Abstract

As the USSR fell apart and independent countries took its place, minorities across Eurasia found themselves stranded in nationalizing states. This article focuses on one of these “beached diasporas”: Georgia’s Armenians. Through a mixed-methods approach, consisting of interviews with activists and a sociolinguistic experiment administered to adolescents (N = 529), we uncover differences among Armenians in their reactions to Georgia’s nationalization policies. Armenians from the borderland of Javakheti mobilized in defence of the in-group but their co-ethnics from the capital of Tbilisi opted for acculturation. These intragroup differences demonstrate that members of the same ethnic group can react to the same nationalization policies along disparate lines, thus adding nuance to the literature on beached diasporas in the post-Soviet space.

摘要

随着苏联解体和独立国家取而代之，欧亚大陆的少数民族发现自己被困在国有化国家。本文重点关注这些“搁浅的侨民”之一：格鲁吉亚的亚美尼亚人。通过混合方法，包括对活动家的采访和对青少年进行的社会语言学实验（N = 529），我们发现亚美尼亚人对格鲁吉亚国有化政策的反应存在差异。来自 Javakheti 边境的亚美尼亚人动员起来保卫群体，但他们来自首都第比利斯的同族人选择了同化。这些组内差异表明，同一族群的成员可以沿着不同的路线对相同的国有化政策做出反应，从而为后苏联空间中搁浅侨民的文献增添了细微差别。