Diasporas Revisiting And Discovering

The present book brings together a collection of key studies from many disciplines all focusing around the 'diaspora' issue. The readers will engage on a journey that spans continents, populations and time frames.

Central to the aim of both this book is to rethink the concept of diaspora as it is used both academically and popularly at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It seeks to interrogate the notion of “diaspora” in an interdisciplinary way, and to explore the contradictions inherent in contemporary notions of place and identity. It presents explorations of both “traditional” diasporas, such as the Irish community in the United States and in Great Britain, as well as recently established diasporas being formed through new patterns of migration and resettlement. Traditional conceptions of diaspora focused on forced exile from the homeland and the adoption of conscious strategies of integration upon arrival in the new land. In the past, it was assumed that migrants would rapidly assimilate into their receiving societies. Alternatively, migrant workers were regarded by themselves and their host societies as “sojourners”: they were not expected to integrate precisely because their alien presence was perceived to be temporary. Two poles then framed the traditional interpretation of migration and settlement. On the one hand, migrants assimilated rapidly; on the other, migrants were temporarily in the host-land. Yet, the realisation both that the melting pot is a myth and that migrant workers do not, in the main, go home, has forced an increasing acceptance of ethnic diversity. This, combined with ongoing improvements in travel and communications technologies, facilitates today’s migrants in maintaining links with their home countries. The increased visibility of transnational ethnic communities and a resurgence in labour migration in the twenty-first century, have stimulated academic interest in both contemporary diasporas and in recovering the hidden narratives of earlier global migrations. The renewed interest in the formation and narrative of diasporas is evident across a range of disciplines. Moreover, the meaningful exploration of any aspect of the humanities and social sciences requires an inter-disciplinary approach. Thus is the aim of this volume. Contributors approach the issue of diaspora from a variety of academic backgrounds: sociology, politics, history, literature and the visual arts. Concomitantly, data sources are diverse, with contributors drawing on official government publications, literary sources and personal memoirs, paintings and photographs, popular culture and personal interviews. This diversity of data sources indicates the multifarious approaches to the exploration diaspora. More importantly, it highlights the critical role played by unofficial, and often hidden, narratives in representing the experiences of those who find themselves, through a variety of political, social and economic factors, displaced. "This edited collection is a timely and precocious answer to a gap in the literature of identities and nationhood. It is a response to the new challenges and opportunities facing diasporic communities and, what is more, sets out key pointers for rethinking diaspora in the twenty-first century. At a time when western states are facing the need to re-evaluate traditional responses to ethnic difference arising from migration in the mid-twentieth century, this book posits an important perspective on the multiculturalism debate. Contrary to previous political and scholarly assumptions, this book shows that the children and grandchildren of immigrants can continue to have an ambiguous relationship to the state in which they were born in part because of the very nature of diaspora. The enduringly complex and sometimes volatile insider/outsider relationship is explored in these chapters through analysis of various narratives, in textual, spoken and visual forms. Analysis of such ‘hidden narratives’ reveals that the meaning and pertinence of membership of a diasporic community is defined as much by the context of the host country as by the discourses of the homeland. Across their various sources and case studies, the authors demonstrate the power of the juncture between dominant national discourses of the host state and the identity of its immigrants. Each author notes how different the diasporic community in question would be – not to mention the impact on its relationship to the host state and the homeland – if some of narratives hidden over time were to be reclaimed. As one author puts it, flux in elements of identity-formation in postmodern society represents a chance to ‘engage in dialogue with our own diversity’. In constructing a coherent volume from such a diverse range of cases and disciplines, the editors successfully demonstrate the wide validity of their case for ‘rethinking diasporas’. Nonetheless, the specific origins of this book – a conference held in a border town in Ireland – are, it may be argued, uniquely significant. For the current process of change in Irish national identity is inseparable from central features of diaspora-formation that the authors highlight, including economic pressures. Moreover, just as the town of Dundalk has historically felt the effects of its proximity to Northern Ireland, so the ‘imagined borders’ of diaspora explored in this book are shown to be all the more powerful for the fact that their delineation is contested." —Katy Hayward (Institute for British-Irish Studies, UCD

Global Indian Diasporas discusses the relationship between South Asian emigrants and their homeland, the reproduction of Indian culture abroad, and the role of the Indian state in reconnecting emigrants to India. Focusing on the limits of the diaspora concept, rather than its possibilities, this volume presents new historical and anthropological research on South Asian emigrants worldwide. From a comparative perspective, examples of South Asian emigrants in Suriname, Mauritius, East Africa, Canada, and the United Kingdom are deployed in order to show that in each of these regions there are South Asian emigrants who do not fit into the Indian diaspora concept—raising questions about the effectiveness of the diaspora as an academic and sociological index, and presenting new and controversial insights in diaspora issues.

This book provides scholarly perspectives on a range of timely concerns in Irish diaspora studies. It offers a focal point for fresh interchanges and theoretical insights on questions of identity, Irishness, historiography and the academy’s role in all of these. In doing so, it chimes with the significant public debates on Irish and Irish emigrant identities that have emerged from Ireland’s The Gathering initiative (2013) and that continue to reverberate throughout the Decade of Centenaries (2012-2023) in Ireland, North and South. In ten chapters of new research on key areas of concern in this field, the book sustains a conversation centred on three core questions: what is diaspora in the Irish context and who does it include/exclude? What is the view of Ireland and Northern Ireland from the diaspora? How can new perspectives in the academy engage with a more rigorous and probing theorisation of these concerns? This thought-provoking work will appeal to students and scholars of history, geography, literature, sociology, tourism studies and Irish studies.

Re-energising debates on the conceptualisation of diasporas in migration scholarship and in geography, this work stresses the important role that geographers can play in interrupting assumptions about the spaces and processes of diaspora. The intricate, material and complex ways in which those in diaspora contest, construct and perform identity, politics, development and place is explored throughout this book. The authors ’dismantle’ diasporas in order to re-theorise the concept through empirically grounded, cutting-edge global research. This innovative volume will appeal to an international and interdisciplinary audience in ethnic, migration and diaspora studies as it tackles comparative, multi-sited and multi-method research through compelling case studies in a variety of contexts spanning the Global North and South. The research in this book is guided by four interconnected themes: the ways in which diasporas are constructed and performed through identity, the body, everyday practice and place; how those in diaspora become politicised and how this leads to unities and disunities in relation to 'here' and 'there'; the ways in which diasporas seek to connect and re-connect with their 'homelands' and the consequences of this in terms of identity formation, employment and theorising who 'counts' as a diaspora; and how those in diaspora engage with homeland development and the challenges this creates.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, millions of Romanians emigrated in search of work and new experiences; they became engaged in an interrogation of what it meant to be Romanian in a united Europe and the globalized world. Their thoughts, feelings and hopes soon began to populate the virtual world of digital and mobile technologies. This book chronicles the online cultural and political expressions of the Romanian diaspora using websites based in Europe and North America. Through online exchanges, Romanians perform new types of citizenship, articulated from the margins of the political field. The politicization of their diasporic condition is manifested through written and public protests against discriminatory work legislation, mobilization, lobbying, cultural promotion and setting up associations and political parties that are proof of the gradual institutionalization of informal communications. Online discourse analysis, supplemented by interviews with migrants, poets and politicians involved in the process of defining new diasporic identities, provide the basis of this book, which defines the new cultural and political practices of the Romanian diaspora.

This book examines the increasing--and increasingly enforced--settlement of Gypsies and Travellers into conventional housing. The authors evaluate a range of Gypsy- and Traveller-related policies in areas such as social housing, community cohesion and regeneration, and race relations and equality. Analyzing the impact of these policies, they offer an unprecedented look into the changing culture and dynamics of ethnic Gypsy and Traveller communities. Ultimately, this volume demonstrates the tenacity and adaptability of cultural formations in the face of policy-driven constraints that are antithetical to traditional lifestyles.