Identity and Participation in Culturally Diverse Societies

A Multidisciplinary Perspective

Assaad E. Azzi, Xenia Chryssochoou, Bert Klandermans, Bernd Simon

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781444351811
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Identity and Participation in Culturally Diverse Societies presents an original discussion in an edited volume of how the links between identity, political participation, radicalization, and integration can provide a scientific understanding of the complex issue of coexistence between groups in culturally diverse societies.

• Offers a scientific understanding of the complex issue of coexistence between groups in culturally diverse societies
• Utilizes original theory which combines social psychology, sociology, and political science
• Includes an original and extensive discussion of combining the concepts of identity and diversity
• Innovatively and engagingly employs the latest research and state-of-the-art theory

Part I

Development, (Re)Construction, and Expression of Collective Identities

Xenia Chryssochoou

The chapters in Part I aim to address issues concerning the relationship between processes and patterns of identity at different interrelated levels of social inclusiveness (i.e., local, regional, ethnic, national, and European levels) in the context of multi- ethnic and multicultural societies. Cultural homogeneity within national borders is no longer the reality for many European nations and ceases to constitute the basis of the national project of “living together.” In addition, globalization trends constitute the frame within which collective identities at an ethnic, religious, national, and supra- national level are developed and expressed. These identities are enacted in the claim of rights and socio- political participation of ethnic minorities and in attitudes and behaviors (often xenophobic) of ethnic majorities aiming to secure their identities. The chapters included here discuss the power struggle for and by identity along with how different levels of identities are developed, reconstructed, and interrelated in a context where nation- states aim to continue being the guarantors of a unifying identity for their ethno- cultural majorities while trying to integrate denizens of different cultural and social backgrounds.

Part I starts with a historical analysis of the development of Greek American identity. Yannis Papadopoulos analyzes historical documents of the early twentieth century when Greek migration to the United States expanded in order to unveil how this dual identity developed and with what political purposes. His work highlights the importance of the historical framework in which identities develop. Moreover, he shows how the meaning of an identity is constructed as a response to pressures of both the sending and the receiving societies and emphasizes the role of the elites, the “identity entrepreneurs,” in shaping the meaning of these identifications. The chapter shows that other memberships such as class and religion influence the way ethno- cultural identities are constructed and enacted.

The important role of context is underlined in other chapters in this section. Chapter 2, by Maykel Verkuyten, brings us to the current context where Muslim identity is at the forefront of debates. The chapter deals with the relation between religious identity and political participation and presents the case of Muslim identity in Western Europe. It examines what it means to be Muslim in the current social context and how this meaning is constructed and performed. This identity consolidation is linked to different forms of mobilization. Verkuyten argues against the perceived homogeneity and essentialization of the Muslim identity. There are different meanings of Muslim identity that relate differently to intergroup experiences and sociopolitical participation. These meanings are constructed in interaction with others within the national polity and are expressions of the power struggles within this community as well as the global one.

There are multiple audiences toward which identities are performed and this idea is further developed in Chapter 3 by Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux. The authors present and discuss literature on bicultural identity and propose another way of conceptualizing it. They emphasize the situated nature of bicultural identities and consider that the performance of these identities varies within individuals and across situations. A major point of their argument is that the compatibility between different memberships is not an individual difference factor but the outcome of the interaction between a person and his or her audience. Thus, the identity takes different forms both when its performance is threatened and in the absence of threat. Bicultural identities contain elements of self- categorization, importance, and meaning whose relation is different among individuals: for example, for some people certain aspects are blended whilst others are not depending on the context. The chapter offers an interesting and useful theorization of biculturalism and contributes to the discussions of this book on dual identities.

The last chapter in Part I, by Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons, raises in particular the issue of the perceived incompatibility between identities that questions the possibility of biculturalism and is seen as a threat to social cohesion. The chapter argues that perceived incompatibility between national, ethnic, and religious identifications constitutes a political statement that is ideological in nature. The empirical evidence for this incompatibility is not conclusive and the research reported in the chapter highlights the importance of the social context in which identities are developed. Beliefs about the incompatibility between identities partially mediate the negative relationship between ethnic and national identities. The authors suggest that further research should be done in order to understand which factors produce a negative relationship, and to examine the role of beliefs about the incompatibility between identities in enabling or constraining identification with the national polity. Chryssochoou and Lyons argue for a thorough understanding of how minorities can identify with the national polity, not only because this identification is a marker of integration and insertion in the new society, but also because such identification, at a higher level, would allow minorities to fight for their rights, interests, and social justice. The chapter offers a theorization of minority identification with the national polity and opens the discussion of the next chapter by presenting the relation between identifications, beliefs about identity incompatibility, and political participation.

The ideological and political nature of identity construction is a common theme in all of the chapters presented here. Each deals with the construction of identities, highlighting different moments in time and different levels of analysis. Chapter 1 by Papadopoulos looks at the past to offer a vision of the present. Chapter 2 by Verkuyten looks at the present and opens our vision toward the future. Deaux and Wiley in Chapter 3 highlight an interactive level of analysis, whereas in Chapter 4 Chryssochoou and Lyons emphasize ideological explanations. Each chapter implies in a different way that identities express projects. The first two chapters emphasize whose projects these identities are expressions of, while the two last chapters address the question of who and what these projects are aimed at. Thus, although Part I refers only to the construction and development of the identity of minorities, the fact that these identities are addressed to others and are constructed through the pressures of the context and the recognition of others, and since their presence and development impact on the (re)construction of national identities, the majority’s perspective is not ignored.

The arguments developed in Part I run counter to five popular myths about identity that circulate in both academic and commonsense discourse. Myth 1, that national, ethnic, and religious identities are de facto competing; myth 2, that national, ethnic, religious, and class identities are of equivalent nature and have similar social psychological and political consequences; myth 3, that immigrants and ethnic minorities choose to enact mainly their ethnic or religious identity; myth 4, that these identifications are similar for majorities and minorities as if there are no power issues involved; and myth 5, that once constructed these identities are invariably performed. The arguments of the four contributions to this part introduce Part II concerning the relationship between collective identity and politicization.

1

The Role of Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Class in Shaping Greek American Identity, 1890–1927

A Historical Analysis

Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos

Massive emigration from Greece to the United States started in the 1890s. It was part of the “new immigration,” a term introduced in about 1880 to describe the wave of immigrants to the United States in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the majority of whom came from Eastern and Southern Europe (Higham, 1967, p. 65). The arrival of these immigrants, who were considered as seditious and inassimilable by many, resulted in the adoption of the Quota Acts by Congress in 1921 and 1924 that set limits on immigration (Tichenor, 2002, pp. 143–145).

The majority of Greek-speaking immigrants came from the provinces of the Greek kingdom. However, from the beginning of the twentieth century, large numbers of Greek Orthodox Ottoman subjects started to settle in the United States.¹ According to the Greek administration, an immigrant was defined as “a Greek citizen settling in countries outside Europe, beyond the Suez Canal and the straits of Gibraltar and traveling third class” (Metanasteusis, 1906, p. 29). From 1890 to 1924, 397,987 Greek subjects and 102,476 Greek Orthodox Ottoman subjects migrated to the United States (Dillingham, 1911, p. 408, Thirteenth Population Census, 1910, vol. 3, pp. 216–217, cited in Kourtoumi-Hatzi, 1999, p. 53). The push factor for the majority of emigrants from the Greek kingdom was an economic crisis that hit the agricultural sector during this period, although the prospects for a better life should not be underestimated (Papastergiadis, 2000, pp. 36–37, 47–48). As for immigrants from the Ottoman empire, according to, among others, the Greek consul in Trebizond (Trabzon), the most important reason for emigration of Greek Orthodox populations was the imposition of compulsory military service for Christian subjects of the Ottoman empire after the Revolution of Young Turks in 1908 (IAYE,² F. B53, 2412, 10.12.1911; Gordon, 1932, p. 306). In both countries, sources stress the role of travel agents who roamed the provinces describing bright prospects awaiting immigrants to the United States (IAYE, F. B12.1/1902, 07567; 29.5.1902, A12.1/1888, 07945, 13.7.1888; Ellis Island Archive, MSS. AKRF-91, Euterpe Bouki-Doukakis’s testimony). Nevertheless, the conditions that immigrants encountered did not correspond to the image they had formed prior to their arrival in America.

In the following chapter I aim to explain the procedures that led to the construction of Greek American ethnic identity in the first quarter of the twentieth century, focusing on the ideological formation of the leading immigrant groups and their activity in local and national organizations and taking into account both Greek irredentism and assimilationist pressures in the American society. The decision to deal with Greek associations in the United States results from the lack of first-hand testimonies from immigrants. The available sources–dispatches from Greek and Ottoman diplomats in the United States as well as Greek-language newspapers–express the views of the local elites and the interests of the states that wished to control immigrants. My argument is based on these archival sources and is bound to the limits they impose. We can therefore only guess at immigrants’ collective attitudes indirectly through the rare surviving letters and some interviews in the Ellis Island archive that do not necessarily deal with issues of collective identity.

A closer look at the sources of the early twentieth century, the period when the Greek American community started taking shape, reveals that the conceptualization of this community was not simply a reiteration of previously existing tendencies but the result of a long process that was inevitably bound to the socio-political and cultural currents in Greece and the United States, that is, to the social status of the Greeks in the United States and their relation to their country of origin and country of residence. As Ioanna Laliotou (2004, p. 11), has pointed out, “migrants become migrants in the context of their encounter with cultural traditions, racial stereotypes, and technologies of social integration in the countries they come from as well as in the countries they arrive at.” It is more accurate to argue that a unified identity was the outcome of specific conditions inside the Greek American organizations AHEPA (American Hellenic Progressive Association) and GAPA (Greek American Progressive Association) and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America after World War I. While the Greek state had attempted to cultivate a pan-Hellenic identity among immigrants, not necessarily different from the ideological orientation of the Greek state, it was only after World War I that a Greek American ideology, and consequently a certain identity, was successfully framed. This identity, however, was not merely a reflection of the Greek national ideology, but was rather a construction along the lines of American nationalism. It was also supposed to serve as a bulwark against the xenophobic and racist climate prevalent in the United States during this period. Moreover, as Werner Sollors has pointed out, “the strengthening of ethnic consciousness often coincides with the rise of agitation against marginal men and disloyal group members” (Sollors, 1981, p. 274). The Greek American identity was primarily the outcome of a complicated process that has been little examined.

Some researchers have remarked that immigrants, when they arrive in their host country, are initially integrated within networks that are reproduced through family, local, occupational, or patronage ties (relational mode of identification) (Brubaker, 2004, p. 41). In the process of integration in the “receiving society,” immigrants start to identify themselves through their incorporation in groups, organized by race, social class, ethnic or national affiliation, language, and nationality (categorical mode of identification). Gradually, although relational identifications do not disappear, categorical identifications become more important for immigrants (Brubaker, 2004, p. 42). These categorical identifications serve not only as ways to conceive the present, but also as efforts to determine the future, and as a result define the position of subjects in the present and the future (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, p. 48). It is thus interesting to study through what processes, in order to achieve integration, a national categorical identification can be transformed into an ethnic one, by shifting the reference frame from homeland nationalism to host country nationalism. I will therefore try to define under what circumstances Orthodox Christian immigrants from Greece and the Ottoman empire adopted different categorical identifications, and how the content of “Hellenism” evolved first in a national and then in an ethnic frame.

As diaspora scholars put it, in order to achieve their foreign policy goals, homelands often try to utilize immigrants’ attachment to their place of origin and their sense of duty (Østergaard-Nielsen, 2003, p. 4). Migration therefore offers national states the chance to broaden their range by developing transnational economic, social, and political links with their citizens who live abroad (Østergaard-Nielsen, 2003). Especially during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period when the nation-states of Europe were founded and a considerable part of their populations migrated to the United States, the strengthening of links with their citizens abroad became an important goal of state policy (Green & Weil, 2006, p. 11). The Greek state was mainly interested in ensuring the continuing flow of immigrant remittances, as well as motivating immigrants politically with the aim to advance national propaganda and counterbalance any adverse propaganda from enemy states. This obviously opens up the question of institutions seeking to mobilize to their political project individuals who have emigrated mainly for economic reasons.

According to social scientists, the ability to convince a group of individuals to consider themselves as part of a given community is necessary in order to mobilize them to achieve an ideological goal. The entrepreneurs of identity define the content of categorical identifications and impose on a given group forms of mobilization for achieving an ideal future (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, p. 49). These individuals seek to present themselves as expressing the voice of the nation and to promote a particular political project in order to obtain power, exert influence, and convince others to follow them (Chryssochoou, 2004, p. 110).

Following the results of the studies cited above, I begin by defining how the putative leading immigrant groups may have substantiated and used the concept of “Hellenism” to mobilize immigrants and legitimize their influence. My study examines how their choices led to national or ethnic groupings and finally to the formation of a Greek American identity. This process consists of two stages. First, I examine how the leading immigrant groups and the organizations they created before World War I, independently or at the instigation of the Greek state, used national categories. Second, I analyze how, as a result of the rise of xenophobia as well as the change in the social structure of Greek communities after the end of World War I, new leading groups emerged that sought to describe a Greek American community as an integral part of the American nation. My main purpose is to examine “how, why, and in what contexts ethnic categories are used – or not used – to make sense of problems and predicaments, to articulate affinities and affiliations, to identify commonalities and connections, to frame stories and self understandings” (Brubaker, 2004, p. 25).

To reply to these questions, it is essential to study the influence of the “two national centers of Hellenism,” Greece and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, in the construction, acceptance, and evolution of the leading groups, as well as the ideology of the political organizations that were founded in the United States in order to mobilize immigrants.

Previous researchers have noted how the Greek government tried to exploit Greek organizations in the United States. Nevertheless, the creation of these organizations has not been studied as part of the process that led to the construction of Greek American ideology. It is important to stress the effort of the Greek state to advance its foreign policy goals on the one hand, and, on the other, the struggle of the leading groups in the Greek communities to establish, by means of nationalism and with the support of the Greek state, their power over immigrants. In order to study this process, we need to focus on the establishment of Greek organizations in the United States and the conflicts between immigrant elites and the foundation of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. To do this, we utilize the theoretical frame of categorical identification use by identity entrepreneurs. In what follows, I show how research questions are substantiated in the historical period under examination.

However, it should be noted that the available sources (the Greek-and English-language press in the United States, Greek and Ottoman diplomatic dispatches) do not provide adequate or unbiased information about the popularity of the nationalist or ethnic organizations with immigrants. Therefore, my analysis focuses on the ideological content of the discourses expressed by these organizations and the leading groups.

Local and Religious Identifications and the Influence of Greek Nationalism

As mentioned above in reference to the Greek communities and associations in the United States, we have to distinguish between immigrants from the Greek kingdom and those from the Ottoman empire. Although the two groups shared a common religion and in many cases a common language, they did not necessarily share common political visions.

For emigrants from the Greek kingdom, the “manifest destiny” of the Greek nation was very strong, expressed by a messianic nationalism in the form of the “Great Idea” (Mεγ

λη Iδέα) that envisaged the restoration of the Byzantine empire with Constantinople (Istanbul) as its capital. Nevertheless, this nationalistic fervor was combined with contempt for King George I of Greece and the country’s political and military elites, who were considered corrupt and were held responsible for Greece’s defeat by the Ottomans in 1897 as well as for the economic crisis that had forced them to emigrate.

On the other hand, emigrants from the Ottoman empire identified themselves with the ethno-religious group (millet) to which they belonged (namely, the Millet-i Rum, that is, the Orthodox community instituted officially in the Ottoman empire during the Tanzimat reforms under the authority of the patriarch of Constantinople) and with their hometown or county of origin, rather than with a political authority, that is, either the Ottoman or the Greek state. The Greek-or Turkish-speaking Orthodox emigrants from Asia Minor and Thrace did not necessarily identify themselves with the irredentist policy of the Greek state. Greek diplomats considered the immigration experience to be a way for immigrants to assimilate the dominant discourse of the “Great Idea” through social intercourse with Greeks from mainland Greece. As the Greek consul in Adrianople (Edirne), Leon S. Matlis, wrote to the Greek foreign ministry (IAYE, F. B/44/1910, 1812, 5.7.1910), “All, without exception, have Greek as a mother tongue and are Orthodox Christians; nevertheless, there is a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Part I: Development, (Re)Construction, and Expression of Collective Identities
• Part II: Collective Identity and Political Participation
• Part III: Bert Klandermans
• Part IV: Integration
• Conclusion From Identity and Participation to Integration or Radicalization
• Name Index
• Subject Index