Emigration as a Defining Factor of a Person’s Ethnic and Cultural Identity

Abstract

Overcoming an alienation from his native land became the life-long problem of a famous philo­so­pher and German-medium writer Givi Margvelashvili [Giwi Margwelaschwili]. He wrote about this already in his autobiographical novel “Captain Vakush” [Kapitän Wakusch]. In the 1980s-1990s, Givi Margve­lashvili wrote documentary prose, which he titled “Perekatasroika (Notes of a Witness of Time, 1988-1993)”, in which he narrated the events of the collapse of the Soviet Union and return to Europe. The paper singles out the causes of ethnic and cultural identity crises among the generation born and brought up in emigration, that modern scientists call the hyphenated identity.