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rfmcdonaldI came across an interested article hosted at the Armenian General Benevolent Union: "Armenian Demography, the Homeland, and the Diaspora: Trends and Consequences," by one Stephan H. Astourian. This paper has the problems that manifest themselves in all papers on a particular population group written by strong supporters of said group--not only are "we"
unique, "we" are particularly blessed with some set of skills or another, "we" have historical enemies who must be dealt with, "we" have the potential to mobilize behind the goal of creating a self-contained population if only we gather in everyone at the margins, et cetera. It at least manages to avoid the most blatant forms of this boosterism, though, and is factually quite correct--it's only the policy implications which are doubtful.
Astourian's article explores the history of the Armenian diaspora over the 20th century, marked initially by the Turkish genocide and a subsequent global diaspora (throughout the Middle East, to France and western Europe, to the United States), the waves of emigration within the former Soviet Union produced by the Soviet collapse, and the rapid decline in the population of the Armenian nation-state, from three-and-a-quarter million in 1989 to barely two million now. The net result is that the trend towards the concentration of the Armenian population within the frontiers of the Armenian republic--moving upwards from one-third of the total to almost one-half by 1989--has been utterly reversed as Armenians leave their titular homeland by the hundreds of thousands. Russia's Armenian population has grown particularly to almost two million people, but the European and American segments of the diaspora have also grown sharply despite assimilation.
I can't help but wonder at the fact that the dispersal of the Armenian diaspora is quite different from the growing concentration of the Jewish diaspora, that where Armenia's population as a share of the Armenian diaspora is declining sharply Israel's population as a share of the Jewish diaspora is growing, that the Armenian and Jewish diasporas are responding--at least in crude demographic terms--quite differently to globalization's potentials and problems.
unique, "we" are particularly blessed with some set of skills or another, "we" have historical enemies who must be dealt with, "we" have the potential to mobilize behind the goal of creating a self-contained population if only we gather in everyone at the margins, et cetera. It at least manages to avoid the most blatant forms of this boosterism, though, and is factually quite correct--it's only the policy implications which are doubtful.
Astourian's article explores the history of the Armenian diaspora over the 20th century, marked initially by the Turkish genocide and a subsequent global diaspora (throughout the Middle East, to France and western Europe, to the United States), the waves of emigration within the former Soviet Union produced by the Soviet collapse, and the rapid decline in the population of the Armenian nation-state, from three-and-a-quarter million in 1989 to barely two million now. The net result is that the trend towards the concentration of the Armenian population within the frontiers of the Armenian republic--moving upwards from one-third of the total to almost one-half by 1989--has been utterly reversed as Armenians leave their titular homeland by the hundreds of thousands. Russia's Armenian population has grown particularly to almost two million people, but the European and American segments of the diaspora have also grown sharply despite assimilation.
I can't help but wonder at the fact that the dispersal of the Armenian diaspora is quite different from the growing concentration of the Jewish diaspora, that where Armenia's population as a share of the Armenian diaspora is declining sharply Israel's population as a share of the Jewish diaspora is growing, that the Armenian and Jewish diasporas are responding--at least in crude demographic terms--quite differently to globalization's potentials and problems.
