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German Diaspora

German Diaspora. A significant portion of ethnic Germans had lived and some still live in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the RF and Central Asia.

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German Diaspora

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  1. German Diaspora • A significant portion of ethnic Germans had lived and some still live in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the RF and Central Asia. • Territorial and border changes between the two world wars intensified the tensions between the German state, ethnic nation and their divergence. • Contested belonging opened the field for diaspora politics and homeland migration.

  2. German Diaspora • After the Second World War, most of the ethnic Germans were forced to leave their settlement areas in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland and Romania. • Forced migration from ‘45 on did not affect all Germans in Central and Eastern Europe. The remaining German diaspora’s return migration started in 50s and continues until today.

  3. German Diaspora • FRG considered itself a successor state of Nazi Germany so assumed responsibility for ethnic Germans in the East, particularly those suffering from discrimination legitimized as retaliation for collaboration with Nazi Germany. • In 1953 ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union also included in the definition as Germans and admitted to apply for admission to West Germany.

  4. German Diaspora • Between 1950 and late 80s, the rate of ethnic immigration depended on East-West relations. During the Cold War migration flows were regulated by bilateral agreements regarding the numbers of ethnic German immigrants or Aussiedler. • The situation changed fundamentally with the end of the Cold War, when foreign and international relations began to lose their impact on this type of migration.

  5. German Diaspora • Before 1989 the migration process was explained and interpreted within the framework of competition between two political and ideological systems. • Ethnic German immigration, as well as migration from East to West Germany, had distinctive political connotations and understood as individual decisions in favor of liberal democracy and market economy.

  6. German Diaspora • Since 1990, the great number of ethnic German flows made the recognition and admission of them more difficult. • As a result of these legal changes, ethnic Germans living in the successor states of the Soviet Union are almost the only ones still eligible for guaranteed admission into Germany. • The number of Aussiedler admitted annually was limited to 100,000 as of 2000.

  7. German Diaspora • Ethnic Germans in the Soviet successor states were never assimilated totally due to two reason. • One was religion and second Soviet nationalities policy which officially classified citizens according to their ethnic background, noting ethnicity as a category in passports and other documents. So the Soviet administration itself sustained the notion of a formal ethnic German identity.

  8. German Diaspora • After the collapse of the USSR and the fall of communism, the legal and social status of ethnic Germans underwent important changes in their home countries. • The new freedom of movement, the right to emigrate or leave the country, prior to 1989 it was very difficult. • Also ethnic Germans are able to keep their property in the host countries. • These two led to a growing number of migration of ethnic Germans after the Cold War.

  9. German Diaspora • However upon their return to the “homeland” many faced the challenges of integration just like labor migrants. • They realized the mainstream German society perceives them as different and label them as Polish-Germans, Russian-Germans etc. • These led to the isolation and ghettoization of return migrants according to their host country origin.

  10. German Diaspora • The social, economic and demographic profile of ethnic German immigrants differs from that of native-born Germans. • The skills of ethnic German immigrants, even their diplomas recognized, did not match the requirements of German labor market therefore unemployment grew. • Some of the German public hold ethnic Germans along with other immigrant groups responsible for a variety of domestic problems, “scapegoating them”

  11. German Diaspora • German migrants organized themselves into political pressure groups called compatriots’ associations and usually voted for the right. • They confronted with problems similar to those of the labor migrants and sometimes they had clashes with these migrants as a result of competing for limited resources.

  12. German Diaspora • The return migration of ethnic Germans led to a domestic debate at home. Some supported the migration on the basis that it is the responsibility of Germany to protect its diaspora and the opposite perspective seen this type of migration as privileging ethnicity and exclusivist. • A result of this debate was the partial revision of the prevailing iussanguinis principle that makes descent the key to citizenship.

  13. German Diaspora • The ethnocultural, differentalist understanding of nationhood in Germany is embodied and expressed in a definition of citizenship that is open to ethnic German migrants yet closed to non-German immigrants. • Germany defined itself until very recently as a state of and for its people, the German people. This construction is the basis for inclusion of ethnic Germans and ethnic return migration.

  14. Chinese Diaspora • The Chinese diaspora is said to have its own successful "culture of capitalism.” • Diasporas are not just an economic resource for home and host countries, but are a symbolic resource in the production of cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and localism. • On the basis of Chinese diaspora in Thailand, this article shows how diaspora both constructs and deconstructs the seemingly opposing forces of nationalism and cosmopolitanism.

  15. Chinese Diaspora • Diasporas are not simply an "ethnic problem" that states need to solve through policies of assimilation or multi-culturalism. • The relations between national identity and diasporas are key to the construction and deconstruction of the seemingly opposite ideologies of nationalism and Cosmopolitanism.

  16. Chinese Diaspora • One need to look in different places for world politics, shifting away from state actors to transnational non-state actors, from geopolitics and international political economy (IPE) to economic culture, and from law and institutions as the foundations of international society to the less formal organizations of diasporic public spheres.

  17. Chinese Diaspora • There is a dynamic interaction between Chinese, Thai, and Sino-Thai identity construction, and the mutual production of cosmopolitan and national politics. • Whether the "Chinese identity" has been assimilated into Thai culture or not. • Diasporic Chinese are studied as an "ethnic problem" in the new states of postcolonial South-East Asia; similar to many Jewish communities in Europe, diasporic Chinese have been criticized as a pariah entrepreneur group that profited from European imperial regimes.

  18. Chinese Diaspora • Critical studies of diaspora challenge any natural linkage between nation and state by arguing that cosmopolitan ethnic communities should be defined by neither countries of origin nor host countries. • Nonini and Ong, for example, argue that diasporic Chinese have their own "third culture" that is neither purely Chinese nor essentially Thai, but mobile.

  19. Chinese Diaspora • Diasporas are a key element in the construction of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, not through an appeal to shared norms, but in the tension between norms and difference, self and Other. • borders of territory and identity are negotiated in the social relations of identity and difference

  20. Chinese Diaspora • Rationalist theories are generally suspicious of cultural arguments; they claim that "identities and norms are either derivative of material capabilities or are deployed by autonomous actors for instrumental reasons." • Hence, culture and norms enter the fray of international politics as variables in the rational calculation of strategic culture. This severely limits the impact of culture on our understanding of IR. • Rather than looking at culture and identity as stable "things,“ one should see identity as the product of negotiated relations.

  21. Chinese Diaspora • Sociological constructivists have broadened the agenda from national security and national interest to non-state actors and nonmilitary issues. • They chart how transnational networks, coalitions, nongovernmental organizations, and social movements are "makers and managers of meaning" in guiding the norms of world politics

  22. Chinese Diaspora • This extension of sociological constructivism to address transnational social movements is very helpful for the analysis of the politics of cosmopolitanism and diaspora. • If one accepts that norms are not merely produced by hegemonic states, one needs "to know how these new international norm structures of social purpose are constructed, maintained, and transformed."

  23. Chinese Diaspora • To answer this question, Callahan argues that one needs to understand how the self-identity of nationalism depends not just on shared norms, but also on the exclusion of Others such as diasporic groups.

  24. Chinese Diaspora • How communities are formed by excluding difference: security depends on insecurities. • Instead of discovering a coherent national culture that could easily be essentialized by rationalists as a discrete "substance,"-a variable that affects state policy-this approach highlights how identity and difference mutually constitute each other.

  25. Chinese Diaspora • The nation and the diaspora are not separate autonomous "substances" with core identities; rather, Chinese nationalism and diaspora take on meaning in relation to each other. • Indeed, the concepts of "nationalism" and "overseas Chinese" both appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, this was not a coincidence: nationalism and cosmopolitanism produced each other in tension.

  26. Chinese Diaspora • Since the 1990s, nationalism has once again become a major topic in Chinese politics, with many security studies analysts searching for the guiding norms of Chinese civilization. • One needs to understand Chinese foreign policy, for example, not just according to the economic analysis of the Chinese state as a rational actor, but according to exotic culture and history. • In both academic and popular culture within China itself, the rise of nationalism has like-wise been accompanied by a rediscovery of China's glorious 5,000-year civilization.

  27. Chinese Diaspora • Never forget National Humiliation: The invasion of the imperialist powers and the domestic reactionary ruling class's corrupt stupidity together created the roots of this catastrophe. • One also needs to consider how diasporic identity is produced in relation to the nation-state. • The PRC has labored to see 'Chineseness' as an essential identity tied to its state. The relation of overseas identity and domestic nationalism is shown in the creation of the term for overseas Chinese, hua-qiao. Though Chinese have been traveling abroad for millennia, the creation of a single term to name this group is quite recent, taking form at the same time that nationalism gained currency in China.

  28. Chinese Diaspora • The Chinese state is trying to not only lure overseas Chinese investment into the PRC, but also to reeducate the diaspora in National Humiliation history. Official National Humiliation texts are increasingly co-published in Hong Kong in traditional Chinese characters for overseas distribution. • The 25 million diasporic Chinese constitute the third largest economy in the world. Overseas Chinese are therefore characteristically figured as a financial resource for the Chinese nationalist project. • PRC and Taiwan still struggle for the loyalty of overseas Chinese as part of their transnational, national reunification strategies.

  29. Chinese Diaspora • The national shame is not just about the loss of the Chinese body politic where imperialist powers divided up the "sacred territory," but of the loss of many Chinese bodies. • Diasporic Chinese are therefore not simply a financial resource for China. The dynamic of diasporic persecution and National Humiliation is used as a symbolic resource for producing Chinese national identity. • Hence, overseas Chinese not only network for economic gain in a mobile "third culture," but for social and political projects as well, to produce a transnational form of nationalism.

  30. Chinese Diaspora • Nationalism in Thailand has a time-honored tradition of using diasporic Chinese as the Other against which the 'Thainess' is defined. • Overseas Chinese have been a key element in the formation of Thai nationalism. • While Chinese nationals banded together with the diaspora to fight against Western imperialism in the Century of National Humiliation, in Thailand, the Chinese have been used as a symbolic resource in national identity construction in a negative way: the "essential outsider“ against whom a national self is constructed.

  31. Chinese Diaspora • Most studies of overseas Chinese identity overlook this negative use of the diaspora by highlighting how Thailand has been accommodating to diasporic Chinese as fellow Buddhists-at least when compared with harsher regimes in the neighboring Islamic societies of Malaysia and Indonesia. • It highlights how the diaspora forms a set of new communities and thus new borders. Though they may seem national, one should be clear that these are not the territorial borders of the nation-state, so much as economic and cultural borders of various communities.

  32. Chinese Diaspora • Diaspora thus both constructs and deconstructs the dynamic of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Rather than assimilating to Thai nationalism, diasporic Chinese are involved in colonizing the prevailing economic culture, be it national, transnational, or provincial. • Examining the transnational politics of diaspora is thus helpful, as this group is often seen as "social problem" by states because it does not fit into normative notions of territory and identity.

  33. Chinese Diaspora • IR scholars could add expertise in norms, states, and regimes to this crossover discipline that combines cultural analysis and IPE to examine the politics of transnational flows of people, cultural practices, and capital. IR theory would also have to take more seriously the politics of Otherness.

  34. Russian Diaspora • One of the new sources of interstate instability identified by political analysts was the presence of a Russian population numbering in the millions, who, without having moved, now found themselves living in non-Russian Soviet successor states. • Some feared that mistreatment of these groups by the national and nationalist governments of these new states might trigger military Russian responses. • Others suggested that, irrespective of how they theywere being treated, Russia might use these diaspora communities in a bid for regional hegemony and as an excuse for interference in the domestic affairs of neighbor states.

  35. Russian Diaspora • Russian diaspora’s plight in the new states; the minority policy of the new governments; human rights violations; language change; and other issues of adaptation and integration have been widely discussed. • One line of argument asserts that there is broad consensus across the entire political spectrum that the Russian state has a moral obligation to defend "its" diasporas in "the near abroad." • Political parties in Russia can ignore the diaspora issue only at the risk of political marginalization.

  36. Russian Diaspora • The actual policy of Russian authorities towards the diaspora for the most part, has been marked by a high degree of moderation. • The, Russian dog has sometimes barked loud to protest alleged or real discrimination against the Russian diaspora communities, but it has rarely done any actual biting.

  37. Russian Diaspora • The element of ethnicity in Russian self-understanding is very weak. This is not a uniquely Russian quality; it seems to be a common trait of dominant nations in most, if not all, multinational states. • Ethno-nationalism is typically a property of minorities, while majorities tend to identify with the state as a whole. • The fact that many non-Russians in the Soviet Union are Russian speakers who identify strongly with Russian culture adds to the blurring of the Russian identity. No sharp demarcation line may be drawn between Russians and non-Russians in the post-Soviet space.

  38. Russian Diaspora • In many of the post-Soviet states, ethnic Russians make up large percentages of the population up to 40% in some cases. • This has generally been seen as a major stumbling block on the road toward consolidating the population of these states into new national communities.

  39. Russian Diaspora • Most of the new state authorities in all FSU states pursue ethnic, not civic nation building. The nation is identified with the titular group, with the ethnic group the state is named after, and not with the total population of the state. • In this paradigm the non-titulars, among whom the Russians often comprise the largest and most important element, are regarded as minorities and extraneous to "the nation.

  40. Russian Diaspora • In this situation the ethnicity-based identity paradigm may rub off even on the Russians. • If you consistently treat-and maltreat someone on the basis of her ethnicity, she may, in the end, begin to see herself in ethnic categories. • In turn, this may lead to a strengthening of ethnic solidarity between Russians in Russia and Russians in the FSU states and to a higher saliency of the diaspora issue in Russian politics. • In Russia, nation-state building and imperialism are not really alternative policies but, rather, two sides of the same coin.

  41. Russian Diaspora • The moment Russia embarks on nation-state building the protection of the diaspora will become a much more central-and volatile-issue than it is today. • In the post-Soviet context, the "nation" is inevitably conceived in ethnic terms. A Russian nation-state building that is indifferent to the diaspora issue is unthinkable. • .

  42. Russian Diaspora • Everything, therefore, should be done to avoid an ethnification of politics in the former Soviet Union, both Russia in and in the, FSU states. • And there is an alternative to the "nation-building-cum'--imperialism" scenario: integration. The former Soviet republics should be encouraged to develop-or, rather, to restore-strong links to one another, culturally, politically, and economically.

  43. Russian Diaspora • Diaspora politics is not dominating Russian domestic politics as it used to do. The nationalist rhetoric and the diaspora issue has not been marginalized completely. • While some hardliner ethno-nationalist parties opposed the ratification of bilateral treaties between Russia and a number of FSU states on the grounds that these treaties did not sufficiently protect the Russian diaspora communities. • Some other mainstream parties, on the other hand, pursues a policy that contains "noticeably integrationist components."

  44. Russian Diaspora • Most of them see gradual economic integration and the building of close and friendly political relations with CIS countries as good ways to achieve a strategic goal, which they see the restoration of some sort of union among former Soviet republics. • The West should not see all Russian attempts to foster greater (voluntary) integration among FSU states as neo-imperialism.

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