Placing Hayastantsis in the Armenian Diaspora: Identity, Belonging and Perceptions of ‘Home’ in Los Angeles’ Armenian Community

The Armenian communities living outside of historical Armenia have long been considered as constituting the Armenian diaspora (Spyurk). After the collapse of the Soviet Union and Armenia’s achievement of independence, there has emerged a new form of Armenian migration, as members of the Armenian nation state (hayastantsis) began to emigrate and join with their historical diasporic communities (spiurkahays). This thesis aims to examine the implications of this encounter for hayastantsis living in Los Angeles, California in relation to three particular themes: 1) emigrants’ identities and homeland imaginations; 2) their senses of belonging and immigrant transnationalism; and 3) co-ethnic relations between hayastantsis and spiurkahays. The main empirical aim of this thesis is to generate new understanding of the lives, experiences and identities of Soviet and post-Soviet Armenian emigrants from Armenia (also referred to as SOPSAM in this thesis) who had been exposed to different geographical, historical and material processes than their kin communities in diaspora. It draws on findings from ethnographic research focused on the Los Angeles Armenian community, including qualitative interviews not only with new emigrants from Armenia, but also with members of the old diaspora and their organisations, and on observations of immigrant activities and in diasporic spaces of encounter. Three empirical chapters demonstrate that the hegemonic diasporic discourses are not widely applicable to the newcomers, neither in relation to identity nor imaginings of the homeland. In addition, emigrant`s transnational ways of being, belonging and practices developed in ways that differ from classical diaspora assumptions. In the encounters between spiurkahays and hayastantsis, the boundaries of the diaspora, ethnicity and co-responsibility begin to be negotiated but the immigrants have continued to follow their own way of being ethnic, transnational or established in their new place of migration — located within the Armenian community spatially but outside the imagined diasporic borders.