Gesellschaften Und Staaten Im Epochenwandel / Societies and States in Transformation – serie

Definitions of citizenship often lack a solid grounding in the lived realities of ordinary citizens. They tend instead to focus on the debates of elites and on geopolitical processes. Citizenship in the postsocialist context defies the narrow definitions given by political elites, primarily because representatives of the state have been unable to guarantee the ‘social rights’ that citizens expect. This volume seeks to provide information by looking both at the making of citizenship from above and at the perceptions and responses of citizens from below. How citizens conceive of their relations to the state determines their involvement (or lack of involvement) in public life, including voting and participation in social movements. It also determines whether or not they will seek an alternative citizenship, and their attitudes towards ethnic conflicts. It follows that the possibilities of citizenship offered by postsocialist Moldova constitute a vital factor in addressing the political, economic, and social difficulties which this young state faces.

This book provides a critical review of the achievements and challenges of European organizations promoting democracy in the Republic of Armenia. Armenia is a post-transition country and yet not a consolidated democracy. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe, and the European Union with its Neighbourhood Policy have been actively engaged in the country’s democratization process. A central question is to what extent reforms and recommendations have been accepted in Armenia, and whether they convey real implementations. By analyzing the organizations’ activities and recommendations, this book explains how projects overlap, whether they reveal an interlocking or interblocking nature, and when they cause unintended side effects.

This volume explores Armenian migration around the world, including the interrelation between domestic communities in Armenia and Armenian communities elsewhere. It takes a close look at the motivation to migrate and the specifics of Armenian communities in different EU countries and the United States. Authors from Armenia, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, and the US use various approaches to the subject such as case-study, in-depth interviews, surveys, comparative and network analysis, as well as migration and transnationalism theories. The collection offers new insights into local Armenian community structure, lifestyle, communication and adaptation, social, economic and gender aspects of migration.

For the past ten years, human rights language has increasingly been employed by Armenian citizens when interacting with state actors in public spaces to protest government wrongdoings and press for change. This book examines the citizens’ exercise of their civil and political rights to put up claims regarding their social, economic and other rights through collective action as a platform for their claims-making. Through the research of key human rights actors, this book explores the ways in which universal human rights are debated, practiced, violated and experienced in Armenia. It reveals significant transformations with regard to both perceptions and practices of the notion of ‘a rights-bearing citizen’ manifest in speech and action, confrontations and interactions in ‘The Street’.

This book tells thestory of 64 Circassian families who during the Kosovo conflictin 1989/99 migrated from the Field of Blackbirds to the Republic ofAdygheya in the Russian North Caucasus, their historical “homeland”. It focuseson the identification process among the Kosovo Circassians before andafter this migration. In her approach, Marieta Schneider challengesthe nationalist assumptions of a non-conflicting relationship betweenidentity, ethnicity and culture and demonstrates the impact of theminority status on the identity formation of thisethnic community. By comparing national and minority politics both inex-Yugoslavia and in the USSR/Russian Federation, the author highlightsthe role linguistic, religious, cultural and social “boundaries”played in this process. The book provides new insights for thosewho study minority politics and identification processes in the Balkans, in theSoviet Union and in the post-Soviet realm.