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The structural components of a state are regularly conflated with a state's national identity. In reality, however, the assumption that the boundaries of a state and its national identity are coterminous is problematic. While this has always been the case, changes in the ability of actors in the international system to use communication and transportation technologies to sustain transnational collective identities points to the need for new empirical research in this area. Contemporary diasporas are defined by a national or cultural identity, yet differ from nation-states in terms of their organizational and spatial logics. By comparing diaspora mobilization in two cases, we find that both non-state political entrepreneurs and state elites are using diasporic practices of identity formation as a means of generating economic and political support in an increasingly integrated global economy. This points to discontinuities between a territorially defined states system and deterritorialized practices of collective identity formation.
KEY WORDS * constructivism * diasporas * Greek-Cypriots * identity * Kurds * nationalism
Introduction
Over the past decade, scientifically minded social constructivists and others have struggled with the question of how to combine a richer conceptualization of identity in International Relations (IR) with an empirically driven research agenda.1 In this context, scholars interested in the mechanisms and processes associated with identity formation in the international arena have increasingly challenged the state-centric nature of IR theory by focusing on other salient identities in world politics, such as national and regional identities, international norms, or civilizations.2 Despite this expansion of the constructivist research agenda, however, a number of collective identities central to understanding international politics remain acutely under-theorized. Chief among these are the collective identities formed by contemporary migration processes, and the way in which they call into question the relationship between states as actors, institutions or territories and colUctive identities as quasi-independent structures of meaning.
It is widely acknowledged in IR that the 'fit' between a particular national identity and the state as a unit of analysis should be treated as a convenient assumption, and does not necessarily correspond with the realities of the world we inhabit. Yet one still finds a continued acceptance of the analytical utility of conflating 'national identity' with the other structural and spatial components of the state.3 Conflating the...