Homeland Nationalism Research Articles

One Russia, many worlds: balancing external homeland nationalism and internal ethnocultural diversity

ABSTRACT For many years, diversity management in post-Cold War Central and Eastern Europe was viewed through the prism of the multilateral minority rights “regime” developed through the OSCE, Council of Europe and EU. With all OSCE participating states asserting the importance of the concept during the early 1990s, minority rights were initially understood as a shared political field that could transcend rival nationalisms. This field, however, encompassed widely varying and competing definitions and was created in a context of unequal power relations between West and East. Russia – never wholly embedded within this concept of normative space – has increasingly challenged the multilateral framework rhetorically and in policy practice, as part of a more general shift toward instrumentalization of minority issues by “kin-state” actors within the region. Using new data from a 2014–17 project on practices of national-cultural autonomy (NCA) within Russia, this article demonstrates how today’s Russian state – hailing its own approach to diversity management as superior to that of the West – seeks to co-opt minority NCA bodies in Russia in the service of external policy and geopolitical competition. The article assesses how minorities respond to this strategy and the implications it might hold for ethnic relations within Russia.

Uncertainties of Transnational Belonging: Homeland Nationalism and Cultural Citizenship of Lithuanian Immigrants in the USA

Uncertainties of Transnational Belonging: Homeland Nationalism and Cultural Citizenship of Lithuanian Immigrants in the USA

Uneasy Double Attachment: Homeland and Exile in Olu Oguibe’s A Gathering Fear*

SummaryThis article reads Olu Oguibe's A Gathering Fear (1992) as an exemplification of the dilemma exiles are confronted with in their relationship with countries of destination and homeland. The article mainstreams the outsider discourse and the contradictions of exiting homeland because of its dystopian conditions only to be faced by situations for which exile becomes less libratory than baleful. To do this, the article highlights the military repression of the mid 1980s and early 1990s under General Babangida in Nigeria, and associated manifestations of dictatorship not only in the despot but also in his wife whose first-ladyship aggravates state oppression in femininity. Considering that a feeling of alienation in the exile ironically underscores homeland nationalism, the article concludes that nostalgia sustains in migrants thoughts of homeland and desire for return.

“Save our students”: contesting discourses of racist attacks against Indians down under

This paper seeks to understand the dominant civic discourses of accusation of racism leveled against the Australians as expressed by the victims of racist attacks and Indian Government officials in the Times of India and Outlook India news magazines. The aim of the paper is to understand how the logics of the discourses have constituted the racially motivated attacks on the Indian diaspora in Australia, and how the nationalistic sentiments are fostered among the diasporic Indians and the Indians in India. The paper argues that there is a mutual production of diasporic and homeland nationalism in the face of a crisis that hits the Indian diaspora in Australia. This analysis also brings to fore the ideology of multiculturalism in Australia.

Imagining the Scottish nation: tourism and homeland nationalism in Scotland

Genealogical tourism is one of the fastest growing sub-segments of heritage tourism. The travel motivation for genealogical visit stems from the search for familiarisation and identification with ‘the native other’ through which tourists seek to reaffirm their cultural affinity and commonness. The purpose of this article is to see how renewed cultural affinity with the homeland constructs a form of nationalism. Qualitative data collected through field surveys, interviews and questionnaires with genealogical tourists showed that such travel bestows a renewed sense of self-identity, enhances cultural affinity to their ‘homeland’ nation and plays a role in articulating ‘homeland’ nationalism. The article contributes in understanding the articulation of root, identity and ancestral belonging in the context of genealogical tourism and the way it can be linked with the ‘Nationalist’ sentiment in Scotland.

The influence of Abba Hillel Silver's diaspora Zionism on his decision not to immigrate to Israel

The option of aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel) poses a continuous challenge to any attempt to forge a diasporic version of Zionist ideology. This challenge grew twofold during the years immediately preceding and following the founding of the State of Israel. The article examines this challenge through the lens of Abba Hillel Silver, the leader of American Jewry during the period in question. While the Israeli leadership saw aliyah as a litmus test, indicating the degree to which Zionist leaders abroad were committed to the cause, for Silver the question was not one of dual loyalties between competing American and Israeli citizenships but a dilemma of inner American-Jewish identity. It is through this American-Jewish perspective that Silver's grappling with both the option of his own aliyah, and the importance of aliyah per se in American Zionism should be seen. An analysis of his views on the matter may illumine the evolving relations between diasporic transnationalism and homeland nationalism during the critical years when the homeland gains independence and sovereignty.

Diaspora Dilemmas and Shifting Allegiances: The Irish in London between Nationalism, Catholicism and Labourism (1900-22)

Focused on the London Irish, this article discusses the diasporic dilemmas of Irish Catholics in England who oscillated between four claims to loyalty in the early twentieth century. Liberals and later the labour movement sought to mobilise them for radical political and socialist goals; the Catholic Church to support religious education against secularist threats; a homeland nationalism to advance the prospects of Irish parliamentary autonomy; and a diasporic nationalism to defend their ethnic interests in England. These pressures peaked during the First World War and the Irish War of Independence. The overall effect of this nationalist mobilisation may have been to advance their integration into English social and political institutions.

Broadening Russia's borders?

Abstract This article draws upon the work of Rogers Brubaker and Alexander Motyl in order to analyse the challenge posed by the Congress of Russian Communities (KRO), a Russian nationalist organisation aiming to reunite all Russians in an expanded Russian state. It is argued that the Tsarist and Soviet past structure relationships among the post-Soviet states in ways that both promote Russian homeland nationalism, and place limits on it: while Russian policy has been driven towards claiming responsibility for `compatriots abroad', the post-Soviet states have tended to recognise each other's sovereignty in order to boost their legitimacy and prevent geopolitical destabilisation. Following discussion of the theoretical frame, the historical context and issues of Russian identity, the article focuses on the KRO's attempts to expand Russia's borders. First, its ideology, and particularly the radical commitment to national reunification, is discussed. Secondly, the KRO's attempts to promote geopolitically radical national minority stances among Russians outside the Russian Federation (particularly in Moldova, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Estonia) and homeland stances within it (through lobbying and electoral politics) are examined. These attempts have been generally unsuccessful. The KRO is also distinguished from its two major competitors, the Liberal Democratic Party of Vladimir Zhirinovksy, and the Communist Party. It is concluded that radical Russian nationalist organisations such as the KRO are unlikely to be able to challenge the post-Soviet geopolitical status quo in the absence of more aggressive nationalising policies towards Russian minorities and official Russian backing.

Virtual Diaspora?: Imagining Croatia On-line

This article, concentrating on contemporary Croatia, explores the role of computer-mediated communication in new relationships between the homeland at war and diaspora. Computer mediated diasporic public spheres are discussed as forms of creative imaginings of a national space from diverse global sites. The text is critical of any suggestion that diasporic identifications are able to be read off, simplistically, from dominant forms of homeland nationalism. Through an exploration of the socio-historical bases of Croatian diaspora communities, and the complexities of callings from the homeland in the 1990s, a more nuanced picture of contestation emerges. A ‘netnography’ of the Soc/Culture/Croatia newsgroup reveals a dominant habitus of processes, forms and content, in particular, the construction of Croatian identity in relation to a, more or less, monolithic ‘Other’ but, also, emerging innovative currents. More work on diasporic affinities as complex, contingent, and fluid is clearly needed, with political as well as theoretical importance.

Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe

Part I. Rethinking Nationhood and Nationalism: 1. Rethinking nationhood: nation as institutionalized form, practical category, contingent event 2. Nationhood and the national question in the Soviet Union 3. National minorities, nationalizing states, and external national homelands in the New Europe Part II. The Old 'New Europe' and the New: 4. Nationalizing states in the old 'New Europe' - and the new 5. Homeland nationalism in Weimar Germany and 'Weimar Russia' 6. Aftermaths of empire and the unmixing of peoples.