The ArmenYouth Rest&Rev project, led by Sophie Hohmann, winner of the Emergences-Idex call for projects

The collaborative research project "ArmenYouth Rest&Rev", led by Sophie Hohmann, senior lecturer in sociology, researcher at Centre de recherches Europes-Eurasie - CREE (Inalco) and Cécile Lefèvre, professor of sociology, researcher at Centre de Recherches sur les Liens sociaux.eu/">Centre de Recherches sur les Liens sociaux-CERLIS (Université de Paris) won the "Emergence-Idex" 2020 call for projects.

* This two-year project was thought out and written before the Covid-19 health crisis, which is also hitting Armenia hard, and before the third Nagorno-Karabakh war in autumn 2020, which has multidimensional consequences and represents a huge rupture in domestic and regional politics. Our project will consider these transformations in reflection and in the field with young Armenians and/or people of Armenian origin.

Biographies

Sophie Hohmann, PhD in Social Sciences (EHESS), is Senior Lecturer in the Eurasia Department at Inalco, Paris. She is associated with the CREE (Centre de Recherches Europes-Eurasie) at Inalco. A sociologist specializing in social issues and mobilities in the South Caucasus (Armenia and Azerbaijan) and Central Asia, she co-edited the 2014 book Development in Central Asia and the Caucasus, Migration, Democratization and Inequality in the Post-Soviet Era, published by I. B. Tauris, London. She has published widely on vulnerabilities, poverty, health and labor migration in the South of the former Soviet Union. She studies historical, sociological and generational trajectories, as well as migrants' strategies and transformations in the relationship to the society of departure and reception. Since 2015, she has been working on the mobilities of Caucasians and Central Asians to Russia's Far North and on the temporalities of labor migration.

Cécile Lefèvre is University Professor of Sociology and Demography at the University of Paris, in the Sociétés et Humanités Faculty. She is a researcher at Cerlis-Centre de Recherches sur les Liens sociaux (UMR 8070, Axe Familles, Individus, Institutions), and an associate researcher at Ined, in the Pôle Perspectives Internationales. She joined the university in 2010, having previously worked at Insee (she is a senior administrator at Insee), DREES and Ined. She closely follows demographic trends and migration in the post-Soviet and Eurasian space. She specializes in issues of social policy and family solidarity in France, Russia and post-Soviet countries, particularly the Caucasus, blending several methodological approaches.

Alice Boccara, participant and coordinator of the documentary film and audiovisual part of the project. She is currently working on a thesis combining visual anthropology and the anthropology of music, and is also pursuing her career as a young documentary filmmaker. She speaks Russian and visited Armenia in 2011 and 2019. During the latter trip, she began filming some exploratory sequences, including a focus group of female students at Yerevan University. She is a graduate of ENS Lyon (2016, Département lettres et arts - Musicologie, Sciences humaines et Cinéma) and of the master's degree in documentary filmmaking (INA-Ecole des Chartes and ENS Paris-Saclay). Among her documentary achievements, the short audiovisual film with Charlotte Ballet-Baz, intérieur - extérieur, devoted to prisoners' correspondences with the outside world, has been selected and awarded at several prestigious festivals: FIPA Doc, Traces de Vie, DocuDays in Ukraine, Festival des Droits de l'Homme in Bangladesh, Partie(s) de campagne...

Staying, leaving, coming back: Armenian youth(s) here and there

Summary
In April 2018, after 70 years of the USSR and then 30 years of authoritarian and oligarchic rule, a democratic and popular revolution - driven largely by local youth - swept through Armenia. This revolution was closely followed by the diaspora, and in particular by 3rd and even 4th generation young people; descendants for the most part of the survivors of the 1915 genocide from territories now located in present-day Turkey.

While up until now, the main future prospects for young local Armenians were to migrate (in particular to Russia, France and the USA), since 2018, many of them now wish to stay and help build a new Armenian society. And for young diasporic Armenians, the revolution has given rise to new projects of "repatriation" - as they call it. As a result, we will study the social transformations of Armenian youth and their desire for participatory democracy and emancipation, cross-referencing the different views, perspectives, discourses and imaginaries of these young people.

We will gather their life stories in order to understand how these young people (Armenian and/or of Armenian origin) position themselves vis-à-vis Armenia's a priori common historical past. These in-depth interviews will aim to clarify the links between small (personal, family, local) and large-scale history. We are therefore planning several missions to Armenia, as well as to diasporic centers in France (Île de France and Marseille). We'll also be organizing a filmed focus group midway through the project, bringing together "diasporic" and "local-local" (as they call themselves) people, so as to make them actors in the research.

This project is at the crossroads of the sociology of youth and migration, history and visual sociology, with the production of a documentary film and a website, in addition to scientific articles and/or books.

Staying, leaving, coming back: Armenian youth(s) here and there

Abstract
In April 2018, after 70 years of Soviet Union followed by 30 years of an authoritarian and oligarchic regime, a democratic and popular revolution emerged in Armenia, largely driven by the local youth. This revolution was closely followed by the diaspora, and in particular by the youth from the third and fourth generation living in France, most of whom being descendants of the survivors of the 1915 genocide who came from territories now located in present-day Turkey.

Until recently, the main prospect for local Armenian youth was emigration, mainly to Russia, France and the United States. However, since 2018, many of them now wish to stay in their home country, in order to participate to the construction of a new Armenian society. Conversely, among the diaspora youth, the revolution gave rise to a new project of "repatriation" - as they call it- or return to the country of origin. Therefore, we propose to study the social transformations of the Armenian youths and their desires for participatory democracy, by crossing the different perspectives, discourses and imaginations of these young people.

We will collect their life stories in order to understand how these young people (Armenian natives and those from Armenian origin) position themselves with respect to Armenia's history. These in-depth interviews will aim to document the links between the small history and the great History. For this doing, we plan missions to Armenia, and trips in France to the main places of residence of the diaspora (Île de France and Marseille). We will also gather a focus group, which will be filmed, at the mid-term of the project, mixing "diasporics" and "locals" (as they call themselves), in order to make them actors of this research.

This project is at the crossroads of the sociology of migrations, of youth, history and visual sociology, with the production of a documentary film and a website, in addition to scientific papers and possibly a book or a summary document as a synthesis.