ABSTRACT
Post-communist Europe has witnessed a proliferation of policies aimed at recognizing, protecting, and engaging the citizenship of ‘their’ populations abroad. These policies take multiple forms: distribution of citizenship to ethnic kin populations abroad, establishment of longdistance voting rights, provision of social and health-care benefits, or symbolic acts, such as the establishment of an ‘emigrants day’, the building of statues, or the opening of an emigrants’ museum. While the Council of Europe refers to them as kin-state policies (Council of Europe 2001 ), many governments present them as diaspora policies, namely policies aimed at including, from a symbolic, civic, political, or social standpoint, populations living outside the state’s territory, on the basis of an alleged link to the homeland.
