plurality of perspectives on the conflict reported online was seen to motivate a desire to join in promoting a particular position on the virtual battlefield over postmemory. For example, Moscow participant Arsen (28) recounts taking part in online truth wars surrounding the Karabakh conflict through “an analytical group on a social network where I fight against the distortion of facts.” While the group provides Arsen with an opportunity to engage, his experience online also leaves him feeling frustrated with the Armenian community, as he later complains that many Armenians online are indifferent because they live outside of Armenia and distance themselves from its problems. In this way, digital platforms can empower youth in diaspora to take an active role in present-day causes linked to transmitted memories, but they can also bring out differences or tensions within the community.

The proximity and immediacy of events brought up by social media can also contain the reassuring promise of transparency in the conflict. René from France, for example, felt that the instant nature of contemporary media communications meant that they functioned as a means of global accountability and a deterrent against new large-scale violence against the Armenian community: “Today, in the era of communication and information, nothing can happen anymore without people being aware of it. And I think today, at least in Armenia, there can no longer be a hidden war or a massacre that is concealed” (René, 33, France). From this perspective, the daily witnessed reality of low-intensity suffering represented by the Karabakh conflict is juxtaposed with the unaccounted-for mass crime of the genocide, firmly located in the past. Social media here is understood to create a new role for diaspora Armenians as ever-present witnesses to potential violence and keepers of the nation and its past through their online presence.

On the other hand, social media has provided young diasporic Armenians with a space to contest, if not move away from, certain interpretations of the past and present. For example, Marina from the UK describes feeling disgusted by the mass nationalism of other Armenians on social media during the April 2016 escalation in Karabakh:

Although not all participants shared Marina’s attitude to escalations in Karabakh, the majority of young people interviewed voiced explicit concerns about bias and unreliability of news they accessed about events in the region. As Rafael (24) from France put it, “It’s really a shame because it’s very hard to have reliable information on [the Karabakh conflict].” Several participants made an active effort to seek out varied online sources or to cross-check news in order to be better informed.

The desire to gain a balanced assessment of events often overshadowed any personal emotions concerning the significance of the territory to the Armenian community among those without close personal ties to Karabakh. Awareness of different perspectives on the conflict encountered online left some participants hesitant to voice a clear position. This ambivalent approach to the conflict based on experience of it primarily as a media phenomenon was seen by some as a generationally distinct aspect of diaspora identity, particularly among the young Armenians in the UK and France:

Thus, while homeland visits have helped many of our participants revive postmemories and experience the significance of the past in new ways, digital media has led diasporic youth to engage with the Karabakh conflict and other events in their homeland in more ambivalent ways. On the one hand, digital media make distant events present and empower diasporas as online witnesses of potential (in)justice. On the other, the new generation can come to question uncritical, nationalist, or one-sided accounts of events, the actions of the Armenian state, and the Armenian community’s acceptance and reproduction of narratives about its traumatic past. The latter has potential to disrupt the long-term viability of these narratives as shared referents of diasporic identity in the future.