Inherited traumas in diaspora: postmemory, past-presencing and mobilisation of second-generation Kurds in Europe

Dealing with a violent past and its remnants in the present: the challenges of remembering the wars in Chechnya in the Chechen Diaspora in the EU

“…These policies contribute to a growing perception of being targeted and marginalized within the host societies, fueling a sense of injustice and discrimination 9 (Cauquelin 2022). But contrary to the Kurdish young generation diaspora members depicted in Sweden (Baser and Toivanen 2023), the experience of discrimination in the host country does not seem to be a factor of collective mobilization.…”

“…Second, the saturation of violence in the present, in the home country but also transported abroad does not provide the terrain for a more peaceful elaboration of the past. The case of Kurdish diaspora (Baser and Toivanen 2023) shows in this volume that violence perpetrated in the present does not prevent the elaboration of a memory by a very pro-active and well-structured diaspora. In the Chechen case, a repressive domestic regime denying violence is clearly an impediment.…”

“…Many scholarly works on diaspora and memory refer to the notion of past-presencing (Macdonald 2013) which is, as Elise Féron recalls in this special issue, "the process through which the past is performed and experienced in the present" (Féron 2023). It appears relevant for the study of the nexus between diaspora, memory, and violent past, and is illustrated by several case studies in this special issue (Baser and Toivanen 2023;Féron 2023). However the Chechen case may slip out of this model in at least two ways: first, as already mentioned the oblivion of the two recent wars in the official memory process both at home and abroad while they are the direct cause of the Chechen exile.…”