Considering commemorative practices of postmemory, past presencing, and transnational memory, this study considers how Genocide memories and the conflict in Artsakh intersect to shape the performance of diasporic Armenian youth identities in Jerusalem as members of a disempowered minority community. Drawing on ethnographic research in Jerusalem’s Armenian School, participant-observation in community events, and interviews with youth and community leaders, this article documents processes of intergenerational memory transmission within educational and community settings and suggests ways in which inherited narratives of victimization find new expressions via transnational acts of citizenship. As Jerusalem’s multilingual Armenian youth engage in commemorative ceremonies and take protests to the streets in acts of diaspora mobilization, memories are (re) interpreted to construct novel identity narratives tied to an imagined Armenian transnation.
This focused digital ethnography explores Armenian diaspora youth mobilisation via hashtag activism concerning a homeland conflict, examining the impact of digital citizenship acts on diaspora nationalism and identity negotiation. Taking Jerusalem's Armenian School as a case study, I analyse the school's use of Facebook amid a global pandemic to coordinate youth mobilisation around the viral hashtag #WeWillWin during the Second Artsakh War between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Ethnographic content analysis was applied to student‐created audiovisual materials, which were contextualised using interviews with schoolteachers and young adults. Considering complex geopolitics within a conflict‐ridden landscape, Armenian youth's audiovisual posts in cyberspace represent empowering, performative statements of identity and citizenship tethered to an imagined Armenian transnation. For diasporic youth facing uncertainty, crisis and marginalisation in local milieus, social media can constitute hybrid spaces between home and homeland for expressions of agency and dissent, identity negotiation and citizenship performance.
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