The “Boomerang Effect” of Kin-state Activism: Cross-border Ties and the Securitization of Kin Minorities

ABSTRACT

The kin-state phenomenon is often understood as unifying and inclusive: states reach out beyond their borders to engage with co-ethnics living abroad, thus maintaining historic “national” ties, and fostering connections and contacts. But kin-state activism may also be dangerous and conflictual, when a kin-state's transborder projects anger neighboring governments, leading to the securitization of kin minorities and the destabilizing of inter-ethnic and regional relations. Moreover, certain types of kin-state behavior may divide the very communities that it seeks to unite. In post-communist East-Central Europe, Hungary and Russia have been pursuing kin-state activism since the early 1990s, using a range of tools and strategies. In recent years, the actions of both kin-states have had a “boomerang effect,” producing unexpected outcomes for kin minorities and for the kin-state itself. Drawing on evidence from the two cases, this paper explores how kin-state activism can backfire and trigger a securitization of cross-border relations.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the participants of the Securitized Borderlands workshop in Brussels, Belgium (Oct. 2016), as well as three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Kin-state activism is a form of “external inclusion” in that it involves strategies to include territorially-external (and dispersed) co-ethnic populations within the cultural and institutional bounds of a single nation-state. This activism may be perceived as unifying and inclusive by kin minorities who strongly identify with the kin-state and who consider themselves part of a transborder nation. In the scholarship on kin-states, this activism is more often understood as unifying and inclusive from the perspective of kin-state elites, i.e. in their political calculations and rhetoric. The policies and programs designed in the kin-state centre may be conceived and presented as efforts to “unify” or “reunify” the nation across borders. Of course, conceptions of unity and inclusion are highly political and subject to interpretation. On a more general note, it is important to remember that nationalism entails an exclusive process that is equal to or greater (both in value and in force) than its inclusive dimension. Nationalism as an inclusive force is based on, and generates from, a process of exclusion. As Marx (2003) argues, the powerful myth of national cultural homogeneity and romanticized notions of inclusion disguise the fact that nationalism is purposefully, necessarily exclusive and divisive. Marx's argument is focused more on “internal exclusion” (i.e. the exclusion of people within the borders of a given state) but the point still stands: the inclusive element of nationalism implies—and indeed, depends on—the exclusive element. I am grateful to a reviewer for highlighting this point.

2 This paper is concerned with kin-state activism from the perspective of kin-state governments. This is not to deny that kin minorities are important actors who have agency, and who can influence kin-state strategies. Nor is it to deny that a perspective “from below” is important in understanding how kinship politics play out (i.e. how they are experienced on the ground among external communities). Here, however, the focus is on policies and programs designed in the kin-state center. For more about how such policies are perceived, received, and experienced among external kin, and for a compelling “bottom up” analysis of kin majorities and minorities in East-Central Europe, see the excellent work of Szabolcs Pogonyi, Cenral European University, and Eleanor Knott, London School of Economics.

3 These groups may also be understood as “accidental diasporas,” since they were created by the redrawing of borders, rather than through the movement and dispersion of people across borders. There is some conceptual confusion in the literature regarding the similarities and distinctions between the terms “diaspora” and “kin/kinship.” Brubaker suggests that diasporas are constituted gradually through several individual migration trajectories, whereas accidental diasporas (kin minorities) crystallize suddenly following a dramatic reconfiguration of political space. For more on this topic, see Rogers Brubaker (2000), “Accidental Diasporas and External ‘Homelands’ in Central and Eastern Europe: Past and Present,” Paper for the Political Science Series, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna (October 2000). See also King and Melvin (1999), especially chapters 1 and 9; Kolstø (1995); and Mandelbaum (2000).

4 It is important to note that “homeland” does not have to refer to the actual homeland of the minority, in the sense that they or their ancestors once lived there. “Homeland” is not an ethnographic category, but a political one; homelands are not static or given, but constructed by political elites A state becomes a homeland for “its” ethnic diaspora when political or cultural elites define ethno-national kin in other states as members of a single nation, claim that they “belong” (in some sense) to the state, and assert that their condition must be monitored and their interests protected and promoted by the state; and when the state actually does take action in the name of monitoring, promoting, or protecting the interests of its kin abroad (Brubaker 1996). See also King and Melvin 1999 and 2000 for further elaboration of this point.

5 In much of the literature, the term “host state” is used to describe the state in which co-ethnics live. This is misleading: it implies that kin minorities are guests on someone else's land—that they have only been there for a short time and will be leaving shortly. In the region of ECE, this simply is not the case. People may have been living on a given territory as a titular majority for generations, but through forced boundary changes and the breakup of empires, this territory became part of another state. Consequently, communities moved from majority to minority status. Such is the pattern of reversals in domination and subordination in this region. “Resident state” is a more accurate and neutral term to denote the state in which co-ethnics currently live.

6 To be fair, the first major Eastern enlargement did not occur until 2004, and many of the countries that became EU members in this year would have been negotiating with European institutions in the 1990s—when Brubaker began writing and publishing on the topic of kin-state nationalism.

7 Note that the two are not mutually exclusive. States that build nations within their borders may also engage in external nation-building.

8 After 1990, many resident states in ECE became “nationalizers” as they sought to consolidate and legitimize control over their newly-constituted territories and populations. They adopted the nation-state model of state-building, whereby the state is believed to be the state of and for a particular nation, and to belong to a single ethnic group. Nationalizing elites promoted the language, culture, demographic position, economic flourishing, and political hegemony of the core ethnic group (Brubaker 1996; Laitin 1998). This resulted in many states adopting citizenship, language, and education policies that protected and privileged the culture of the ethnic majority, while marginalizing that of the minority(ies).

9 Large-scale immigration to Western Europe started in the 1960s, and the securitization of migrants soon followed. Anti-migrant social and political attitudes have been public, popular, and successful in Western European states for at least two decades. In Eastern Europe, exposure to and experience with immigration is much newer than in the West. Anti-migrant attitudes and movements burst into light here in 2015. In many ECE states, migrants were viewed as a threat to security and identity; these states responded with hostility, intolerance, and xenophobia (see Nougayrède 2015). Also note: We must be careful to distinguish between the terms “migrant” and “minority.” The two are not synonymous, although a migrant may be a member of a minority community in the host society. It is also analytically useful to distinguish between minorities that are territorialized, institutionalized, and recognized by their resident state as historic national groups; and “newer” ethnic minorities that are non-territorialized and unrecognized by the state. These types of minorities tend to differ in the resources they hold and the political claims they make, with implications for their relations with the majority community and for ethnic boundary-making and -maintaining.

10 “Hungary” and “Russia” are not unitary, coherent actors. Indeed, since 1990 there has been significant contestation between and within domestic political parties, political and cultural elites, and publics regarding the state's relations with co-ethnics abroad. However, because kin-state policies are debated and ultimately ratified by kin-state governments (and also for brevity's sake) this paper will use the terms “Hungary” and “Russia.” Moreover, these terms are being used as shorthand for “Hungarian kin-state” and “Russian kin-state,” respectively.

11 It is difficult to find consistent figures on the number of co-ethnics living beyond the current borders of Hungary and Russia. The numbers that appear here are based on an understanding that “ethnicity” is tied to culture and language, i.e. Hungarians are those who identify as ethnically Hungarian and Hungarian-speaking, Russians are those who identify as ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking.

12 This includes some 25.3 million ethnic Russians and an additional 11.2 million Russian-speakers. The number “11.2 Russian-speakers” refers to those who declared a non-Russian ethnicity on the 1989 Soviet census but who chose Russian as their native language (found in Shevel 2012: p. 112, footnote #5).

13 King and Melvin (1999, 54) cite as examples various addresses made in the mid-1990s, in which President Yeltsin and foreign minister Kozyrev singled out the Russians outside Russia for special mention: “Yeltsin Gives New Year Address with Pledge to Stand by Russian Citizens Abroad,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts—Soviet Union (SWB-SU), January 3, 1994; “Yeltsin's New Year Address,” SWB-SU, January 3, 1995; “Kozyrev Details Russian Foreign Policy Agenda,” Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports—Soviet Union (FBIS-SOV), February 10, 1994: 12–14; “Foreign Minister Kozyrev Outline's Parliament's Role in Foreign Policy,” SWB-SU, February 5, 1994; “Kozyrev Warns Against Violations of Rights of Russian Minorities in Former USSR,” SWB-SU, January 21, 1994. Jennie L. Schulze also suggests (2010b): “New Russian Nationalities Policy Programme,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, October 2, 1992; R. Batyrshin's “Russian Federation,” report, “Nationalities policy concept exists. State Committee for Nationalities Policy want to become ‘superministry,’” Nazavisimaya Gazeta, Moscow, September 26, 1992.

Additional information

Funding

The research undertaken for this study was partially funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.