Migrant Multicultural And Diasporic Heritage

Migrant, Multicultural and Diasporic Heritage explores the role heritage has played in representing, contesting and negotiating the history and politics of ethnic, migrant, multicultural, diasporic or ‘other’ heritages in, within, between and beyond nations and national boundaries. Containing contributions from academics and professionals working across a range of fields, this volume contends that, in the face of various global ‘crises’, the role of heritage is especially important: it is a stage for the negotiation of shifting identities and for the rewriting of traditions and historical narratives of belonging and becoming. As a whole, the book connects and further develops methodological and theoretical discourses that can fuel and inform practice and social outcomes. It also examines the unique opportunities, challenges and limitations that various actors encounter in their efforts to preserve, identify, assess, manage, interpret and promote heritage pertaining to the experience and history of migration and migrant groups. Bringing together diverse case studies of migration and migrants in cultural heritage practice, Migrant, Multicultural and Diasporic Heritage will be of great interest to academics and students engaged in the study of heritage and museums, as well as those working in the fields of memory studies, public history, anthropology, archaeology, tourism and cultural studies.

This Element argues that community-initiated migrant heritage harbours the potential to challenge and expand state-sanctioned renderings of multiculturalism in liberal nation-states. In this search for alternative readings, community-initiated migrant heritage is positioned as a grassroots challenge to positivist state-multiculturalism. It can do this if we adopt the migrant perspective, a diasporic perspective of 'settlement' that is always unfinished, non-static, and non-essentialist. As mobile subjects, either once or many times over - a subject position arrived at through acts of mobility, sometimes spawned by violence or structural inequality, which can reverberate throughout subsequent generations - the migrant subject position compels us to look both forwards and backwards in time and place.

Using an interdisciplinary and transhistorical framework this book examines the cultural, material, and symbolic articulations of Irish migration relationships from the medieval period through to the contemporary post-Celtic Tiger era. With attention to people’s different uses of social space, relationships with and memories of the landscape, as well as their symbolic expressions of diasporic identity, Heritage, Diaspora and the Consumption of Culture examines the different forms of diaspora over time and contributes to contemporary debates on home, foreignness, globalization and consumption. By examining various movements of people into and out of Ireland, the book explores how expressions of cultural capital and symbolic power have changed over time in the Irish collective imagination, shedding light on the ways in which Ireland is represented and Irish culture consumed and materialized overseas. Arranged around the themes of home and location, identity and material culture, and global culture and consumption, this collection brings together the work of scholars from the UK, Ireland, Europe, the US and Canada, to explore the ways in which the processes of movement affect the people’s negotiation and contestation of concepts of identity, the local and the global. As such, it will appeal to scholars working in fields such as sociology, politics, cultural studies, history and archaeology, with interests in migration, gender studies, diasporic identities, heritage and material culture.

The Heritage Corridor argues for a transnational approach to investigating and recording heritage places that emerge from histories of migration. Addressing the material legacy of migration, this book also relates it to issues of contemporary importance. Presenting an image of the built environment of migration as one shaped by the ongoing flows of people, ideas, objects and money that circulate through migration corridors, Byrne proposes that houses and other structures built by migrants in their home villages in China over the period 1840–1940 should be seen as crystallisations of the labour, aspirations and longings enacted and experienced by their builders while overseas. Demonstrating that the material world of the migrant is distributed across transnational space, the book calls for an approach to the heritage of migration that is similarly expansive. It proposes and illustrates new methods and strategies for heritage practice. The Heritage Corridor is a book for scholars and students in the fields of critical heritage studies, migration studies and Chinese diasporic mobilities. It is designed to be accessible to heritage practitioners, readers with an interest in the material worlds of migration, past and present, and to all those with an interest in the ‘archaeology’ of transnational migration.

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

Changing Heritage presents the most comprehensive analysis of heritage issues available today. Critically analysing the complexity of the current and forthcoming issues faced by heritage, it presents insightful directions for the future. Drawing on the author’s many years of experience working in senior positions at UNESCO, the book presents discussions of heritage sites all around the world. Today, our cultural and natural legacies face significant threats due to social and economic developments, political pressures, and unresolved historical issues. This book delves into these threats from two distinct perspectives: internal tensions and external pressures. The internal tensions include the disregard for human rights and gender equality; the increasing exploitation of heritage for political purposes; the development of post-colonial perspectives; and the necessity to reassess the established notion of "universal value." External pressures stem from global processes, unsustainable tourism, political conflicts, ethnic clashes, and religious strife that are causing destruction in numerous parts of the world. Examining the dynamics between heritage and these internal tensions and external pressures, Bandarin offers insights into the challenges faced and emphasises the imperative role of civil society in safeguarding the value of heritage for present and future generations. Changing Heritage explores a wide range of issues surrounding the crisis in heritage management on an international level. It will be essential reading for heritage scholars, students, and professionals

This book explores the transnational practices of migrant groups in global London, illustrating the complex relations between migrants and the city in the context of globalisation. The chapters offer a starting point to examine migrants and the city from a comparative perspective by bringing together case studies of diverse migrant communities. They use ‘languaging’ as the central concept in the development of an interdisciplinary framework that creates an opportunity to ‘talk across disciplines’ to engage with key issues crisscrossing migration, cities and language. The book promotes ‘language-based’ or ‘language-sensitive’ research, drawing on the plurilingual repertoires and the language and translanguaging practices of migrant communities as the tool for data collection and ethnographic fieldwork. This approach generates fresh insights into the complex issues of diasporic identities, belonging and place-making, which have broad implications for migration studies in post-Brexit Britain and beyond.

Since the Intangible Heritage Convention was adopted by UNESCO in 2003, intangible cultural heritage has increasingly been an important subject of debate in international forums. As more countries implement the Intangible Heritage Convention, national policymakers and communities of practice have been exploring the use of intellectual property protection to achieve intangible cultural heritage safeguarding outcomes. This book examines diverse cultural heritage case studies from Indigenous communities and local communities in developing and industrialised countries to offer an interdisciplinary examination of topics at the intersection between heritage and property which present cross-border challenges. Analysing a range of case studies which provide examples of traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions, and genetic resources by a mixture of practitioners and scholars from different fields, the book addresses guidelines and legislation as well as recent developments about shared heritage to identify a progressive trend that improves the understanding of intangible cultural heritage. Considering all forms of intellectual property, including patents, copyright, design rights, trade marks, geographical indications, and sui generis rights, the book explores problems and challenges for intangible cultural heritage in crossborder situations, as well as highlighting positive relationships and collaborations among communities across geographical boundaries. Transboundary Heritage and Intellectual Property Law: Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage will be an important resource for practitioners, scholars, and students engaged in studying intangible cultural heritage, intellectual property law, heritage studies, and anthropology.