By Shushan Ghahriyan
CRRC-Armenia Yerevan State University Scholarship Holder
CRRC-Armenia Yerevan State University Scholarship Holder
The Syrian crisis, started in 2011, forced many
Syrian-Armenians to leave Syria and resettle in Armenia. Followed by the challenges brought by
war,
in Armenia they
faced
problems that are common
for the
locals as well.
Thus the
research is
focused on bringing out the manifestations of social alienation among
Syrian-Armenians.
To
analyze
the phenomenon of social alienation among Syrian-Armenian immigrants we will refer to M.
Seeman's (1959)
approach to social alienation who
defines the concept in terms of powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness,
isolation and self-estrangement. Later,
isolation was divided into social isolation and cultural isolation (Middleton, 1963).
Powerlessness
According to our results, powerlessness
predominantly refers to inability to control desired outcomes of behavior
and it is mainly expressed in socio-political situations. Respondents most
often mention that they cannot
change anything in Armenia, cannot
improve their conditions as mostly everything depends on the Government and changes should come from
there. This feeling of powerlessness is
connected to the fact that Syrian-Armenians do not yet consider themselves as a
part of the Armenian society.
Social
isolation
Powerlessness
is closely related to social isolation. According to the interviews we can say
that social isolation causes the feeling of powerlessness. When talking about
social isolation we need to take into account the place of origin of Syrian-Armenians. In contrary to the ones from Allepo (a large city in
Syria), people
from Qamishli (a small city with
strong community ties), feel more isolated as they cannot restore
former ties
and relationships as well as the community life they used to have.
Cultural
estrangement
Cultural
estrangement manifests in value differences. Syrian-Armenians are affected by oriental culture and this has its effects on
their outlook. It was also mentioned that Syrian-Armenians are more
business-minded than the locals.
Normlessness
Normlessness mainly refers to the ineffectiveness of
laws. Usually problems in Armenia are being solved through
“mediators”, people who are considered as informal problem solvers. This way of
problem solving is very common in the Armenian reality. Thus we can say that this institute of “mediators”
is to some extent a social capital in the Armenian society. From this viewpoint
normlessness is not as obvious as other dimensions of alienation among Syrian-Armenians because
they do not have the relevant social networks
through whom it would be possible to solve problems in Armenia. Thus they rely
only on formal, legal regulations which do not function properly.
Meaninglessness
Switching
to the next dimension that is meaninglessness we should mention that it is
connected with the person's past experience in different aspects and spheres.
The notions of meaninglessness can be divided into two parts. The first is that
it is meaningful to start a new initiative in Armenia, to have long-time plans,
as Armenia is desired and sweet homeland for
Syrian-Armenians and they still think that it is worth linking future with it. The second is that everything is uncertain in
Armenia and one cannot predict what will happen in the near future. That's why
they do not see any meaning in initiating, creating, planning something.
Self-estrangement
And the
last dimension of social alienation is self-estrangement. It mainly refers to
the situation when Syrian-Armenians lost something from their self. Most of
Syrian-Armenian immigrants cannot
realize themselves in Armenia as they do in Syria. When talking about
self-estrangement first of all we should mention the loss of prestige and respect they had in Syria. We can state that
self-estrangement is more specific to men. As for women, here in Armenia they have more opportunities for self-realization
which was difficult in Syria surrounded by Muslims who have their strong rules
concerning women.
To sum up, we should mention that these issues if not
solved can deepen the feeling of alienation and create obstacles for integration to the
society in Armenia.
About YSU Scholarship
Highly appreciating partnership with Yerevan State University and strong commitment to contribute to the excellence of social science research in Armenia, Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC)-Armenia has launched Yerevan State University Scholarship program in 2014. The goal of the program is to encourage young researchers, who make their first steps in social science research. For that purpose, CRRC-Armenia provides single-time financial support to two Master’s students from the departments of Sociology, and Economics and Management to allocate resources for field organization and first-hand high-quality data collection and analysis for their master thesis.
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