Saturday, October 31th 9:00 – 10:30

Session Room: Loft 1

1) Alexandra Liebich, Queen’s University
Nation-building Beyond the State: Comparing the 'virtual nationalism' of Hungary and Russia

Kin-state nationalism refers to the efforts by a state to engage with its co-ethnics or ethnic “kin” abroad, in the interest of maintaining, reproducing, or even constructing national ties with them. Although this phenomenon is neither new nor unique to Europe, the regions of Central & Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union provide fertile ground for the emergence of this kind of behaviour. Also known as “virtual” or “trans-sovereign” nationalism, kin-state nationalism is both a response and a challenge to the realities of border fixity within the current international order.

What drives states to engage with their kin abroad? What are the specific triggers of this behavior, and how can they be explained? Is it solely “the ethnic bond” (as much of the current literature suggests) or are there other factors we should be taking into account to understand the full story behind this phenomenon? The presentation will aim to answer these questions, through a comparative study of Hungary and Russia – two fruitful examples of kin-states “in action”. Both of these states experienced repeated and dramatic border changes over the twentieth century, resulting in large external kin populations and competing narratives of nation- and state-building. Both have pursued kin-state politics since the beginning of the 1990s, but with varying strategies of engagement and varying levels of commitment toward their co-ethnics abroad. I will characterize the activism of these two kin-states, focusing on the various tools that each has employed (e.g. benefit laws, citizenship policies, treaty negotiations, irredentist claims) and how this activism has evolved in each case from 1990 to the present. I will then outline the similarities and differences in the two cases, and explain whether the nationalism of these kin-states is driven largely by ethnicity and/or by strategic interests.

2) Demet Islambay and Banu Cingoz Ulu, Middle East Technical University
Armenians in Southeastern Turkey: Multiple Identities and Representations of Citizenship

Citizenship has been hotly debated across many disciplines such as political science and sociology. The daily practices and experiences of belonging have changed tremendously within the legal, political, social and cultural spheres. The practices of citizenship which has been defined by constitution and laws, are affected by migration, displacement and wars. Moreover, citizenship includes or excludes people with respect to place, time, ethnicity, and religion. Armenians have been subjected to assimilation policies, maltreatment and discrimination and they have had unsecured and unsafe lives in their lands more than a hundred year. This is why we selected them as the research target. In this context, we explore the question of how Armenians perceive and place themselves as citizens with regards to their multiple identities, freedom of belief and geography they live in. In addition, how they practice their citizenship in their daily lives is also explored. Based on a qualitative method with a social psychological stance, face-to-face interviews were conducted with Armenians from the southeastern region of Turkey, around April 24, 2015, during the 100th commemoration ceremonies of the 1915 events. The interviews reveal how Armenians’ perceptions of identities, state, constitution, native language, freedom of belief, and geographies are reflected in their citizenship representations and their narratives of their civic practices.

3) Nives Mazur Kumric, University of Liege, Belgium
Construing the Concept of Citizenship in a Contested Nation-State: Reflections on Kosovo

Since the inception of the Republic of Kosovo in February 2008, the contouring of its statehood has been predominantly affected by four interwoven factors: the partial recognition of its sovereignty, perplexed inter-ethnic relations, profound international interference and parallel jurisdictions with the Republic of Serbia. The efforts put forth to conceptualise the meaning and scope of Kosovo citizenship in such a sensitive socio-political environment have proved particularly challenging. This paper aims to provide an analytical framework for determining essential elements of Kosovo citizenship, with particular emphasis on its practical and ideological implications for the multicultural, yet ethnically divided society. This is done through an assessment of the key nation-constituting legal norms as well as the deep-rooted ethnic tensions sparked by conflicting perceptions of Kosovo's statehood by the majority (Kosovo Albanian) and minority (Kosovo Serbian) population. By formal definition, Kosovo is an indivisible state of all citizens, however, polarised majority-minority interests have impinged the constitutionally guaranteed civic spirit of the entity, thereby threatening not only national, but also wider international security and integrity. With the purpose of determining and delineating labyrinthine intersections of a contested nation-state, citizenship, national minorities and security, the paper offers a comprehensive theoretical and empirical analysis of the respective quadrilateral nexus.