European Journal of International Relations-2007-Adamson-489-526 Incorporating Diasporas in IR

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Remapping the Boundaries of State and

National Identity: Incorporating
Diasporas into IR Theorizing
FIONA B. ADAMSON
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK
MADELEINE DEMETRIOU
University of Kent at Canterbury, UK
The structural components of a state are regularly conflated with a states

national identity. In reality, however, the assumption that the boundaries
of a state and its national identity are coterminous is problematic. While
this has always been the case, changes in the ability of actors in the international system to use communication and transportation technologies to
sustain transnational collective identities points to the need for new
empirical research in this area. Contemporary diasporas are defined by a
national or cultural identity, yet differ from nation-states in terms of their
organizational and spatial logics. By comparing diaspora mobilization in
two cases, we find that both non-state political entrepreneurs and state
elites are using diasporic practices of identity formation as a means of generating economic and political support in an increasingly integrated
global economy. This points to discontinuities between a territorially defined states system and deterritorialized practices of collective identity
formation.
KEY WORDS constructivism diasporas Greek-Cypriots identity
Kurds nationalism
Introduction
Over the past decade, scientifically minded social constructivists and others have
struggled with the question of how to combine a richer conceptualization of
identity in International Relations (IR) with an empirically driven research
European Journal of International Relations Copyright 2007

SAGE Publications and ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research, Vol. 13(4): 489526
[DOI: 10.1177/1354066107083145]
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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

agenda.1 In this context, scholars interested in the mechanisms and processes
associated with identity formation in the international arena have increasingly
challenged the state-centric nature of IR theory by focusing on other salient
identities in world politics, such as national and regional identities, international
norms, or civilizations.2 Despite this expansion of the constructivist research
agenda, however, a number of collective identities central to understanding
international politics remain acutely under-theorized. Chief among these are
the collective identities formed by contemporary migration processes, and the
way in which they call into question the relationship between states as actors,
institutions or territories and collective identities as quasi-independent structures
of meaning.
It is widely acknowledged in IR that the fit between a particular national
identity and the state as a unit of analysis should be treated as a convenient
assumption, and does not necessarily correspond with the realities of the world
we inhabit. Yet one still finds a continued acceptance of the analytical utility of
conflating national identity with the other structural and spatial components
of the state.3 Conflating the various components of the state with its identity
allows us to model behavior and interaction between states as we would model
interaction and behavior between individuals (see Wendt, 1999: 21524;
Jackson, 2004; Neumann, 2004; Wight, 2004; Wendt, 2004). This has its
advantages in that it forces us to be economical in the face of a large number
of complex identities and practices that exist at the national and international
levels efficiently filtering out the wheat from the chaff in our attempts to
understand and investigate the salient patterns and processes which define
international political life.4
This simplified state-centric approach, however, also brings with it costs
costs which have always been present, but are even more readily apparent when
one attempts to understand the processes and social forms which define international politics under current conditions of globalization.5 The uneasy fit
between the state as an administrative unit and the state as a spatially discrete
homogenous political identity is increasingly being called into question in the
world of social theory as well as in the world of political practice. In the world
of theory, there is a proliferation of writing across the social sciences that
seeks to understand how various practices associated with globalization or
transnationalism challenge or restructure the nation-state (see, for example,
Appadurai, 1996; Castells, 1997; Featherstone et al., 1995; Sassen, 1996). In
the world of political practice, we see that material changes in the ability to
communicate and connect across state borders, in combination with an accompanying change in consciousness regarding the social meaning of space, work
together to produce changes in the everyday practices and strategies of both
state and non-state actors.6 The question is, how salient are these transnational
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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

practices for the understanding of basic dynamics of international politics, and
how can we go about investigating such phenomena?
In this article, we propose a conceptual starting point for understanding some
of these changes that are being manifested in both theory and practice. The
starting point we propose is the study of diasporas, and the ways in which contemporary diasporic practices and politics interact with state structures and
strategies. We make two primary claims in this article. First, we claim that the
concept of diaspora is a useful tool for IR scholars to adopt as a means of analyzing changes in the relationship between states and collective identities under
contemporary conditions of globalization. The organizational and spatial logics
of deterritorialized and network-based collective identities, such as diasporas,
can be fruitfully compared and contrasted with those of territorially defined and
institutionalized collective identities, such as nation-states. By comparing diasporas and states as two differently structured organizational forms which, nonetheless, are both held together by similar types of national, cultural or other
identity claims, we are forced to empirically investigate, rather than assume, the
conceptual conflation of state with nation that is so prevalent in IR.
Second, we argue that the organizational form of diaspora is being adopted
by both non-state political entrepreneurs and state elites who are taking advantage of new technologies to use transnational practices of diaspora mobilization as a means of generating material resources and political support in an
increasingly integrated global economy. We provide empirical support for
this claim by tracing processes of diaspora formation and diaspora mobilization in two case studies: the Greek-Cypriot diaspora in the United Kingdom,
and the Kurdish diaspora in Germany and other European states. In both of
our case studies, diasporic practices have led to a partial de-coupling of
homogenous national identity claims from bounded territorial entities. The
task of empirically mapping out the relationship between territorial and institutional administrative structures and ideational structures of meaning and
collective belonging is of crucial importance to IR scholars who wish to
empirically engage with, rather than shrink from, debates regarding the possible impacts of globalization and technological advances on the structure of
the international system.
Since the advent of the constructivist turn in IR, neither nationalism nor
the practices which undergird it have received the degree of attention which
they deserve, despite the obvious fact that the basic unit of analysis in IR is
either implicitly or explicitly conceived of as being a nation-state, with national
culture and character presumed to constitute the fundamental ideational features which would distinguish the identity of any state x from state y. State
identities are routinely thought of as national identities to the extent that
the two terms are conflated and used interchangeably to describe the same
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properties.7 What the study of diasporas and their practices provides to IR theorists is a means of empirically investigating the relationship between the structural and material aspects of stateness and the ideational and cultural aspects
of nationness. Instead of an a priori conflation of state and nation, the study
of diasporic practices forces one to call into question the way in which the two
are related, and how that relationship may change over time, in terms of processes of political legitimation, mobilization and unit differentiation.
The concept of diaspora is being employed across a variety of disciplines in
the social sciences as a means of studying the relationship between territorially
defined forms of political organization and control, and the articulation and
mobilization of political identifications. We see this in particular in a number
of works in anthropology and sociology that seek to understand how diasporic
practices and identifications lead to changing spatial expressions of national
identities and nationalist practices (see, for example, Anderson, 1994, 1998;
Appadurai, 1996; Basch et al., 1994; Danforth, 1995; Ong, 1999). The study
of diasporic practices, however, not only sheds light on the changing relationship between the state and the nation under contemporary conditions: the
cumulative effect of such practices themselves can be hypothesized to be an
important causal factor in the restructuring of that relationship. As Appadurai
(1996: 160) writes:
One major fact that accounts for strains in the union of nation and state is that
the nationalist genie, never perfectly contained in the bottle of the territorial
state, is now itself diasporic. Carried in the repertoires of increasingly mobile
populations it is increasingly unrestrained by ideas of spatial boundary and
territorial sovereignty.
Diasporic practices by actors in the international system point to the fact that
territoriality provides only one possible organizational basis for the mobilization and formation of political identities. The existence of deterritorialized
identities and transnational processes of identity formation which operate parallel to and in conjunction with the territorial system of nation-states is something that has been under-addressed in the constructivist literature in IR. At
the same time, however, the empirical study of these practices through case
studies demonstrates that globalization does not necessarily eliminate or even
lessen the importance of notions of territoriality, national identity and the
state as the crucial signifiers in the articulation of political identities in international politics. Instead, as the case studies in this article show, it leads to
important shifts in their spatial manifestations and discursive articulations,
resulting in observable changes in the boundaries between states as institutions and national identities as structures of meaning.
Our line of argumentation in this article proceeds as follows. First, we point
to gaps in the current constructivist research agenda by describing the lack of
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theorization of transnational processes of identity formation. We discuss the
growing epistemological split between positivist state-centric versions of social
constructivism and post-positivist research that has generally been more critical
of state-centric assumptions. In the second section, we introduce the concept
of diaspora as a means of better theorizing the relationship between territoriality, national identity and the state. We employ the concept not simply as a tool
for critiquing state-centric constructivism but rather as a means of generating
an empirically informed research agenda which is more nuanced in its analysis
of the relationship between state practices and collective identities. We survey
the research on diasporas and migration-based transnational communities that
has been produced in a variety of disciplines. In the empirical portion of our
article, we compare the practices and politics of the Greek-Cypriot and Kurdish
diasporas in Europe, and discuss how these practices lead to a spatial reconfiguration in the relationship between states as institutions or structures and
national identities as ideational constructs. We conclude by emphasizing the
need for further empirical research on the relationship between transnational
processes of identity formation and the territorial system of states.
Expanding the Constructivist Research Agenda: Transnational

Dimensions of National Identity
Mainstream IR continues to be grounded in a rather dated view of the relationship between identity and territory. For mainstream realists and constructivists, states are still conceptualized as territorial monoliths with unitary
social identities, and there has been reluctance on the part of mainstream
constructivists to actively deconstruct the state into its various components.
States are modeled as bearers of discrete homogenous identities that are then
projected onto a socially thin anarchic system. This model of states as possessing territorially defined unitary identities, however, fails to capture the
complexity and diversity of identities that inhabit the larger social world
within which states are embedded. As Lapid (1996: 10) has observed,
It is ironic and evident that IR scholars are now vigorously reclaiming culture
and identity in response to their mounting difficulties with exponential increases
in global heterogeneity and diversity. It is ironic because, as an inter- type discipline long dominated by political realism, the IR field should have been doubly
well prepared to deal with issues of diversity. Instead, recent events have rendered
apparent IRs inability to encompass vastly accelerated and co-occurring dynamics of integration and disintegration at both sub- and supra-state levels. It seems
as if IRs fascination with sovereign statehood has greatly decreased its ability to
confront complex issues of ethnic nationhood and political otherhood. As a result,
the IR theoretical enterprise must now reorient itself to a dynamic pluralism conceived at a new level of complexity and fluidity.
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The constructivist research agenda in IR has now evolved to the point
where the rationalistconstructivist divide has subsumed the old realistliberal
institutionalist divide as the defining debate in the field, and research which
addresses questions concerning the role of identity in international politics is
proliferating at a rapid rate.8 At the same time, however, there are rifts within
the constructivist research agenda itself regarding the appropriate means of
inquiring into the role and nature of identity in international political life.
With the publication of Wendts (1999) Social Theory of International Politics,
a modernist or naturalistic constructivism, which rests on the foundations
of state-centrism and scientific realism, has become a standard bearer for the
mainstream constructivist research agenda. Yet despite Wendts attempt to
find a via media between positivist and post-positivist approaches, Social
Theory of International Politics appears to have had the opposite effect in
some respects, resulting in the mainstreaming of a state-centric version of
social constructivism into North American IR debates, and the alienation of
many post-positivist constructivists from mainstream debates.
This growing epistemological and methodological split in the constructivist
camp seems to confirm earlier predictions that debates within constructivism
could prove to be more heated than those between constructivists and rational
positivists (Neufield, 1993: 40 as cited in Ruggie, 1998: 36). Such a trend
means that constructivists could spend more time discussing epistemology
and methods than devising a concrete research agenda that engages with the
empirical reality of politics. Thus, we follow Wendt (1999: 40) in arguing for
the utility of a question-, rather than method-driven research agenda. We
break with Wendt, however, in our view of what this research agenda should
look like, since we are convinced that resting the constructivist research
agenda on a narrow state-centric foundation is a sure formula for limiting
both the analytical and explanatory scope of a question-driven research
agenda. Specifically, we challenge the utility of Wendts (1999: 193245)
conflation of the various components of the state institutions, monopoly on
violence, sovereignty, society and territory into a single identity unit, which
results in his claim that states are people too. This anthropomorphizing of the
state, we argue, makes it difficult to develop an expanded constructivist
research agenda, in that it prohibits an investigation into a wide range of
transnational processes and practices and thus inhibits the understanding and
analysis of deeper structural changes in the international system or simply
precludes empirical inquiries into a growing number of puzzles and policy
concerns which lie outside a simple state-centric framework.9
While states may be the primary actors in international politics, the world in
which states operate is one in which notions of collective identity are increasingly conceived of in multicultural and plural, rather than in homogenous and
unitary terms. Instead of a simple form of state-centrism, we suggest the utility
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of employing a richer conception of identity that allows us to examine the relationship between political identifications and territorially defined state structures in a more constitutive and nuanced manner. Drawing on what John
Ruggie (1998: 267) broadly refers to as a transformationalist version of constructivism, we argue for a research agenda that seeks to map out and explain
changes in the organizational make-up of political space. Such a research
agenda would focus on the nature of unbundled territoriality under current
historical conditions, and would seek to account for the disjunction between
modes of organizing and administering spaces, and the ever-expanding range of
possibilities for mobilizing and sustaining political identifications across spatially
discontiguous locales.10
Postmodernist and critical approaches to IR have made great headway in
deconstructing the state into various ideational components and practices (such
as the maintenance of territorial borders, national discourses and administrative
regimes), and have also focused attention on a number of non-state identifications (such as gendered or postcolonial identifications).11 In our opinion, however, there has been a tendency in much of this writing (as well as within
mainstream constructivism) to implicitly conflate state-centrism with certain
epistemological and methodological claims, despite the fact that there is no necessary or obvious relationship between the two. Thus, the small amount of IR
writing which engages conceptually with diasporas, migrants, refugees, transnational identities, borders, or processes of deterritorialization has been written
largely from a postmodernist perspective, with a view to drawing attention to
marginalized identities or practices as a means of critiquing hegemonic conceptions of the state and hegemonic discourses in the field of IR (see, for example,
Agnew, 1999; Brock, 1999; Campbell and Shapiro, 1999; Doty, 1996b;
Shapiro and Alker, 1996; Sog uk, 1999; Sog uk and Whitehall, 1999. Important exceptions include Hgel and Peretz, 2005; Haus, 1995; Huntington,
1996; Koslowski, 2000; Sheffer, 1986; Weiner, 1995; Shain and Barth, 2003;
Wayland, 2004). A conceptual focus on non-state identities is therefore often
paired to a political project located within the field of IR, rather than an IR
project that seeks to understand the real world of international politics. In the
words of one commentator:
Here is the most serious shortcoming of studies that celebrate multiculturalism,
globalisation, and the postcolonial moment the lack of work on politics. In
the current discussion, much of the emphasis falls on the nation rather than the
state, on identity as opposed to citizenship, on culture instead of governance
(Jusdanis, 1996: 154)
Not enough attention has been paid within IR to examining the politics that
actually occur within transnational spheres or spaces, and to making conceptual links between these activities and the everyday exercise of state power.
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By framing critiques of state-centric constructivism in such terms, there is a
generalized presumption that transnational and other non-state forms of
identity are either impossible to investigate empirically through methods
which have been referred to as normal science or are peripheral to the
central questions and debates of the discipline (Jepperson et al., 1996: 65;
Ruggie, 1998: 38). Instead of drawing lines, we argue for the utility of drawing on a variety of methods and approaches for the purposes of the empirical investigation of understudied transnational phenomena that we believe to
be central to our understanding of contemporary international politics.
A promising way of building such an empirically grounded research agenda,
we argue, is to import the concept of diaspora into a mainstream constructivist
research agenda as a means of theorizing deterritorialized or transnational
identity networks. While there is an impressive and growing body of literature
in IR that looks at transnational networks, transnational relations and nonstate actors, this literature has focused primarily on liberal and norm-based networks, such as NGOs and principled-issue networks, and has sought to analyse
how the activities of these networks lead to changes in the interests or behavior of states (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Risse-Kappen 1994, 1995; Sikkink,
1993). This literature has shown that states as units are penetrated by a variety
of transnational actors, and evolve and respond to the activities of non-state
actors. It has not, however, engaged with the deeper constitutive issues regarding the nature of transnational identity claims and the relationship of such
claims to a territorially defined system of states.
One of the promises of explicitly importing the category of diaspora into
constructivist theorizing is the value added it provides for theorizing the
identity components of transnational practices and their effects. Such a category allows us to observe a set of transnational identity formation processes
and, by so doing, link an analysis of micro-practices with work on macrostructures, to determine which micro-practices are potentially transformative
agents (Ruggie, 1998: 27). Diasporic practices and politics are a potential
source of changes in the spatio-political configuration of identities in the international system, since they take place within the interstitial spaces of the
existing structural configurations of international politics.12 By producing
competing organizational and spatial logics at the level of the international
system, such practices can cumulatively lead to shifts in the relationship
between states as institutions and the ideational and cultural structures that
define symbolic boundaries of collective membership and belonging.13
Diaspora as a Useful Analytical Category

One of the reasons why the category of diaspora is so useful for shedding light
on the issues raised in the above two sections is because diasporas contain
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many of the identity components which have defined nation-states, yet can be
distinguished from the nation-state in terms of their organizational structure
and spatial logic. A diaspora can be defined as a social collectivity that exists
across state borders and that has succeeded over time to (1) sustain a collective national, cultural or religious identity through a sense of internal cohesion
and sustained ties with a real or imagined homeland and (2) display an ability
to address the collective interests of members of the social collectivity through
a developed internal organizational framework and transnational links.14
Thus, whereas nation-states consist largely of territorialized institutional
structures, diasporas consist of deterritorialized organizational structures and
transnational networks of relationships. Since both entities depend on an
identity to conceptually hold them together, investigating the ways in which
identifications are articulated within the diaspora also provides a useful means
of comparing and contrasting the ways in which identifications are articulated
within the nation-state. As ideal-types, then, we can conceive of diasporas and
nation-states differing from each other in both their organizational and spatial
logics, as explicated in Table 1 below. When viewed in this manner, we can
see that diasporas as social forms are not necessarily more nor less amorphous
or resistant to empirical investigation than nation-states; they simply differ
from nation-states in terms of both their organizational and spatial logics.15
Table 1
Organizational and Spatial Logic of Diasporas and Nation-States
Diaspora
Organizational logic
Spatial logic
Network
Deterritorialized
Nation-State
Institution
Territorialized
Some would argue that diasporas not only differ from nation-states, they
also increasingly present a challenge to the nation-state as an organizational
form. While this claim is often exaggerated in the literature and should be
treated as an empirical question rather than as an assumption, the argument
is based on the observation that the organizational and spatial logic of the diaspora as social form appears to be gaining in popularity as a model for political mobilization. This is not just a result of the increased ease with which it
is possible to maintain and sustain deterritorialized identity-based networks
over long distances due to advances in communications and transportation
technologies, but also due to the self-conscious efforts of political entrepreneurs who use this new environment to articulate, politicize and activate various diasporic identifications and practices (Basch et al., 1994: 20710).
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Thus while the diaspora as a social form is certainly not new the classical historical example is, of course, the Jewish diaspora scholars such as
Sheffer (1995: 9), Safran (1991) and Weiner (1986) argue that increased
international migration, combined with the ability to maintain ties with
ones country of origin have created a trend towards what they call the diasporization of ethnic and religious groups. The concept of diaspora has thus
been expanded to include ethnically defined groups such as Turks and
Moroccans in Western Europe; Filipinos in the US, Japan and the Middle
East; Koreans in Canada, the US and the Middle East; and religiously defined groups such as Muslims in Europe and elsewhere (Mandaville, 2001:
101ff.). Vertovec (1997) notes that diaspora is the term used today to
describe practically any population which is considered deterritorialized or
transnational that is, which has originated in a land other than that in
which it currently resides, and whose social, economic and political networks
cross the borders of nation-states or, indeed, span the globe.
In addition to economic push and pull factors affecting international
migration flows which are bound up with continuing NorthSouth (and
WestEast) inequalities, the structure of labor markets in the United States
and other western industrial countries, and the opening up of new areas of the
world to emigration following the collapse of communism the new diasporization of populations around the world is facilitated by the greater ease
of transportation and communication, which allows migrants to reach remote
countries and then maintain contacts with their homelands (Sheffer, 1995:
401; see also Wakeman, 1988, cited in Basch et al., 1994: 4). This process of
being increasingly able to maintain close ties to either a symbolic homeland
or a migration-sending state has meant a change in identity formation
processes, in which the national, ethnic and religious identities which define
migration-based or ethnic communities take on a transnational dimension,
and are embedded in a global, as opposed to a purely national, context. Indeed, the term diaspora is in some circles becoming a means of creating or
redefining a transnational identity for groups who do not necessarily have a
recent history of migration, or have not conceived of themselves explicitly as
constituting a diaspora. Thus, in addition to being a descriptive term of material realities, the concept of diaspora is also a prescriptive term in that it suggests organizational forms and strategies which can be taken up by political
entrepreneurs (and, as we shall show, state elites) as a means of constructing
identity in ways that move beyond the nationally defined categories of ethnic minority or immigrant, and which allow for identifications and forms of
coalition-building and political action which can take place across national
borders on a global, as well as a national and local, stage (Clifford, 1994;
Gilroy, 1993; Hall, 1990).
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One strand of research that has emerged on diaspora has been conceptual
and critical, largely treating diaspora as a social condition or form of consciousness. Research which treats diaspora as a form of consciousness has occurred across disciplinary boundaries, and has been undertaken by sociologists,
anthropologists, literary critics and those working within the traditions of
cultural studies and communication and media studies. One of the main contributions of this literature has been to introduce the concept of diaspora as
a means of critically interrogating hegemonic identities, and to theorize and
reflect upon the transnational and translocal dimensions of identity formation. Diasporic practices are thus viewed as bottom-up forms of resistance to
pressures for cultural homogenization that emanate from the nation-state,
from dominant discourses about race and ethnicity, or from processes of
globalization. The pioneering and influential work of Stuart Hall (1990),
Paul Gilroy (1993) and James Clifford (1994), as well as work by authors
such as Avtar Brah (1993), Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins (1998) and
others (see Modood and Werbner, 1997; Werbner and Modood, 1997) fall
into this category.
Still another strand of literature on diaspora employs a revised notion of
the traditional concept of ethnic diasporas as a means of exploring how new
forms of transnationalism are transforming traditional understandings of
national identity. Work in this tradition includes studies by Cohen (1997),
Sheffer (2003), Shain (1999) and others. In this literature, the term diaspora
refers less to a social condition than to an empirical reality the reality,
these authors would argue, of dispersed ethnic groups who are connected by
transnational networks and practices. Along similar lines, there is also an
interdisciplinary, empirical body of research on diaspora and ethnic minorities in Europe that has developed in response to the ethnic un-mixing,
migration and resettlement that occurred in the post-Cold War period. The
collapses of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have directed attention to the
Russian minorities in the Baltic states where disputes have emerged over citizenship, and to refugees from the former Yugoslavia who set up communities across Europe and North America (Brubaker, 1996; Hockenos, 2003;
Laitin, 1998; Melvin, 1995; Winland, 1999).
In addition to the above, there is a body of research on the political activities of diasporic communities which includes both newer work on diasporas
as political actors and earlier work that examined the impact of migrant interest groups and ethnic lobbies on American foreign policy (see Huntington,
1997; Mathias, 1981; Tucker et al., 1990; Uslaner, 1991; Weil, 1974; see also
Shain, 1999, for diasporas as promoters of US interests abroad). While earlier work treated diasporic communities as ethnic groups operating within
the state, the increasing politicization that many ethnic communities have
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undergone in recent years and the growing awareness of the importance of
diasporic ties with the sending country have encouraged researchers to also
pay attention to these groups links with their countries of origin, a dimension that was largely ignored until recently (Constas and Platias, 1993;
Hockenos, 2003; Shain and Barth, 2003; Winland, 1995; OstergaardNielsen, 2002). A rich array of empirical work has been generated as a result,
and the more traditional foreign policy analysis focus of earlier studies has
gradually given way to research that examines the political activities of diaspora groups from a transnational perspective.
One of the best known anthropological studies to recognize the practice
of transnationalism in the daily lives of migrant communities and to acknowledge that the effects of their actions can be felt in both the societies in which
they have settled and in the homes which they left behind, is the book
Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and
Deterritorialized Nation States (Basch et al., 1994). Primarily an ethnographic study of the Hispanic, Afro-Caribbean, Filipino and Haitian immigrant communities in the US, this pioneering work was one of the first to
draw attention to the theoretical importance of understanding that the daily
lives and experiences of many immigrant communities in the United States
were not limited to a single territorial space, in terms of discourse, practice
or strategies.
The observation that the current growth in cross-border social and political networks, movements, and ties of people who might have been traditionally labeled as migrants or ethnic minorities is politically significant, and
that the study of these patterns sheds light on deeper questions regarding the
relationship between identity, territory and the state under current historical
conditions, has thus been taken up by a group of scholars who have become
engaged in the study of transmigration and transnational communities (see
Basch et al., 1994; Danforth, 1995; Georges, 1990; Portes, 1999; Portes
et al., 1999; Schiller et al., 1992; Schiller et al., 1995; Smith and Guarnizo,
1998). Migration-based transnational communities, as defined by Basch et al.
(1994: 4, 6), are characterized by an emergent migration process in which
people live lives stretched across national boundaries . . . and take actions,
make decisions, and develop subjectivities and identities embedded in networks of relationships that connect them simultaneously to two or more
nation-states. In this emergent process, separate places become effectively a
single community through the continuous circulation of people, money, goods
and information, (Rouse, 1991: 14) as airplanes, telephones, tape cassettes,
camcorders, and mobile job markets reduce distances and facilitate . . . twoway traffic, legal and illegal, between the worlds places (Clifford, 1994:
304). Migrants thus develop public identities [which] are configured in relation
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to more than one nation-state and characterized by a situation of simultaneous embedded-ness in more than one society:
They are not sojourners because they settle and become incorporated in the
economy and political institutions, localities, and patterns of daily life of the
country in which they reside. However, at the very same time, they are engaged
elsewhere in the sense that they maintain connections, build institutions, conduct
transactions, and influence local and national events in the countries from which
they emigrated. (Schiller et al., 1995: 48)
One of the interesting and perhaps counterintuitive findings of such studies

is that the concept of diaspora has not only captured the imaginations of nonstate political entrepreneurs, but has also been nurtured and institutionalized
by state elites in many migration-sending countries. Developing countries in
particular have, in the past decade or so, attached increasing importance to
their overseas nationals political and economic potential (Portes, 1999: 467;
Laguerre, 1999). In most cases this has meant engineering a shift in official
rhetoric and public perceptions of nationals abroad. From being almost
regarded as defectors, emigrants are being embraced, granted dual nationality
and encouraged to naturalize and participate in the politics of their country of
residence (Basch et al., 1994). The governments of the Dominican Republic,
Columbia and Peru are all engaged in this new form of nation building in the
hope of tapping the political, economic and social potential of their co-ethnic
populations abroad and encouraging them to mobilize (Basch et al., 1994: 3).
In pursuit of the benefits that can accrue from their overseas citizens, governments have promoted policies that have ranged from
the creation of a specialized ministry or government department in Haiti and
Mexico, the granting of dual citizenship and the right to vote in national elections in Colombia, and new legislation allowing the election of representatives
of the diaspora to the national legislature in Colombia and the Dominican
Republic From these policies, it is clear that sending governments do not
want their immigrants to return, but rather to achieve a secure status in the
wealthy nations to which they have moved and from which they can make sustained economic and political contributions in the name of patriotism and
hometown loyalties. (Portes, 1999: 467)
So, [i]n very pragmatic ways, governments are institutionalizing transnational

practices (Schiller et al., 1992: 225). Ties between the Croatian diaspora in
North America and the Croatian government after independence, the overseas
Chinese and China, and ethnic Russians or Russian speakers in the near
abroad and the Russian Federation, are further well-known examples of external homelands reaching out to what they perceive as their co-ethnics abroad.16
Interestingly, then, if we return to our two-by-two table at the beginning of this
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section, we can see that state elites are turning to the organizational form of
diaspora as a means of capturing resources and loyalties abroad, leading anthropologists to coin the expression deterritorialized nation-states. In other words,
the institutionalizing of links between a state and its diaspora leads to a
change in both the discourses and practices that define membership and
belonging in the state. National identity remains salient and is still linked
symbolically to a specific territory, but the practices, strategies and policies by
which state elites link identity and territory are themselves transnational and
deterritorialized.
This decoupling of identity and territoriality, however, works differently
within the context of the relationship that emerges between diasporas and host
states. As we discuss later, the exercise of diasporic practices and politics
within the borders of the receiving or host-state is leading to changes in the
articulation of identity claims that also involve processes of denationalization,
pluralization or multiculturalism (along with reactionary backlashes to such
processes) within migration-receiving states. These two types of relationships
are not exhaustive, of course, but the point to be made is that in both these scenarios, diasporic practices impact upon state practices regarding the linkage
between identity and territory in concrete and measurable, albeit in quite different, ways. This suggests the utility of employing the concept of diaspora as a
means of inquiring into macro-level changes in the organizational structure of
international politics commonly associated with globalization, through an empirical focus on the practices and politics that inhabit contemporary transnational spaces.
A wide range of academic disciplines, including anthropology, sociology,
urban studies and cultural studies, are employing the notion of diaspora with
increasing vigor and success to highlight the structural ambiguities that characterize the contemporary nation-state. This has led some to put forth the
exaggerated claim that we have entered a post national age in which members of transnational communities . . . escape the power of the nation-state
to inform their sense of collective identity (Basch et al., 1994: 30). As the
two ensuing case studies will show, this claim captures some dimensions of
diasporic practices and politics but misses many others. Rather than discussing claims of postnationalism, deterritorialization and the deconstruction
of national culture in abstract terms, then, the point to be made is that these
claims are claims which are open to empirical investigation, and do not by
either definition or necessity belong exclusively to the domain of critical theory or postmodernism. Importing a concept of diaspora into the mainstream
constructivist research agenda, we argue, presents us with a way of organizing empirical research around questions surrounding the impact of transnational activities on the nation-state, and presents a means of investigating
common IR assumptions regarding the spatially bounded nature of the state.
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The discipline of IR has by and large been absent from the debates on the
upsurge and proliferation of diasporic communities and their politics which
have been multiplying and expanding across a variety of other social science
disciplines. This is unfortunate, given the focus of these debates on the
changing nature of the nation-state, and the fact that the nation-state provides the foundation on which our fundamental assumptions regarding the
organization of international political life are built in IR. Importing a concept of diaspora into IR as a means of broadening the constructivist research
agenda, therefore, does not imply an abandonment of the core concerns and
questions of the discipline. It rather means expanding the scope of our
research agenda in ways that facilitate the production of empirical research
that can help us to address those core concerns and questions.
Shifting Boundaries of National Identity in Europe:

The Role of Diasporas
One need only have a passing familiarity with the main themes that dominate
the contemporary European press to note the extent to which debates over
migration, multiculturalism and national citizenship shape public discourse
on national identity. The conventional wisdom in mainstream IR is that
these debates and transformations occur at the level of the state, and therefore fall within the domain of comparative politics and not International
Relations. One of the reasons why these debates have so much salience at the
national level, however, is because practices and discourses associated with
migration disclose and reveal the way in which states are being restructured
within the context of deeper changes at the international level due to
processes of globalization. Specifically, practices and politics associated with
migration point to the changing relationship between territory and political
identifications, and to new realms of the political that challenge our assumptions regarding the simple analytical distinctions commonly made between
what is internal vs external to the state.17
While much of the social constructivist IR literature on Western Europe has
focused on the creation of a supranational European identity, less attention has
been paid to the impacts of criss-crossing and interlocking transnational identities formed by migration networks which now stretch across Europe.18 An
attention to the phenomenon of migration and the proliferation of diasporic
practices calls into question the assertion that the state- and market-driven
processes of European integration are the only factors altering the relationship
between the state and national identity in Europe. Although the category of
nation-state is being problematized by some of the literature on European
integration and regionalization, there is little systematic research to be found
on another process that calls into question many central assumptions of IR
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regarding the state: this is the process of transnationalization of political identifications that is taking place in migration-based communities in Europe
and around the world. An investigation into this latter process therefore complements, yet differs in focus from both the literature on European integration
and the rapidly growing literature on migration, citizenship and national identity in Europe (e.g. Brubaker, 1992; Checkel, 1999; Ireland, 1994, 2004;
Joppke, 1999, 2000; Koopmans and Statham, 2000; Koslowski, 2000; Lahav,
2004; Soysal, 1994).
A study of the diasporic practices and politics that define migration-based
transnational communities in Western Europe points to several salient features of migration in Europe which these other literatures miss. First, in contrast to the literature on citizenship and national identity, the use of diaspora
as a category is a way of creating conceptual links between migration-sending
and migration-receiving states. Whereas the literature on citizenship focuses
on incorporation or integration policies of migration-receiving states in
Europe, a diasporic perspective points to the continuing importance of the
policy of the migration-sending state vis-a-vis its emigrant population.
Second, and relatedly, a focus on diasporic practices and politics points to
activity which occurs in the interstices between states in other words,
practices and politics which are occurring in transnational spaces, even if the
content of such practices is still often heavily laden with national, territorial,
and statist symbols.19 A focus on the transnational activities which occur in
the diaspora therefore illuminates the ways in which articulations of national
identities can become embedded in transnational practices, and may even
show how these micro-practices are contributing to macro-structural reconfigurations in the relationship between the state and national identity.
There are specific historical features of migration to Western Europe that
have shaped the forms of migration-based transnational networks which now
connect Western Europe to its periphery, but on a general level, the transnational communities which are found in Western Europe today are typical
of other migration-based communities around the globe: Technological
advances have led to cheaper and faster forms of communication and travel,
which allow migrants to stay in touch with their home countries on a regular basis. As Benedict Anderson (1994: 322) has observed:
the communications revolution has profoundly affected the subjective
experience of migration. The Moroccan construction worker in Amsterdam
can every night listen to Rabats broadcasting services and has no difficulty in
buying pirated cassettes of his countrys favourite singers. The illegal alien,
Yakuza-sponsored, Thai bartender in a Tokyo suburb shows his Thai comrades
karaoke videotapes just made in Bangkok. The Filipina maid in Hong Kong
phones her sister in Manila and sends money electronically to her mother in
Cebu. The successful Indian student in Vancouver can keep in daily touch with
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her former Delhi classmates by electronic mail. To say nothing of an ever-growing
blizzard of faxes.
In the following pages, we illustrate how these general dynamics are manifested within the everyday practices and politics of two diaspora communities
in Europe, the Greek-Cypriots of Britain, and the Kurds of Germany and
other Western European states.
Over the course of a few decades, both the Greek-Cypriot and Kurdish
diasporas have emerged as relatively coherent transnational collective identities, with internal organizational structures that successfully mobilize their
members and engage in sustained political activities vis-a-vis both their home
and host states. In both cases, political entrepreneurs have drawn upon territorial symbols and nationalist ideologies to maintain transnational identity
networks although this has occurred in different ways in the two cases,
representing the contrasting relationships that these two diasporas have with
their home states. In the Greek-Cypriot diaspora, Cypriot state elites have
engaged in processes of top-down political mobilization of the diaspora, and
have played an important role in encouraging diasporic practices amongst
overseas Greek-Cypriots as a means of generating financial flows and political support. The relationship between the Greek-Cypriot diaspora and the
Republic of Cyprus has thus been largely synergistic. In the Kurdish diaspora
it is non-state political entrepreneurs who have constructed a Kurdish
national identity around the notion of Kurdistan in order to create a
transnational constituency which is then mobilized to challenge official versions of Turkish national identity as articulated by Turkish state elites. The
relationship between the Kurdish diaspora and the Republic of Turkey has
thus been more antagonistic.
In both of our case studies, therefore, the transnational processes of diaspora mobilization have led to an increasing disjunction between the geopolitical boundaries of the state and its symbolic boundaries of national
belonging but in very different ways. In the Cypriot case, the diaspora has
acted as a means of extending and projecting Cypriot national identity
beyond the territory of Cyprus and into new political spaces within the
United Kingdom, whereas in the Kurdish case, the diaspora has mounted a
challenge to Turkish nationalism and official versions of the national identity
of Turkey, while simultaneously challenging hegemonic versions of nationalism in Germany and other European states. Thus, in addition to illustrating
the types of micro-level and everyday practices that lead to changes in the
articulation of national identifications at the individual and community level,
we go beyond much of the anthropological and sociological literature on
diasporas by examining how the practices which occur in diasporic spaces
also impact on the (re-)construction of national identities and their relationship to states and state practices.
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Overseas Greek-Cypriots: From Apodemoi (Migrants) to a Diasporic
Community
Communities of Greek-Cypriot immigrants have existed in Great Britain
since the early 1920s, but contact between Greek-Cypriot migrants and their
co-ethnics in Cyprus during the inter-war period was too limited to argue
that such ties constituted diasporic practices or politics.20 Many of the early
migrants who arrived in Britain in the inter-war years were never to lay eyes
on their families in Cyprus again, and the difficulties of travel and limits
of technology were decisive determinants in the contact between Cypriot
migrants and their home (Constantinides, 1990: 923).
Trips by boat and rail between Cyprus and Britain became more common in
the 1950s, but it was not until the revolution in airfares during the 1960s that
visiting and travel between the two countries became a regular feature of the
migration experience. Since then, ties between the UK-based community and
Cyprus have been maintained with greater frequency, efficiency and ease. Over
the years there has been a transformation in the means of communication and
channels with which contact is maintained. Telephone calls, e-mails and fax messages have replaced the letters and telegrams of earlier days, remittances are sent
electronically rather than in registered envelopes, and air travel has replaced the
longer sea-voyage and train journey of the first half of the century. The parcel
of Cypriot halloumi, feta, olives and loukanika has become a thing of the past,
as grocery stores in contemporary Britain now cater to these needs. So time and
distance have, thanks to the forces we commonly refer to as globalization,
become compressed today, and if need be, contact between Greek-Cypriots in
Britain and Greek-Cypriots in Cyprus can take place in real time on a daily basis.
In the case of overseas Greek-Cypriots, regular links with their ancestral
home are maintained in a variety of ways: through visits, capital investment,
cash remittances, letters, consumption patterns and telephone calls. The immigrant weeklies published in London also play a significant role in maintaining
links between the two communities by allowing Cypriots in the UK to keep
abreast of developments and politics in Cyprus. This also works the other way
around, as Cypriot dailies carry weekly supplements with News of Cypriots in
Britain. It is also common for UK-based Cypriots to invest capital in the island
by purchasing holiday homes or plots of land. And travel is a regular feature of
communication as families, relatives and friends take turns visiting and staying
with each other during holiday periods. Compared with other Commonwealth
countries, a trip to Cyprus is relatively near and moderately priced, which
means that Cypriot immigrants suffer less isolation from their original homeland than most other Commonwealth immigrants to Britain (Oakley, 1971:
123). So, the constant stream of contact and communication between the
Greek-Cypriots in the UK and family, friends and relatives in Cyprus results in
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the fact that the Greek-Cypriot immigrant community has undergone a transformation over the past decades from experiencing themselves as marginalized
immigrants in Britain to members of a transnational community that is sustained by a set of everyday diasporic practices.
These changes in daily social patterns and practices have been accompanied
by changes in the political experience of migration. The same compression of
time and distance that has affected everyday patterns and practices among
immigrants has also encouraged successive Cypriot governments over the last
quarter of a century to take a keen interest in the half a million overseas GreekCypriots scattered across the globe.21 If the rhetoric of officials is reliable, and
there are about as many Greek-Cypriots resident abroad as there are living in
Cyprus, then government interest in the diaspora is hardly surprising. As officials in the homeland became increasingly aware of the potential political influence diasporic lobbies could wield, the latent power of the wider Greek-Cypriot
diaspora captured their imagination. The Cypriot governments decision to
attach increasing importance to the diaspora has meant engineering a shift in
official rhetoric and public perceptions of Greek-Cypriots abroad. From being
anonymous migrants, the leaders and prominent members of the diaspora have
over the years acquired the status of VIPs, while members of the lay diaspora
have been constructed as honorable and distinguished citizens. Like other small
states with substantial numbers resident abroad, the Cypriot leadership has
engaged in a new form of nation-state building aimed at creating a political
discourse which encourages the populations that make up its diaspora to continue to see themselves as citizens of their ancestral home. Although fully
aware that the majority of Greek-Cypriots abroad are actually citizens of their
countries of residence, official discourse dictates that migrants of Cypriot origin
and their offspring of whatever generation are still an integral part of Cyprus
and are therefore addressed as nationals of the country.22
This ideology is also promoted and sustained through the use of policies and
regulations specifically designed to favor and benefit the diaspora and returnees.
Much like honorary or career consuls, they enjoy a certain number of limited
facilities, privileges and immunities. For example, during the 1990s, overseas
Greek-Cypriots who planned to repatriate were entitled to a rent rebate for a
year, the facility to import duty free household goods and a duty free car,
currency concessions, medical coverage, free Greek-language classes and certain
exemptions from military service.23 So as well as imagining themselves as GreekCypriots, the diaspora is also encouraged to experience themselves as such
when they enjoy the rights and privileges which the Cypriot state bestows on
them. In this way, when local Cypriot politicians address diaspora gatherings
it seems natural to the overseas Greek-Cypriots, even though they live thousands of miles away, to be reminded of the duties and responsibilities that come
with belonging to a politically divided island. Thus, diasporic practices serve not
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only to provide members of the diaspora with concrete privileges in Cyprus,
they also provide the Cypriot state with important benefits, such as a political
lobby within Britain, and important symbolic and demographic resources
within the context of the islands continuing political division.
Overseas Greek-Cypriot group identity has therefore become re-situated
and rearticulated within the larger context enabled by a global communication and transportation infrastructure over the past several decades. Current
technology makes it possible to create an illusion of spatial contiguity, a lack
of spatial separation (Werbner, 1999: 26). In the case of the Greek-Cypriot
diaspora, the Cypriot state has played an important role in politicizing and
mobilizing migrants abroad. By articulating a deterritorialized version of
national identity, and by providing material incentives as a means of capturing
the loyalties of Greek-Cypriots living abroad, the state has managed to create
a version of state-based long-distance nationalism which is backed up by a
form of long-distance citizenship for the deterritorialized members of a
Cypriot national community. In this process, the symbolic importance of territory, national identity and the state has certainly not diminished, and may
have in fact increased in tandem with the expansion of transnational ties and
diasporic practices and politics which have marked the interactions between
the overseas community and the home state over the past several decades.
Technological changes associated with globalization have therefore led not
to the erosion, but rather the spatial rearticulation and reconfiguration, of
national identifications. This spatial rearticulation has occurred not just within
the diasporic community itself, but has been actively pursued by the Cypriot
state, which has institutionalized policies that have led to the embedding of
national identities within new transnational spaces and diasporic practices.
Overseas Greek-Cypriots have undergone a transformation from viewing
themselves as immigrants on the margins of British society to members of a
transnational diaspora with interests in both Britain and Cyprus. In this process, Cypriot state elites have used diasporic practices as a means of constructing a citizenry that stretches beyond the territorial confines of the Republic
of Cyprus, and which can be called upon to invest in and lobby for the interests of the Cypriot state. The national boundaries of belonging and membership in the Cypriot political community have been expanded beyond the
territorial boundaries of the Republic of Cyprus to include a transnational
community of overseas Cypriots in Britain and other states, most of whom are
legal citizens of these states. The organizational structure of the transnational
Cypriot community stretches across and penetrates the territorial boundaries
of states, such as Great Britain, where it also interacts with the domestic structures of the state by engaging in lobbying for Cypriot interests, and by
challenging traditional notions of national belonging in Britain through its
support for policies that promote multiculturalism. Thus, a set of diasporic
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practices has led to shifts in the articulation of national identity in both the
migration-sending state of Cyprus, and the migration-receiving state of
Great Britain. In both these states there has been a partial decoupling of the
fit between a states territory and its national identity.
Turkish Immigrant Labor: From Gastarbeiter to a Kurdish Diaspora
The articulation of a national identity, and the relationship of that national
identity to a symbolic territory, has also been an important feature of Kurdish
diasporic practices and politics in Germany and other European states. In the
case of the Kurds, however, the relationship between the diaspora community
and the home state of Turkey is a very different one from that which has developed between the Greek-Cypriot community in Britain and the Republic of
Cyprus. The availability of new communications technology and cheap transportation has meant that dispersed groups of Kurdish exiles and political elites
have been able to interact and build dense networks across Europe in ways that
bypass, contest and challenge official constructions of national identity in
Turkey. This has created a deterritorialized social, cultural and political community, which nonetheless is still largely defined by a territorial identification
with Kurdistan a symbolic homeland whose borders stretch across parts of
contemporary Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Since the concept of Kurdistan in
particular, and the expression of Kurdish identity in general, have been subject
to intense political repression within the Turkish state, the transnational space
inhabited by Kurds abroad has served as an arena for Kurdish political entrepreneurs to socially construct, articulate and mobilize nationalist identifications which fundamentally oppose official versions of nationalism propagated
by the Turkish state.
The development of a Kurdish nationalist identification constructed
through transnational diasporic practices in Europe is something that emerged
as a politically salient factor over the past several decades. Communities of
Turkish citizens in Germany and other Western European countries have their
origins in patterns of labor migration that began during the postwar economic boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s (Akgndz, 1993; Bhagwati
et al., 1984; Faist, 2000: 17193; Herbert, 1993). Prior to the 1980s, the
majority of laborers from Turkey in Germany and other states were identified
as Turkish guest workers (Gastarbeiter) labor immigrants who were temporarily in Europe for economic reasons. While many of the first economic
migrants came from the Kurdish region of Turkey in southeastern Anatolia,
they did not articulate a Kurdish nationalist identity in the early days of migration flows from Turkey to Europe. This changed, however, following the
1980 military coup and the repression of political activity in Turkey during
the early 1980s. Political exiles from Turkey left for Europe, and began to
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create an organizational structure that would mobilize the immigrant population transnationally, in the process creating links across immigrant communities
in Europe and underground opposition groups in Turkey (Bruinessen, 1998;
Leggewie, 1996; White, 2000).
The politicization of a Kurdish identity and the development of a Kurdish
nationalist movement within the Turkish immigrant community in Germany
occurred throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Cassettes and video-cassettes during the 1980s, and since the 1990s, satellite television, have been used to foster
and systematize an independent Kurdish national identity in the diaspora. This
has involved the standardization of a Kurdish language, Kurdish national history, Kurdish cultural practices, and the production of a body of cultural
symbols, such as music, art and literature. Kurdish nationalism in the diaspora,
therefore, has consisted of an active social construction of new national symbols,
practices and identifications by political elites, rather than simply the maintenance of cultural and affective ties with an ancestral homeland. The construction
and mobilization of a Kurdish nationalist identity by diaspora elites has been so
successful that the number of self-identified Kurds in the Turkish diaspora
has steadily increased over the past 20 years (Leggewie, 1996).
Kurdish political entrepreneurs in Europe have therefore been able to produce and sustain an alternative imagined community beyond that defined by
either the host state in which they reside, or the home state from which they
emigrated.24 The communications technology characterizing current
processes of globalization has made it possible for dispersed communities to
pool their assets and take advantage of variations in both community resources
and political opportunity structures across states. This division of labor and
pooling of resources has manifested itself, for example, in the organizational
structure of a Kurdish satellite television that has broadcasted under a variety
of names.25 Between 1995 and 1999 the headquarters of the Kurdish station
was in London, from where it broadcast via satellite to Europe, North Africa
and West Asia. Most of the production work, however, was carried out in various other European capitals, at studios in Brussels, Berlin, Stockholm and
Moscow. This organizational structure took advantage of the various resources
available in the local contexts for example, the studio in Sweden produced
many of the cultural and childrens programming, taking advantage of the fact
that the Swedish state sponsored the translation of Swedish childrens literature into Kurdish and paid for childrens native language programming,
whereas the studio in Moscow, with its cheaper labor rates, was responsible for
more technical and time-consuming tasks such as dubbing and providing subtitles (Hassanpour, 1997: 246; Hassanpour, 1998).
Observers agree that satellite television has played an important role in developing and expanding the use of Kurmanji and other Kurdish languages/dialects
(as opposed to Turkish) within the Kurdish diaspora community in Western
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Europe. The role of Kurmanji and other Kurdish languages/dialects (i.e. Zaza)
in Kurdish community broadcasting increased in the late 1990s from a ratio of
approximately 20% Kurdish and 80% Turkish at the outset to a ratio of 80%
Kurdish and 20% Turkish.
In addition to reaching the Kurdish diaspora, Kurdish satellite television
was able to bypass Turkish state authorities and broadcast in Turkey, despite
Turkish laws that in the 1990s prohibited broadcasts in Kurdish. A Reuters
news report from the mid-1990s noted that, despite the ponderous some
would say boring nature of its broadcasts . . . it has its intensely loyal viewers, and all because the language of choice is Kurdish.26 Broadcasts during
the 1990s had to be watched in secret in Turkey, and there were reports of
satellite dishes being destroyed, coffee houses being raided, and even torture
of those who were suspected of watching the Kurdish language programming
that was being broadcast from Europe (Hassanpour, 1997). However, the
existence of Kurdish satellite television posed a real problem for Turkey in the
1990s, since satellite programming of all different kinds (including international programming such as CNN and MTV) has been widely popular. The
existence of Kurdish satellite television operated transnationally by non-state
political entrepreneurs in the diaspora therefore reflected both the problems
Turkey has in suppressing Kurdish identity in the age of technology and open
borders, as well as the growing role of the usually wealthier and better educated Kurdish diaspora in Europe.27
Kurdish satellite television, however, is just one example of the many ways
in which the Kurdish diaspora in Europe has remained linked with Turkey and
has agitated against official constructions of Turkish nationalism. Published
materials from the diaspora were brought into Turkey during the 1990s, and
intellectuals in the diaspora regularly wrote for underground and/or Kurdish
publications in Turkey. In addition, information flows in two ways, and the
intensive Turkish media links between Turkey and Europe meant that news
about the war in southeastern Anatolia during the 1980s and 1990s and other
developments reached Kurdish communities instantaneously.28 Political developments in Turkey could therefore be experienced in real time in Germany
and other states in Europe and take on a life of their own outside of the
Turkish state. As one author wrote in the mid-1990s:
There is an enormous amount of interaction between the Kurdish Diaspora in
Germany and Kurdistan. Newspapers, faxes and telephones, videocassettes, music
and language cassettes, films, travel and visits to friends and relatives in Kurdistan
bind the Kurdish Diaspora in Germany so tightly to events in Kurdistan, in
ways that most of German society would find hard to imagine. It may sound
rather provocative, but an exiled Kurd in Germany, who hasnt been able to see
his homeland for over 20 years because of Turkish policies against the Kurds,
is probably better informed regarding developments there, than the average
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German is about conditions in the new federal states (East Germany) under
conditions in which unlimited travel is possible. (Mnch, 1994: 177 [authors
translation from the German])
All this has led to a dense exchange of information and other cultural and
social goods across territorial boundaries. This exchange allows for both the
development of a diasporic public sphere which serves as a transnational space
for negotiating a Kurdish identity, as well as a tightly connected system of
cross-border networks that can be used to engage in political mobilization,
including fund-raising, lobbying and recruitment to the Kurdish nationalist
movement. This does not mean that the Kurdish transnational community
which has developed is necessarily a unitary force within the transnational
social spaces which have arisen around migration-based networks that stretch
between Germany and Turkey, a highly contested transnational political field
has emerged in which the divisions and conflicts which plague Turkish politics
are mirrored in the political stances which emerge in the diaspora.29 What the
transnational space of the diaspora has provided is a space in which Kurds who
may have once lived in politically isolated lives in villages in Turkey (or other
countries) have had the chance to come into contact with self-identified Kurds
from other regions and countries. In one survey of Kurds in Germany, every
respondent had had social contacts with Kurds from other countries a
process that appears to have led to an expanded sense of national identity that
is emerging and being constituted, however, within a transnational network
and international context (Amman, 1997).
Thus, in the case of the Kurds, a portion of labor migrants from Turkey
underwent a transformation from viewing themselves as apolitical Turkish
Gastarbeiter to members of a transnational Kurdish nationalist movement that
used its position in Europe to also engage in political lobbying for Kurdish
rights and autonomy in Turkey. This process has been led by non-state political entrepreneurs who have used diasporic practices as a means of bypassing
and countering and contesting the official constructions of national identity
that are produced by Turkish state elites, and as a way of generating financial
and political support for Kurdish opposition groups and political parties that
were banned within Turkey in the 1990s. The organizational structure of the
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which was a legal entity in Germany until
being banned in 1993, its underground entities and successor organizations, and
other Kurdish groups, such as the social democratic organization KOMKAR,
have all been transnational and network-based, and have used transnational
spaces in Europe to challenge hegemonic constructions of Turkish nationalism,
a practice that would have been impossible within the territorial boundaries of
the Turkish state during most of the 1980s and 1990s.
Throughout this process that has occurred in transnational spaces, there has
been a parallel process of pluralization that has occurred within the territorial
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boundaries of the Republic of Turkey. Kurdish identities have been strengthened through the interactions that have occurred between the Kurdish population in Turkey and the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. This pressure for increased
pluralism within Turkey has combined with pressure for Kurdish rights from
European states who have been influenced by Kurdish lobbying in Europe and
are making this a condition of Turkish membership in the European Union.
The combination of these practices has resulted in significant shifts in the articulation of national identity in Turkey, including a growing acceptance of cultural pluralism, as indicated by changes in practices and policies, such as the
legalization of broadcasts in the Kurdish language in October 2001.
The diasporic practices that have led to the construction of a Kurdish nationalist movement in Europe have also called into question state practices of immigrant incorporation in Germany, which had relied in the past on close
cooperation via bilateral treaties with the migration-sending Turkish state for
the provision of immigrant services, such as Turkish-language education and
the staffing of mosques and other religious institutions. By articulating an
alternative national identity, Kurdish activists in the diaspora have also
confronted European states with demands for access to new immigrant services and educational opportunities, such as Kurdish-language instruction.
This, in turn, helped to challenge the idea that immigrants in Germany were
merely guests that could be serviced by the institutions of the migrationsending state (in this case, the Republic of Turkey), and has raised issues of
multiculturalism in countries that have until recently viewed themselves,
despite the large populations of immigrants within their borders, as not
being countries of immigration.30
In contrast to the Greek-Cypriot case, it has been non-state political entrepreneurs, rather than state elites, who have taken advantage of new communication technologies to engage in diasporic practices that involve the
creation of transnational organizational structures and identity networks.
Similar to the case of the Greek-Cypriot diaspora, however, political mobilization in the Kurdish diaspora has led to a significant redefinition of the
symbolic boundaries of national belonging that has, in turn, created a disjunction between the state and national identity in both Turkey and
Germany. Thus, in both cases, diasporic practices of transnational identity formation have challenged dominant conceptions of national identity, thereby
calling into question the fit between a particular national identity and the
state as an administrative or territorial unit.
Conclusion
A comparison of the diasporic practices and politics that occur in the GreekCypriot and Kurdish diasporas in Europe shows how transnational practices
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lead to a decoupling of the geopolitical boundaries of the state from national
and symbolic boundaries of membership and belonging. This decoupling
calls into question the analytical utility of assuming a fit between state and
national identity in IR theory, and points to the fact that the relationship
between the boundaries of the state as an actor, institution or territory, and
the boundaries of its national identity should be the object of empirical
investigation rather than treated as a basic assumption. This is especially true
in an era in which new communications technologies and cheaper transportation costs are allowing actors in the international system to increasingly
engage in diasporic practices of identity formation that, in turn, allow for the
construction and maintenance of cross-border political identifications and
transnational social collectivities.
The comparison shows that, rather than viewing globalization processes as
a zero-sum competition between states and non-state actors, the availability of
new communication technologies and cheap transportation has led to the
emergence of diaspora mobilization as a preferred strategy of both state elites
and non-state political entrepreneurs. Instead of making generalizations about
globalization, the impact of transnational mobilization processes on state identities and practices requires empirical exploration in specific case studies. We
have traced processes and impacts in two case studies of diaspora mobilization
in Europe that are, we assert, representative of a global trend towards the
adaptation of diasporic practices by actors in the international system. An empirical research agenda that explores other instances of diasporic practices and
transnational identity formation can shed further light on macro-level transformations that are taking place around the world in the articulation and
mobilization of deterritorialized and transnational collective identities, and the
relationship of these identities to the institutional apparatuses of states.
Certainly, the emergence of transnational and diasporic practices and politics
is not the only way in which the territorial logic of the states system is being
challenged under conditions of globalization. Diasporic practices and identities
need to be studied alongside other important factors that challenge the organizational and spatial logics of the contemporary states system. These include
regionalization and efforts to construct a supranational European identity; empire and contemporary American hegemony; as well as cosmopolitanism, the
spread of liberalism, and the emergence of structures of global governance.
These various factors have all received a significant degree of attention in the IR
literature. To date, less attention has been paid to what we argue is an equally
significant development: the emergence of diasporas and transnational identity
networks. For the most part, migration and multiculturalism in Europe are still
largely treated by IR scholars as issues of domestic politics, rather than as factors that directly challenge basic disciplinary assumptions regarding the relationship between the state and national identity.
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Mainstream IR theory still tends to conflate the concepts of state and
national identity. Yet our case studies have shown that articulations of
national identity are increasingly embedded, not just within a confined territorially defined state entity, but also within transnational practices and political
activities. Our two examples, therefore, show how transnational practices made
possible by transformations in communications technologies have led to shifts
in the fit between state and national identity in both migration-sending
and migration-receiving states in Europe. Importing the concept of diaspora
into IR is a useful way of analysing these processes, since it provides a means
of examining how identity constructs can be deployed to sustain collective
identities across territorial borders. This source of change in state identities is
invisible to mainstream IR theorizing, since the processes by which it occurs
are transnational and take place within the interstices of existing structures.
As Appadurai (1991: 192) writes in the context of understanding globalization and its implications from the perspective of the discipline of anthropology:
There is an urgent need to focus on what is now called deterritorialization.
This term applies not only to obvious examples such as transnational corporations and money markets, but also to ethnic groups, sectarian movements, and
political formations, which increasingly operate in ways that transcend specific
territorial boundaries and identities.
Mapping and dissecting this process, which involves a changing relationship

between the material and the ideational, and understanding the larger implications of this process for the contours of international politics, provides a
more promising line of theoretical inquiry, we argue, than that which is currently represented by either the rationalist/constructivist or positivist/postpositivist impasses. We have attempted to demonstrate in this article that it is
counterproductive, even for analytical purposes, to think of identity as being
spatially bounded or fixed within state entities, as has been portrayed in much
of the IR literature. At the same time, though, we have shown that states as
institutional structures are still at the centre of current processes of spatial
reconfiguration, and that the symbolic importance of both national identity
and territory are not necessarily fading, but are rather being reappropriated
and rearticulated through a variety of transnational practices and politics.
Importing the category of diaspora into mainstream constructivist theorizing is a useful way of generating new empirical research which can help us
to analyse, explain and understand such macro-level changes in international
politics. The fact that a variety of disciplines across the social sciences are currently grappling with the concept of diaspora, and are analysing the role that
diasporic practices and politics play in changing the relationship between
state and nation, means that there is a large body of both theoretical and
empirical research for IR scholars to draw upon in the quest for an expanded
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constructivist research agenda. Such a research agenda is necessary if we are to
make sense of the wide variety of transnational practices and politics that take
place in the interstices of the international political system. The investigation
of such practices and politics will increasingly be viewed as something that is
not marginal, but rather is of fundamental importance to the basic concerns
and questions of IR.
Notes
1. For reviews, evaluations and critiques of the progress made see Abdelal et al.
(2006); Checkel (1998); Desch (1998); Hopf (1998).
2. On nationalism, see Barnett (1995); Cederman (1997); Snyder and Ballentine
(1996); Snyder (2000); Van Evera (1994); on regional identities see Adler and
Barnett (1998) and Mercer (1995); see Boli and Thomas (1999) and Finnemore
(1996) for international norms; Huntington (1996) for civilizations.
3. There has been an increase in literature of late that has moved beyond the statecentric focus of IR theory, such as the literatures on empire, American hegemony
or European integration. However, this literature has not generally probed the
relationship between territoriality and identity.
4. On the methodological problems of studying transnational and non-state phenomena in international politics, see Katzenstein et al. (1998: 19).
5. We do not deal at length with the issue of globalization here. On globalization
and culture more generally see Appadurai (1996); Held et al. (1999); Robertson
(1992); Waters (1995).
6. This self-reflexive aspect of globalization processes is incorporated into Waters definition of globalization as a social process in which the constraints of geography
on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding (Waters, 1995: 3).
7. On this point, see discussions in Barkin and Cronin (1994: 11011); Cederman
(1997: 1619; 2002); Connor (1972, 1978); Haas (1986, 1997). As several of
these authors point out, Webers (1981: 176) distinction between the state as a
territorially defined organization and the nation as a community of sentiment
has been largely dropped by analyses in IR.
8. For an assessment of the current state of IR as defined by the rationalistconstructivist debate, see Katzenstein et al. (1998). For a frequency count of the
use of identity, see Abdelal et al. (2006).
9. For an argument concerning the inadequacies of state-centric constructivism in
explaining either the democratic peace or nationalist and ethnic conflict, see
Cederman and Daase (2003).
10. The term unbundled territoriality is drawn from Ruggie (1993).
11. On the deconstruction of the state into its components, see, for example Agnew
(1994); Agnew and Corbridge (1995); Ashley (1987); Campbell (1998a, 1998b);
Mitchell (1988, 1991); OTuathail (1996); Shapiro (1997); Weber (1995). On IR
and gendered and postcolonial identifications, see Doty (1996a); Peterson (1992);
Pettman (1996); Sylvester (1994); Krishna (1999); Ling (1996).
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12. On the importance of practices that occur in the interstices of structures as sources
of social and political change see Mann (1986: 16).
13. By focusing on diasporic practices we do not claim here that these are the only
or most important source of change in the international system rather, they
provide one possible avenue for further theorization and empirical enquiry.
14. Definitions of diaspora have been hotly contested in the literature, making it, like
the state, an essentially contested concept (Connolly, 1993). For examples of
definitions of diaspora, see Cohen (1996, 1997); Esman (1986); Safran (1991);
Sheffer (1993). We do not attempt to resolve the debate here, but rather survey
the existing literature to suggest the contours of what the category of diaspora in
IR would include.
15. For a comparison on the varying definitions and amorphous nature of the state
as a conceptual category, see Badie and Birnbaum (1983); Nettl (1968).
16. On the Croatian diaspora in Canada see Winland (1995). On the overseas Chinese
see Liu (1998). On the Russian diaspora see Laitin (1998); Melvin (1995). On the
influence of home states on diasporas more generally see Ostergaard Nielsen
(2003).
17. On the distinction between the internal and external in International Relations
theory see Walker (1993).
18. For examples of literature that examines the construction of a supranational
European identity, see for example Cederman (2001); Risse et al. (1999); Schimmelfennig (2000); Wiener (2004).
19. This is not to say that all forms of diasporic politics must be centered on national
identities. The increasing use of the term Muslim as an identity category in Europe
fosters a common sense of identity between Muslim communities in Europe, and
Muslim populations in places such as Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and Uzbekistan,
thus, in effect, seeking to create a Muslim diaspora or transnational umma. See
Mandaville (2001); Roy (2004).
20. For an overview of migration from Cyprus to Great Britain see Anthias (1992);
Oakley (1989).
21. Some of the information in this section is drawn from the Fifteenth Annual
Meeting of the Central Executive Councils of the World Federation of Overseas
Cypriots (POMAK) and the International Coordinating Committee Justice for
Cyprus (PSEKA) held in Nicosia, 2427 August 1998.
22. Extracts from the address by the Director of Immigration Republic of Cyprus,
D. Karakoulas at the First Conference of Overseas Cypriots, Nicosia (1976: 107).
According to Anthias (1998: 569), the Cypriot state chooses to describe Cypriots
abroad as apodemoi (migrants) and purposely avoids using the term diaspora
because of the connotations this has in terms of loss of identity and unlikelihood
of return. This policy has come about largely as a result of what the state perceives
as the demographic challenge presented by the Turkish presence on the island.
23. From a conversation with the Director of the Service for Overseas Cypriots, Costas
Maliotis, Nicosia, August 1998. Also, see Cyprus to-day: A Quarterly Cultural and
Informative Review of the Ministry of Education, Nicosia: Press and Information
Office, Vol. XXVI, OctoberDecember 1988, No. 4, 45.
24. See Anderson (1983) on the concept of an imagined national community.
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25. The station broadcast as MED-TV between 1995 and 1999, and as MEDYA-TV
from 1999 until February 2004, and then was reconstituted as Roj-TV. MEDTVs license was revoked in April 1999 by the British authorities for broadcasting
material that advocated violence. MEDYA-TV was shut down by the French
authorities in February 2004; a new Kurdish broadcasting channel Roj-TV, based
in Denmark, opened shortly afterwards.
26. Reuters, 15 May 1995.
27. Reuters, 15 May 1995.
28. The war was being fought between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK), a separatist organization demanding Kurdish autonomy. For an overview of the politics surrounding the war, see Barkey and Fuller (1998).
29. On the notion of contested political fields in diasporas, see Brubaker (1996, esp.
5576). In the case of the political field that stretches between Turkey and
Germany, other identities include Turkish nationalists, leftists and Islamists.
30. The claim that Germany was not a country of immigration was an official component of the political platform of German center right parties until 2001.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this article was first presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the
International Studies Association, Chicago, IL, February 2024, 2001. Fiona Adamson
thanks the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) MacArthur Foundation Program
on Peace and Security in a Changing World for their support in making this collaboration possible, and both authors also acknowledge the support of a European Science
Foundation grant for work deriving from the international workshop, Diasporas and
Ethnic Migrants in 20th Century Europe Humboldt University, Berlin, May 2023
1999. Lars-Erik Cederman, Rainer Mnz, Rainer Ohliger, Jack Snyder, Seira Tamang
and several anonymous reviewers provided very helpful comments on previous drafts.
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489-526 EJT-083145.

Remapping the Boundaries of State and

The structural components of a state are regularly conflated with a states

European Journal of International Relations Copyright 2007

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

Expanding the Constructivist Research Agenda: Transnational

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

Diaspora as a Useful Analytical Category

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

One of the interesting and perhaps counterintuitive findings of such studies

So, [i]n very pragmatic ways, governments are institutionalizing transnational

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

Shifting Boundaries of National Identity in Europe:

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)

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Adamson and Demetriou: Remapping the Boundaries

Mapping and dissecting this process, which involves a changing relationship

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European Journal of International Relations 13(4)