This paper addresses the (post)-memories of the generations of offspring of survivors of the genocidal processes in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. About 12,000 Yezidis managed to flee to Armenia and establish a diasporic community. Based on ethnographic fieldwork within this community, including interviews with members of subsequent generations, this article focuses on the narratives and experiences of women as well as gender-specific violence. The gathered empirical data makes it possible to elaborate on the hardly documented history, on its lasting effects, and on gender-specific differences in these narrations. Despite certain politics of silencing, memories of genocidal persecution were passed down from one generation to the next. The most recent case of genocidal persecution of Yezidis in Shingal (Iraq) 2014 affected the very foundations of the Yezidi community both in Armenia and the transnation—and at the same time revived their joint remembrance of the fate of their ancestors who had once sought refuge in Armenia.

AbstractThis article sets out to highlight present-day anthropological contributions to the field of forced migration and to the current debates on this topic in Europe through the experience of developing an international and interdisciplinary network for the study of refugees based in Vienna, Austria. To this end, this article engages with the grounding facts of the present Central European sociohistorical context and global political trends, grapples with shifting and questionable research funding landscapes such as the focus on “integration,” illustrates some of the main current research challenges, and highlights pressing topics. It concludes proposing a research horizon to counter present strong limitations on forced migration research and steer this research toward a more meaningful direction.

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