Transitional justice scholarship has importantly analyzed how European groups use Holocaust-related legislation to create a unified political culture. While this research has made many valuable contributions, it does not include various other external actors, who also influence European political culture through transitional justice measures related to the Holocaust. This analysis expands the existing research about transitional justice and Holocaust restitution by analyzing the influential role U.S. intermediation played in Latvia’s 2022 Holocaust restitution law. The findings of this research do not contradict the existing scholarship; rather, they broaden it by unpacking how the U.S. influences European political culture through Holocaust restitution legislation.

International student migration (ISM) makes up an increasingly significant part of all international migration. Scholars have unpacked various aspects of this global mobility. While ISM scholarship has largely focused on a particular stream of migration—namely, student migration from the Global South to the Global North—recent studies have expanded this research to include more diverse case studies. ISM scholarship has also analysed education agents, who provide migration infrastructures and enable student mobility (or, in some cases, immobility). But the scholarship's characterisations of these agents remain somewhat limited: Studies focus largely on the oversized role agents play in student recruitment processes—that is, as those who enable initial mobility. This paper analyzes a unique case study—Indian medical students in Yerevan, Armenia—to unpack education agents' extensive, oftentimes problematic roles in structuring students' postmigration experiences.

Scholars have done a great deal to unpack the motivations sitting behind nationalists’ appropriation of Holocaust-related memory laws in several eastern European and Baltic states. While these accounts have shed important light on memory politics, there remains much scope for further study. For example, several Eastern European and Baltic states have passed resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide, as well. Furthermore, the existing literature does not provide any analytical tools to conceptualize the dynamic and complex processes giving rise to memory laws. This article broadens the memory laws scholarship through an original analysis of Latvia's Armenian genocide recognition resolution of 2021. The findings highlight how diverse actors support and pass memory laws through a process of constructivist memory politics. Constructivist memory politics involves the strategies political actors employ to change the salience or meaning of historical events in the creation and promotion of memory laws. Although the analysis focuses on a single case, it provides the analytical tools to reorient how scholars approach memory laws both in Europe and elsewhere.

Noting an overreliance on North American and European-based understandings of race and ethnicity, many sociologists have called for research in new spaces. But the same conceptual and regional limitations apply to several other studies. One example of this is multiculturalism. Scholars tend to associate multiculturalism with international migration and ethnic pluralism. As such, they typically study multiculturalism in the most ethnically diverse (and often most affluent) countries – that is, in Europe and North America. But international migration does not always result in ethnic pluralism. For example, diasporic return migration often leads to the convergence of internally diverse co-ethnic populations in ethnically homogeneous nation-states. The diasporic ‘returnees’, who were born outside of their perceived homelands, come through targeted migration policies, face various levels of discrimination, and yet contribute significantly to the economic development and cultural diversity of the countries to which they relocate. As such, this article argues that the multiculturalization of monoethnic nationhood is substantially driven by diasporic return migration. In exploring diasporic multiculturalism, the article draws from data collected in Yerevan, Armenia.

Scholars have identified the important roles personal characteristics — such as religion, gender, and race — play in influencing policymakers' position-taking behavior. One important yet overlooked personal characteristic is generation. This personal characteristic is not only influencing individual policymakers’ position-taking behavior; it is also changing some important political realities across Europe. An illustrative example of these changes is Finland's decision to join NATO. Based on documentary analyses of parliamentary speeches and personal interviews with Finnish officials, this article demonstrates that Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine revealed already established, generation-based cleavages among MPs whose parties had long opposed the prospect of joining NATO. The speeches also reveal a dynamic and evolving orientation to the Baltic states among an emerging political cohort of Finnish MPs, who have been socialized in a fully EU-integrated Finland. 

Ethnic communities adapt diverse strategies to mobilise in distinct geopolitical settings. The scholarship has done much to unpack how large, marginalised ethnic communities intermediate between themselves and the state. Nonetheless, these analyses have largely neglected smaller, more prosperous ethnic communities. This article seeks to broaden the scholarship on ethnic intermediation by presenting a case study of contemporary Australian Armenians in New South Wales. Although quite small in demographic concentration, this community has intermediated successfully in the passage of a broad range of legislation and reallocated important, symbolic state resources. The analysis thus demonstrates how Armenian Australians have devised context-specific strategies to intermediate on behalf of their ethnic community’s interests. More specifically, Australian Armenians have intermediated and influenced legislation by (1) forming strategic coalitions and (2) challenging Australian national narratives. The findings of this research begin to unpack how ‘elite’ populations actually bargain with state officials to achieve their personal and organisational interests.

Existing studies on legal approaches to ethnic minority representation often highlight different systems’strengths and weaknesses. While this scholarship provides important insights into the growing body ofliterature on minority representation, the topic remains largely under-theorized. Because systems of ethnicminority representation clarify the organizations and philosophies of diverse states, more theoreticalanalyses can enrich the descriptive literature. Building on the existing scholarship, this article assessesRomania’s particular version of proportional representation regarding designated national minorities. Itapplies two theoretical models: (1) institutional activism and (2) ethnic intermediation. The former clarifiesthe establishment of Romania’s post-communist constitutional provisions regarding minority organizations, and the latter explains how small yet influential minority populations make claims to and reallocateresources from the Romanian state. Through a unique, understudied case study – the Armenian communityof Romania – this article attempts to broaden ethnic minority representation scholarship by refining thetheoretical frameworks of institutional activism and ethnic intermediation.

This article examines the concept of ethnic return migration in the permanent settlement of Iranian Armenians in the Republic of Armenia. Scholarship on ethnic return migration (or diasporic “homecoming”) almost exclusively focuses on mobility to or from affluent Western multicultural democracies in North America, Europe and Oceania. This article therefore provides a new opportunity to test the generalizability of existing models on return migration. Iranian Armenians fit within what the scholarship refers to as ethnic or diasporic return migrant – that is, migrations motivated, largely, by affective orientation to ethnicity and perceived home country. However, these migrations are not primarily motivated by ethnic or national longing for an ancestral homeland, but rather a variety of economic and political reasons sit behind these migrants’ decisions to choose Armenia instead of moving to a Western country or remaining in Iran.

Building on Europeanisation scholarship, this article unpacks the instrumental rhetoric of Armenian genocide recognition in Bulgaria. In Bulgaria’s 2015 parliamentary hearings on the issue, diverse political actors—from liberal to nationalist political party members—formed unlikely coalitions and strategically instrumentalised Armenian genocide recognition as a way to signal ‘Europeanisation’ in pursuing very distinct ends.

Scholars have unpacked the rhetorically nuanced ways political actors alter state narratives in resisting pressure to comply with international norms. But many of these rhetorical strategies apply in other contexts, where there exists sufficient norm ambiguity, too. For example, in response to Turkey's long-standing denialism, many governments have been asked to recognise the Armenian Genocide (or 1915 Genocide of Christians in the Ottoman Empire). But, because there exists no clear international norm about recognising genocides perpetuated by other states, even some of the most unlikely government officials adapt their rhetoric to resist recognition and pursue ulterior foreign policy objectives. Building on Dixon's rhetorical adaptation framework, this article argues that, between 1999 and 2021, Swedish political actors often adapted their rhetoric in ways similar to Turkish officials as a result of the normative ambiguity of states recognising the Armenian Genocide. In explaining why Sweden consistently resisted Genocide recognition efforts, this analysis focuses on its larger foreign policy commitments of spreading democracy in Turkey and managing the Syrian refugee crisis.

Concentrated immigrant settlement of US suburbs is transforming how many newcomers become politically incorporated. While the scholarship traditionally assumed political incorporation takes place after social or cultural incorporation, novel political agents-or ethnopolitical entrepreneurs-have arisen from within immigrant communities and inverted this assumption. In these dynamic 'ethnoburbs', ethnopolitical entrepreneurs play an increasingly important role in constructing, organizing, and mobilizing internally diverse first generation, co-ethnic constituents. And they do so before their prospective constituents have become socially or culturally incorporated. But the existing scholarship on ethnopolitical entrepreneurs is very limited. Because entrepreneurs' approaches to political incorporation vary based upon their individual experiences and backgrounds, this article seeks to broaden the framework through two case studies of Armenian ethnopolitical entrepreneurs in Glendale, California-Rafi Manoukian and Ardashes (Ardy) Kassakhian. While they manifest considerable overlap in terms of their career trajectories and incorporation strategies, these entrepreneurs' individual experiences-particularly as a first and second-generation immigrant, respectively-have influenced the ways in which they incorporate newcomers and run campaigns.

Scholarship on ethnic intermediation has paid much attention to how demographically important but socioeconomically disenfranchised groups broker power within various geopolitical contexts. But it has not yet unpacked how intermediation operates among electorally small yet economically prosperous communities. Contemporary Buenos Aires offers a series of case studies in which visible, affluent ethnodiasporas have had considerable success making sustained claims and reallocating state resources. Drawing from extensive fieldwork and over 35 interviews with community leaders, this article argues that small, well-organized groups rely on ethnic elite intermediaries - that is, ethnic activists who serve in executive-appointed, non-elected positions - to make sustained claims and reallocate state resources on behalf of ethnic organizational interests. The analysis introduces ethnic elite intermediaries in the context of Armenian and Jewish Argentines during the Kirchner and Macri presidencies, respectively.

Scholarship often assumes that there is a correlation between successful immigrant political incorporation and newcomers' ability to make sustained claims and reallocate city or state resources. By influencing or nominating legislators, scholars assume immigrants become civically engaged and politically empowered. However, these assumptions have not been tested. This article explores the personal experiences and perceptions of Armenian immigrants in Glendale, California, where nearly 40 per cent of the city's 200,000+ population is of Armenian descent, 70 per cent of whom are first-generation immigrants. Furthermore, over 70 per cent of Glendale's elected officials claim Armenian ancestry. Nonetheless, many of Glendale's Armenian residents do not perceive the benefits of their electoral achievements. That is, there exists a perceptual disconnect between the city's ethnic-leaning reallocations and the residents' recognition thereof. This article argues, therefore, that electoral incorporation may not, after all, prove the final step in the achievement and perception of inclusion.

The existing scholarship typically measures "Americanization" along structural lines-such as knowledge of public policies, percentage of life spent in the U.S., or proficiency in the English language. While these variables are certainly important, they overlook another important dimension of newcomers' post-migration experiences-namely, immigrants' psychological attachment and sense of belonging to the American social, political, and economic fabric. This article therefore reevaluates what it means to Americanize by exploring the psychological (or symbolic) dimensions of multigenerational immigrants' evolving political beliefs toward the polity. In rethinking the process of Americanization, we rely on a largely understudied immigrant population-that is, the Los Angeles Armenians (or Armenian Angelenos)-and an original public opinion survey-the Armenian Angeleno Survey (AAS). This study demonstrates that symbolic (rather than merely structural) Americanization is a useful framework in studying how contemporary immigrant groups position themselves in relation to the polity and understand important political outcomes. This article thus introduces an expanded model based on how multigenerational immigrants cultivate their ethnic communities while becoming ideological members of American society.

Drawing upon ethnographic data collected in Glendale, California, this study applies constructivist theories of ethnic politics to political incorporation research. The analysis demonstrates how the evolving loci of political incorporation-from marginalized racial minorities in urban centers to multi-ethnic migrants in prosperous suburbs-have given rise to new agents (ethnopolitical entrepreneurs) in new spaces (ethnoburbs). In these evolving spaces, community leaders emphasize, consciously and unconsciously, specific attributes, which determine, in part, whether co-ethnics support selected candidates. Specific emphases lead to both the nomination of prospective politicians as well as the political incorporation of newcomers. By applying constructivist theories of ethnic politics to the study of political incorporation, this article expands and refines discourses in both fields of study. Based upon a case study of the intra-ethnically diverse yet highly mobilized Armenian community in Glendale, California, the paper's findings synthesize the strengths of both analytical perspectives.

Glendale may house the most visible Armenian diaspora in the world; however, it remains among the most invisible in print. The following begins to shed light on this community by providing a brief background and demographic profile of Armenians in Glendale. The article then attempts to expand discussions of Chinese "ethnoburbs" by situating Glendale Armenians in these discussions. Despite scholars' expansion of the concept, the ethnoburb has had limited application-largely, to Chinese and a few other Asian immigrant communities. However, is the concept of the ethnoburb generalizable in contexts outside of Chinese immigrant settlements? In this article, I contend that the ethnoburb model is generalizable by situating Glendale's Armenian community within this framework.

Despite its many contributions to Los Angeles, the internally complex community of Armenian Angelenos remains enigmatically absent from academic print. As a result, its history remains untold. While Armenians live throughout Southern California, the greatest concentration exists in Glendale, where Armenians make up a demographic majority (approximately 40 percent of the population) and have done much to reconfigure this homogenous, sleepy, sundown town of the 1950s into an ethnically diverse and economically booming urban center. This article presents a brief history of Armenian immigration to Southern California and attempts to explain why Glendale has become the world's most demographically concentrated Armenian diasporic hub. It does so by situating the history of Glendale's Armenian community in a complex matrix of international, national, and local events.

Return migration from the diaspora to the ancestral homeland has emerged as an important sub-field within migration studies. The scholarship has introduced new ways of understanding migratory trajectories by exploring the roles of migrants’ ethnicity and imagination and has identified novel ways of unpacking migratory patterns whose motivations are not centered on economic mobility. But the scholarship has introduced a paradox by documenting both returnees’ ethnic and sentimental motivations and the unexpected difficulties they encounter once they have settled in their perceived homelands. The current research project investigates the experiences of North American Armenians who have “returned” to Armenia. It seeks to extend the existing theoretical framework by demonstrating how ancestral returnees sustain a powerful feeling of connection to a country while simultaneously harboring a sense of disengagement from local practices.