Migration and its Impact on Armenia A field practice Edited by: Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek Maria Six-Hohenbalken ASSA Austrian Studies in Social Anthropology ISSN Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology University of Vienna Vienna 2017 Table of contents Migration and its Impact on Armenia. Introduction Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek 3 Family Alienation and Labor Migration: A Case Study from Gyumri Anna Atoyan 19 Syrian-Armenian Immigrants in Armenia: A Sociological Analysis of Social Alienation Shushan Ghahriyan 29 Circular Short-Term Migration from Armenia to Russia. The Issue of Time and Socio-Economic Effects on Family Life in Armenia Andreea Zelinka 40 Perceived Effects of Men’s and Women’s Migration on Values, Attitudes and Roles Sinara Navoyan 56 Remittances for the Ancestors – Influence of Migration on the Yezidi Ethno-Religious Community Maria Six-Hohenbalken 66 2 Migration and its Impact on Armenia Caring for the Homeland from a Distance: the Armenian Diaspora in Vienna and Transnational Engagements Daniela Paredes Grijalva 85 Integration in die "Heimatgesellschaft" nach der Remigration: Hilfsorganisationen und Fallanalysen in Yerewan Anna Mautner 97 Return Migration to Armenia: Motivations and prospects guiding return and the role of different organizations Juliane Jakoubek 114 "I am an Armenian living in a non-Armenian country" Diaspora-Identität am Beispiel von Birthright Armenia Cristina Biasetto 129 Mit Prof. Hranush Kharatyan im Gespräch. Ein ExpertInneninterview Bernhard Begemann 148 Migration and its Impact on Armenia – Photo exhibition 2015 158 Authors 182 ASSA - Austrian Studies in Social Anthropology ISSN 1815 - 3704 3 Migration and its Impact on Armenia Migration and its Impact on Armenia Introduction Gabriele Rasuly-Paleczek Displacement and migration play an important role in the memory and lived experience of Armenians. For centuries, they have been forced to leave their places of residence because of political and religious persecution, difficult economic conditions, and natural disasters. Alt- hough massacres, flight, and deportations had been recurrent events in Armenian history, it was in particular during the last decades of Ottoman rule that Armenians became the victims of massive persecution.1 The most tragic blow to the Armenian communities occurred in 1915, when Talat Pasha and the ruling Committee for Union and Progress ordered the deportation of millions of Armenians. Massacres, atrocities, and starvation resulted in the annihilation of an estimated 1.5 million of an assumed pre-war population of 2.5 million Ottoman Armenians (cf. Gust 2005: 519 et seq. quoted in Poghosyan 2009: 62 and 78).2 Those who were able to escape the genocide resettled in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Russia (including the current territory of the Republic of Armenia, among them also some Yezidi, cf. Six-Hohenbalken, this volume), Europe (in particular France), and the Americas. Armenians residing on the territory of the newly established Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic remained exposed to forced migration and resettlement. During the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, thousands of Armenians were deported to Siberia and Central Asia (cf. Matossian 1962; Hovannisian 1996). Following World War II, new waves of migration and resettlement took place. Compensating for Armenian male labor force losses during World War II, the Armenian government invited diaspora Armenians to immigrate and settle in Armenia (cf. Poghosyan 2009: 62 et seq. and 78).3 At the same time, the Soviet government restricted their freedom of movement, especially 1 E.g., in the early 17th century, Iranian rulers depopulated parts of the Armenian Highlands by marching their population to Iran and resettling the survivors in different areas of Iran (cf. Koutcharian 1989: 239 et seq. quoted in Poghosyan 2009: 62). According to Dadrian 1995 and Lepsius 1897, some 300,000 Armenians perished in local massacres (1894-96) as well as from starvation and disease in their aftermath, another 100,000 fled their settlement areas and found refuge in the Balkans, Iran, and the Russian Empire (quoted in Poghosyan 2009: 62). 2 The figures are contested. Regarding the genocide, cf. Dadrian (1995), Suny (2015), Kevorkian (2011) and Gust (2005). 3 According to Poghosyan (2009: 63), some 100,000 ethnic Armenians immigrated in the few years between 1946 and 1949, many from the Balkans (Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece) and from the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran), but also from France and the United States of America. After 1965 the influx of Armenians from outside the Soviet Union decreased. Yet, further Armenians immigrated from other Soviet republics. "In all, the number of immigrants to Soviet Armenia between 1965 and 1985 was as high as 178,000 persons" (Poghosyan 2009: 63). ASSA - Austrian Studies in Social Anthropology ISSN 1815 - 3704 4 Migration and its Impact on Armenia in terms of out-migration. Nevertheless, some permanent and seasonal labor migration, in particular to the "virgin lands" in the southeastern region, evolved and Armenians became one of the most mobile population groups of the Soviet Union (cf. Poghosyan 2009: 63; Mitchneck and Plane 1995; Navoyan in this volume). It was, however, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that large-scale processes of migration gained new momentum in the Republic of Armenia. Military confrontations with Azerbaijan (1991–1994) led to the influx of several hundred thousand of Armenians that had been expelled from Azerbaijan.4 Later on, other yet smaller groups of Armenian refugees from Syria and Iraq were accommodated.5 The first wave of out-migration started in the aftermath of the earthquake of December 7, 1988 when a total of approximately 200,000 people were evacuated to other Soviet republics, where most of them settled permanently (cf. UNDP Human Development Report Armenia 2009: 36; Johannson 2008: 4, and Navoyan in this volume). Even more dramatic was the out-migration of Armenians in the early 1990s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia—similar to many other of the former Soviet republics—plunged into a severe economic crisis that triggered large-scale emigration. Until the end of the 1990s, nearly a million Armenians—that is roughly one third of the current population—had left the country, mostly for the Russian Federation (approximately 620,000), but also for the United States (approximately 100,000), other former Soviet republics (e.g., Ukraine around 80,000), and western Europe (20,000) (Savvidis 2009: 37).6 Emigration peaked between 1991 and 1994, when some 600,000 Armenians left (Savvidis 2009: 37). In the late 1990s, Armenia’s political and economic situation somehow stabilized and the country’s economy recovered somewhat.7 Permanent emigration slowed down, while seasonal labor migration—mainly to Russia—remained high (cf. Minasyan et al 2007: 25; ILO 2009: 5; IOM 2012: 29; and Navoyan in this volume).8 4 The numbers of Armenians expelled from Azerbaijan vary considerably, ranging from some 360,000 to about 500,000 individuals (cf. Poghosyan 2009: 63 and 66). According to UNHCR (2011) figures, 264,339 found refuge in Armenia (quoted in Poghosyan 2009: 63). 5 No exact figures are available. According to the MPC (2013: 2), 4,449 Armenians fleeing the civil war in Syria arrived in Armenia in 2011. Another 1,986 individuals arrived during the first six months of 2012; 851 Iraqi Armenians arrived between 2005 and 2011. Ghahriyan (in this volume)—referring to UNHCR statistics for 2015—mentions the arrival of 17,000 Syrian Armenians since the beginning of the war in Syria. 6 No exact numbers are available on permanent and seasonal labor migration flows. For details on the problem, cf. Savvidis (2009:31); Poghosyan (2009: 67 et seq.); ILO (2009); Minasyan and Hancilova (2005); Minasyan et al (2007), and Heleniak (2008). 7 However, even in the mid-2000s, the economic situation was difficult. Only 25 percent of adult Armenians were permanently employed. An estimated 34.6 percent of the population was living below the poverty line (Johannson 2008: 4 et seq.). 8 Compared to the period between 1988 and 2001, when 1 to 1.1 million Armenians emigrated, only 150,000 individuals emigrated between 2002 and 2007. Between 2007 and 2013, only approx. 35,000 people emigrated ASSA - Austrian Studies in Social Anthropology ISSN 1815 - 3704 5 Migration and its Impact on Armenia Seasonal labor migration has constituted a crucial survival strategy for many Armenian households to this day (cf. contributions by Zelinka, Atoyan, Navoyan, and Six-Hohenbalken in this volume). Around one quarter to one third of all households depend on financial remittances to cover their basic needs.9 Nevertheless, detailed national statistics on the volume of seasonal migration in Armenia are rare. Several studies based on nationally representative data offer estimations of seasonal migration rates in the country (e.g., Gender Barometer Survey 2014; cf. contribution of Sinara Navoyan in this volume; ILO 2009; Minasyan and Hancilova 2005; Minasyan et al. 2007). According to a study conducted by the ILO (2009: 7), approximately 14.5 percent of all Armenian households were involved in labor migration between 2005 and 2007. The vast majority of Armenian labor migrants are employed in the Russian Federation, around 43 percent of them in Moscow (cf. ILO 2009: 5; Savvidis 2009: 40, and IOM 2012: 32). As of today, only a small number of Armenians—some 3.2 million (IOM 2014: 78) reside in the Republic of Armenia, while the majority of Armenians—an estimated 7 to 9 million (IOM 2014: 78; Savvidis 2009: 30, and Poghosyan 2009: 63) live outside the residential areas of their ancestors—that is the territory of the former Ottoman Empire, Czarist Russia, and Iran. Centuries of persecution and labor migration have led to the formation of a rather heterogeneous Armenian diaspora (cf. Mkrtichyan 2015; Walker 1990). Next to descendants of earlier waves of Armenian refugees and traders that had left their home area since medieval times when Armenia lost its statehood in 1045, the initial Armenian diaspora consisted mainly of the survivors of the genocide of 1915.