256
(Brubaker 2002). The case of the Meskhetians is emblematic, since questions
concerning their collective identity are intimately – and practically – connected to
processes of inclusion, integration and citizenship, and tend to assume identity as a
prerequisite, rather than as a process of negotiation. In this perspective I presented
some brief observations derived from my fieldwork research in two Meskhetian
settlements in Georgia. My intent was to follow a way of thinking about groups not
biased “toward finding the Gemeinschaft within the Gesellschaft” (Hannerz 1996, p.
100), but rather emphasizing their outward movements and the tensions produced by
the interaction among moral economies, legal frameworks and everyday practices.
The way new families are formed is particularly relevant here, because it entails
movements across borders and encounters with bureaucratic systems and regimes of
citizenship.
Assuming a constructivist point of view on vernacular categories doesn't
imply, in my opinion, that we should deny the importance that imagined collec-
tivities, and collective memory, have in shaping ideas of belonging to a particular
territory and sharing a common past. Regardless of the number of Meskhetians who
will effectively settle in their – or their ancestors' –
homeland, their conception of
return is rhetorically framed as a collective movement, and often practiced along
collective routes: projects that involve families, networks of families, neigh-
borhoods, etc.
The recognition of such a collective level is compatible, in my opinion, with
refocusing our analysis from “groups” to the construction of “groupness”.
Discourses on belonging and homeland; movements across borders and regimes of
citizenship; reinscription of historical and collective memories in national
metanarratives could be measured not only against generalizing notions of identity,
but also on a micro-level of individual and familial projects of life.
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