Sunroom Desk

Instead of staying in town to watch Larry Zarian’s second televised candidates’ forum for the upcoming Glendale elections, I drove to UCLA to attend a Society for Armenian Studies session on “Researching the Contemporary Armenian Diaspora.” If the hundred plus attendees at Royce Hall had wanted a dramatic contemporary focus, they would have driven in this direction!

The academicians who spoke at UCLA raised important points about Armenian and other diasporas and their effect on “receiving countries” politics. They also supplied interesting historical facts.

Canadian professor Aida Boudjikanian, who conducted extensive research in France, contended that Armenian causes are well-recognized in France, both academically and politically, because a number of Armenians there became prominent scholars in the 1970s. These scholars focused academic work on Armenian political issues and the Armenian diaspora in France, bringing them to the attention of the larger public.

Buenos Aires University professor Nelida Boulghourdjian discussed Argentina’s efforts to study the tension and dynamics between Armenian settlers and its receiving society in the context of its very open immigration policy dating from the early 20th century.

Sossie Kasbarian, currently with the Graduate Institue of International and Development Studies of Geneva, quoted a U.K. Ministry of Defense think tank, the Development Concepts and Doctrines Center, on the subject of diasporas. Its Global Strategic Trends Programme says this (among other things) about diaspora communities on page 10:

Diaspora communities and their networks will be dynamic and unpredictable features of the political, demographic and economic aspects of globalization.

Physical and cultural origin will continue to be significant to identity, but will be employed increasingly selectively, based on their utility in context and in relation to personal interest.

Her main point was that in the recent past “diaspora studies” were not taken seriously, but at the present time they are being closely studied as nations observe flourishing diasporic identities “extending to every ‘de-territorialized’ group beyond the historical diasporas of Jews, Greeks, and Armenians.” Multiple allegiances, of course, are viewed with suspicion by national security elites.

City University of New York professor Anny Bakalian told the audience that while the U.S. Armenian diaspora is the largest and most affluent in the world, it is mostly invisible. She cited low numbers of Armenian-American politicians and prominent business people, and decried the lack of academic scholarship on the U.S. Armenian diaspora, which she said could (as the Canadian professor argued it did in France) raise the community’s visibility in American society. I went up and told her afterwards about Glendale’s upcoming elections and encouraged her to send scholars here.

In her historical perspective, Dr. Bakalian discussed the 1910 U.S. Census, when the U.S. government put Japanese and Chinese immigrants into a new category, “Asiatic.” Census personnel didn’t know what to do with Armenians, and considered classifying them as “Asiatic” as well, which would have prevented them from gaining U.S. citizenship. The classification was fought, and defeated (1909 in re Halladjian), at the Court of Appeals level.

Dr. Bakalian’s conclusion about the current U.S. (and Southern California) diaspora: Symbolic Armenianness is being preserved; Armenians exhibit strong ethnic identity and pride in their ancestry; they exhibit overwhelming support for the Republic of Armenia; U.S. and Turkish recognition of the Armenian genocide is a unifying issue; and the percentage of their college-bound population in the U.S. is identical to native-born American rates.

As a Glendale resident, I can’t agree with Bakalian that Armenians are nearly invisible in American society. Scholars should come to Glendale to study the eagerness and tenacity of naturalized Armenian citizens involved in the American democratic process in this city.

Khachig Tölölyan, editor of the academic journal Diaspora, moderated the Thursday panel. Seminars continue today and Saturday at UCLA. The complete schedule of events, open to the public, is here.