Democracy, Diaspora, Territory

Europe and Cross-Border Politics

Olga Oleinikova, Jumana Bayeh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000710847
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume offers a profoundly new interpretation of the impact of modern diasporas on democracy, challenging the orthodox understanding that ties these two concepts to a bounded form of territory. Considering democracy and diaspora through a deterritorialised lens, it takes the post-Euromaidan Ukraine as a central case study to show how modern diasporas are actively involved in shaping democracy from a distance, and through their political activity are becoming increasingly democratised themselves. An examination of how power-sharing democracies function beyond the territorial state, Democracy, Diaspora, Territory: Europe and Cross-Border Politics compels us to reassess what we mean by democracy and diaspora today, and why we need to focus on the deterritorialised dimensions of these phenomena if we are to adequately address the crises confronting numerous democracies. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and politics with interests in migration and diaspora, political theory, citizenship and democracy.

1 Democracy, Diaspora and Ukraine

Thinking Beyond the Territorial Mentality

Jumana Bayeh and Olga Oleinikova

Territory is widely assumed to be a fundamental feature of both democracy and diaspora, and the reasons for this are not difficult to discern. Chief among these is that democracies are associated with political systems that govern defined geographical spaces, and diasporas, even though scattered, are said to have disseminated from originary homelands. The type of territory that is referenced in these discussions usually takes the form of a physically demarcated place, a nation-state, indicating that democratic politics and diaspora are understood in relation to borders and national identity. Territory’s persistent presence in diaspora and democracy research, however, is ironic in light of the widespread recognition of the highly globalised world we inhabit and, more specifically in regard to democracy, the rapid growth of deterritorialised political forces that exert pressure on states while exceeding their borders. The recent Black Lives Matter movement and social media-driven #MeToo campaign, which demand greater accountability and transparency from the violence perpetuated by institutionalised racism and patriarchy, are but two examples of proto-democratic movements that transcend state boundaries. Likewise, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based organisation founded in 2006 by Syrian exiles, has exposed on an international platform the human rights violations unfolding in Syria, and agitates from abroad for democratic development within the highly authoritarian state. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’ goals are summed up, as their website indicates, in their slogan ‘Democracy, Freedom, Justice, Equality’. Equally significant are anti-democratic forces that operate across territory and borders. A frequently referenced example are the acts of terror that occur in the Middle East, Europe, Australia and elsewhere, that were undertaken by al-Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist movements. States are also implicated in undermining democracy with their own forms of cross-border aggression, evident in numerous territorial disputes that, for instance, saw Russia annex Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and saw Ukraine impose martial law in response to escalating tensions with Russia as it tightened its control over the Kerch Strait in November 2018. In short, territorial democracies are being challenged on both sides by extra-territorial actors, that is by anti- and pro-democratic forces that operate transnationally and across borders.

These developments should collectively prompt a questioning of the dependency on territory within studies of diaspora and democracy, and yet, as the literature shows, little progress has been made to rethink territory’s centrality. This is especially the case in relation to democracy, where various scholars, like David Andersen et al. (2014), and Dani Rodrik and Romain Wacziarg (2005), have doubled down on territory, arguing that democracy needs strengthening within the confines of the state. Dani Rodrik, in his widely cited The Globalization Paradox: Why Global Markets, States and Democracy Can’t Coexist (2011), remains particularly wedded to the nation-state, emphasising that it is a necessary prerequisite for democracies to function economically and politically. These scholars repeat what Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan concisely stated over two decades ago: ‘Democracy is a form of governance of a modern state. Thus, without a state, no modern democracy is possible’ (Linz and Stepan 1996, 17). Although more progress has been made in questioning territoriality in diaspora research, this has not readily been, as Garrett Wallace Brown points out, the case in politics or international relations-related research on the topic. Both homeland and host state continue to orient studies of dispersal from a politics perspective, with diasporas widely considered, to borrow from Khachig Tölölyan, as the ‘others’ of the nation-state (1991). Such arguments from democracy and diaspora research fail to respond to the real challenges posed by the example of cross-border politics that are impacting or shaping democratisation efforts. They have fallen, as John Agnew argues, into the ‘territorial trap’ to such an extent that they are likely guilty of ‘idealizing the territorial state’ (Agnew 1994, 77). This has dangerous, even if unintended implications because such arguments seem to approximate the strong resurgence of a territorial mentality that underpins, as even Rodrik who favours strong nation-states notes, the rise of populism which saw the election of Donald Trump, the growth of authoritarian nationalist governments in Europe and the success of Brexit (Rodrik 2018).

This book does not ignore the mounting evidence of instances of new forms of delocalised democratic pressures and movements; it makes them the prime focus. It challenges the resurgence of the territorial mentality to adopt a deterritorialised view of diaspora and democracy, applying it to modern Ukraine to explore how its transnational community has contributed to various modes of democratic development. The term ‘deterritorialisation’ is not meant to signify, as the prefix ‘de’ might indicate, an erasure of territory or suggest that territory is, in today’s globalised and highly media-connected world, immaterial to understanding democracy or diaspora. Rather, it responds to what Charles S. Maier has referred to as the ‘crisis of territoriality’, which requires that territory be subject to considered analysis. In Maier’s formulation, territoriality refers to the demarcation and subsequent ‘control of bordered political space’, where territory operates simultaneously as a ‘decision space … establish[ing] the spatial reach of legislation’ (Maier 2000, 808), and an ‘identity space or a space of belonging’ (2016, 3). A crisis emerges for Maier in the late twentieth century when identity space and decision space diverge. Where once, he writes, ‘adults in the West understood their decision and identity space [to have] organized their labor, provided security, and ensured family continuity’ they have in the last several decades increasingly perceived ‘territoriality … less a resource for guaranteeing livelihoods, excluding foreigners, or maintaining coherence of values’ (Maier 2016, 3). The crisis of the ‘waning of territoriality means … that the well-off and educated residents of the West are fated to live in proximity to, and without territorial protection from, peoples of other traditions’ (Maier 2000, 829; emphasis added).

While this volume rejects this particular interpretation of crisis that Maier espouses, it does share his perception that the notion of bordered territorial space needs to be scrutinised. More specifically, it questions that democratic politics can only be assessed as operating within territorially bound spaces, and argues that democratic activity can take place outside a particular geographical space, a dimension of diaspora and democracy research that requires urgent considered analysis. To undertake this analysis, the volume borrows and adapts Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s formative work on deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, two concepts that are highly pertinent in a number of ways to this study (Deleuze and Guattari 1987; 1986). Firstly, is the classification of the relationship between deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation as necessarily dialectical. In Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet’s words, every ‘quanta of deterritorialisation … [is] each time [accompanied by] a complementary reterritorialization: the locomotor hand as the deterritorialized paw is reterritorialized on the branches which it uses to pass from tree to tree’ (2002, 134). The complementarity of these terms is illustrated in the chapters by Ivan Kozachenko, and Serhiy Kovalchuk and Alla Korzh, where the political activities of the examined groups within the Ukrainian diaspora are shown to be at once dispersed and networked across geographical space (deterritorialised) while aimed towards a particular place (reterritorialised).

Secondly, Deleuze and Guattari employ the phrase ‘lines of flight’ to denote escape from territorial forms of what they refer to as ‘striated space’, that is areas that fall under the jurisdiction of states or geographical regions ‘divisible by boundaries’ that segregate one state or region from another (1987, 380). Diasporas, as Jumana Bayeh suggests in her chapter, are non-state-based political groups that can ‘escape’ or transcend boundaries, work and connect cross them, taking flight from macro-political structures such as the bounded state. Lines of flight stand in contrast to fixed points in space, and escape infers motion between points. Lines, flight and escape align closely with deterritorialisation, which implies becoming uprooted, detached from the earth to both move and think across it. John Keane’s contribution highlights the significance of researchers’ needing to rethink how space is conceptualised within democracy studies. His challenge to the ‘territorial mentality’, a mainstay of democracy research, is a request for a form of deterritorialisation of the psyche, for the mind and the patterns that shape how we understand the operations of democratic politics to escape or take flight from current territorial orthodoxies.

Of course, sustained deterritorialisation is not possible, which even Deleuze and Guattari admit, as all flights and escapes entail being recaptured (reterritorialised) by ‘apparatuses of capture’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 424). Apparatuses of capture are varied and include the capitalist system, the body, the subject and, most relevant for this study, the territorial state. A further important dimension to flight is that it is not singular but recurring, with each flight or deterritorialisation causing some ‘piece of the system to get lost [and altered] in the shuffle’ (1977, 277). Lines of flight can connect to, or become entangled with, other lines of flight, or other deterritorialised elements, forming larger, constantly shifting networks or, to employ Deleuze and Guattari’s term, ‘assemblages’. For diaspora communities, such assemblages or networks form across state boundaries facilitated by, for instance, media technologies, as illustrated by the contribution from Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp, creating deterritorialised media cultures, and further explored in relation to the Ukrainian diaspora and its use of social media for political activity in Olena Fedyuk’s chapter.

Although Maier calls for critical engagement with territory, and while he recognises the power behind Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of deterritorialisation, flight and escape (Maier 2016, 282–3), it is alarming that he concludes by restoring prominence to territory: ‘almost all of us have inherited centuries of institutionalised habits structured by territory … We are beings set in defined places … For now, even those who transplant themselves … remain still with borders’ (295–6). And while he concedes that diasporas in particular have ‘attenuated [territory’s] significance’, he nevertheless maintains that dispersed communities have not been able to erode territory’s overriding ‘importance’ (295). The contributors to this volume do not subscribe to Maier’s reductive conclusion, and present cases that demonstrate why a substantial shift in thinking about the centrality of territory and an assertion of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation are necessary. Stefan Rother’s chapter, to focus on one example, includes a prescient discussion of the impact of migration on democratisation across a range of levels and actors, from individual to collective, as well as the varied spaces, both home and host countries, that benefit, or not, from a diaspora’s political activity. Rother’s aim, like all the contributors in this volume, is to stimulate new thinking and research on the spatial dimensions of democratic politics and diaspora, exploring how they intersect and inform one another through a consideration of delocalised and dispersed political arrangements. This approach aligns, to an extent, with Michel Foucault’s prescient diagnosis that space will be the major preoccupation of modern scholarship. Writing in 1967, Foucault stated that

the present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in … the epoch of the near and far … of the dispersed. We are at the moment … when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersections with its own skein.

(Foucault 1986, 22)

Foucault’s words further inform our particular use of deterritorialisation as they align with this volume’s understanding of diaspora as a ‘network of connections’ and ‘intersections’ forged across space. Diaspora has been studied from the perspective of transnational communities, from the so-called classical Jewish and Greek diasporas to the more contemporary experiences of Chinese, Lebanese, Polish and Ukrainian dispersal, to reveal multiple and contested, but also interrelated definitions and appreciations of the term. Drawing on the debates generated by these studies, and focusing attention on the territorial interests that anchor this volume, the concept of diaspora used here is not one that assimilates all the debates generated by countless studies of dispersal, but rather is intentionally considered as an ‘ideal-type’ or model with certain characteristics. An ideal-type definition is useful, even if it does not exactly reflect the complex dynamics of dispersal in the social world, precisely because, to adapt Max Weber’s thoughts on objectivity in the social sciences, it simplifies the vast and varied array of diasporic experience. Our approach does not assume that an ideal-type definition is the model that dominates all meanings of diaspora, but serves our investigation into the largely uncharted research of how diaspora impacts or intersects with democratisation and vice versa.¹

While a more thorough examination of diaspora is offered in Chapter 3, an ideal-type definition refers to a dispersed community of people who are connected both to the homeland and across multiple locations of settlement, who remain invested in the political developments of the ‘home’ country and the diaspora community, and who coordinate efforts across the diaspora to support or shape, in various ways, political developments during times of crisis or transition in the home country. The term diaspora involves questioning the notion of methodological nationalism, which assumes that national identity is or should be homogenously defined and that the territorial nation-state is a site where cultural, political and territorial boundaries converge (Wimmer and Schiller 2003). It is also partly for this reason that this volume selects the concept diaspora, rather than closely related terms such as migrants, exiles or refugees. These are not interchangeable terms, and the benefit of diaspora is that it is capaciously conceived and can incorporate the variations of people who cross borders, dwell outside of their homelands and connect across multiple geographical sites. An added dimension to its capaciousness is that diaspora also accommodates the temporal shifts in a dispersed community’s self-perception of its displaced and deterritorialised status, its relation to the homeland and its members’ differing degrees of integration into the host society. While biological age has been used to mark transformations in migration patterns and experiences, Mette Louise Berg has developed the notion of ‘diasporic generations’ to account also for the ‘historically situated trajectories, which gave rise to different modes of remembering and relating to home and away’ (2011, 40). Berg’s work focuses on the Cuban diaspora, but this concept is also important to this volume’s Ukrainian example particularly in relation to Serhiy Kovalchuk and Alla Korzh’s contribution, where they write about the political agency of Ukrainian ‘migrant youth’ in New York, and how this generation’s political views and activism differs from more established migrants.

This volume also adopts an ideal-type definition of democracy. Constructing a simplified, even if imperfect definition of this term is beneficial, because the concept of democracy has and continues to receive a vast amount of scholarly attention. This volume’s use of democracy as an ideal-type allows us to test how it is impacted or altered when it is assessed from the perspective of diaspora. Again, as with diaspora, our concerns regarding the dominance of territory in democracy scholarship orient our definition, taking issue with the broad-based assumption that democratic politics operate primarily or successfully within a specific location, a contained territorial unit or a state.² We propose an expansive view that sees democracy as a way of life and type of decision making whereby the people within and without a nation-state can exert effective control and influence over the political landscape. Democracy includes civil society groups and networks that operate across borders or state boundaries, the financial and political remittances diasporas transport back to their countries of origin and the role of older and newer forms of media in processes of democratisation. It also involves understanding the values or ideals that underpin democratic societies. As the discussion reveals, for Ukrainians their democratic aspirations include the rule of law, the elimination of oligarchic corruption within government, economic prosperity, political freedom, freedom from domination by powerful neighbours (notably Russia) and sovereignty. The achievement of these values for Ukrainians located in Ukraine and its diaspora is tied closely to the country’s integra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Democracy, Diaspora and Ukraine: Thinking Beyond the Territorial Mentality
• PART I: Cross-Border Politics: Mapping the New Conceptual Terrain
• PART II: Territory, Democracy and the Ukrainian Diaspora
• Index