The Diaspora Returns Home

A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism offers a ground-breaking combined discussion of the concepts of diaspora and transnationalism. Newly commissioned essays by leading scholars provide interdisciplinary perspectives that link together the concepts in new and important ways. A wide-ranging collection which reviews the most significant developments and provides valuable insights into current key debates in transnational and diaspora studies Contains newly commissioned essays by leading scholars, which will both influence the field, and stimulate further insight and discussion in the future Provides interdisciplinary perspectives on diaspora and transnationalism which link the two concepts in new and important ways Combines theoretical discussion with specific examples and case studies

In recent decades, increasing numbers of diasporic peoples have returned to their ethnic homelands, whether because of economic pressures, a desire to rediscover ancestral roots, or the homeland government's preferential immigration and nationality policies. Although the returnees may initially be welcomed back, their homecomings often prove to be ambivalent or negative experiences. Despite their ethnic affinity to the host populace, they are frequently excluded as cultural foreigners and relegated to low-status jobs shunned by the host society's populace. Diasporic Homecomings, the first book to provide a comparative overview of the major ethnic return groups in Europe and East Asia, reveals how the sociocultural characteristics and national origins of the migrants influence their levels of marginalization in their ethnic homelands, forcing many of them to redefine the meanings of home and homeland.

A Globe and Mail, Hill Times and CBC Best Book of the Year Have you ever wondered what it would be like to return to your roots? Drawing on astute political analysis and extensive reporting from around the world, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From illuminates a personal quest. Kamal Al-Solaylee, author of the bestselling and award-winning Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes and Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone), yearns to return to his homeland of Yemen, now wracked by war, starvation and daily violence, to reconnect with his family. Yemen, as well as Egypt, another childhood home, call to him, even though he ran away from them in his youth and found peace and prosperity in Canada. In Return, Al-Solaylee interviews dozens of people who have chosen to or long to return to their homelands, from Basques to Irish to Taiwanese. He does make a return of sorts himself, to the Middle East, visiting Israel and the West Bank, as well as Egypt. A chronicle of love and loss, of global reach and personal desires, Return is a book for anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to return to their roots.

This book examines return mobilities to and from ancestral homelands of the second generation and beyond. It presents cutting-edge empirical research framed within the mobilities, transnational and return migration/diaspora paradigms on a trans/local and global scale. The book is unique in presenting not only a variety of return movements, including short-term visits and longer-term return migrations, but also circulatory movements within transnational social fields while engaging with notions of ‘home’, belonging, identity and generation. The individual contributions range widely over different ethnic, national, regional and global settings, including Europe, North America, the Caribbean, the Gulf and Africa. The result is a remapping of the conceptualisation of ‘diaspora’ and of the role of successive generations in the diasporic experience, as well as a nuancing of the concepts of return migration and transnationalism by their extension to the second and subsequent generations of ‘immigrants’. This book was originally published as a special issue of Mobilities.

The first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed a passionate engagement with the losses of the past. Rites of Return examines the effects of this legacy of historical injustice and documented suffering on the politics of the present. Twenty-four writers, historians, literary and cultural critics, anthropologists and sociologists, visual artists, legal scholars, and curators grapple with our contemporary ethical endeavor to redress enduring inequities and retrieve lost histories. Mapping bold and broad-based responses to past injury across Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, Australia, the Middle East, and the United States, Rites of Return examines new technologies of genetic and genealogical research, memoirs about lost family histories, the popularity of roots-seeking journeys, organized trauma tourism at sites of atrocity and new Museums of Conscience, and profound connections between social rites and political and legal rights of return. Contributors include: Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University; Nadia Abu El-Haj, Barnard College; Elazar Barkan, Columbia University; Svetlana Boym, Harvard University; Saidiya Hartman, Columbia University; Amira Hass, journalist; Jarrod Hayes, University of Michigan; Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University; Eva Hoffman, writer; Margaret Homans, Yale University; Rosanne Kennedy, Australian National University; Daniel Mendelsohn, writer; Susan Meiselas, photographer; Nancy K. Miller, CUNY Graduate Center; Alondra Nelson, Columbia University; Jay Prosser, University of Leeds; Liz Sevchenko, Coalition of Museums of Conscience; Leo Spitzer, Dartmouth College; Marita Sturken New York University; Diana Taylor, New York University; Patricia J. Williams, Columbia University

In recent years, the Vietnamese diaspora, including some of whom are Protestant Christian Việt Kiều, have returned to their natal homeland of Vietnam in large numbers. This book investigates the phenomenon of the Protestant Christian Việt Kiều who have returned and reestablished belonging in Vietnam with a missional purpose and the perspective of non-migrant local Protestant Christian leaders as a case study of diaspora missiology. It is based upon doctoral research utilizing in-depth interviews which sought to answer the following questions: 1) What are the motivating factors of Protestant Christian Việt Kiều returning to Vietnam for mission-related purposes? 2) What has been the experience in ministry of the returning Protestant Christian Việt Kiều regarding mission-related reasons for returning? 3) How have the non-migrants experienced the phenomenon of return? This book explores the answers to these questions as a case study of diaspora missiology. Findings suggest that the Protestant Christian Việt Kiều are welcomed back in Vietnam and contributing in many dynamic ways in the homeland. At the same time, the return journey is a road layered with complexities, contradictions, opportunities, and unique challenges. Findings from this diaspora community engaged in missions by and beyond the diaspora give insight into the paradigm of diaspora missiology and temper the enthusiasm for widely promoted theory. Important questions arise regarding how far diaspora as a framework can carry us.

In TheDiaspora Strikes Back the eminent ethnic and cultural studies scholar Juan Flores flips the process on its head: what happens to the home country when it is being constantly fed by emigrants returning from abroad? He looks at how 'Nuyoricans' (Puerto Rican New Yorkers) have transformed the home country, introducing hip hop and modern New York culture to the Caribbean island. While he focuses on New York and Mayaguez (in Puerto Rico), the model is broadly applicable. Indians introducing contemporary British culture to India; New York Dominicans bringing slices of New York culture back to the Dominican Republic; Mexicans bringing LA culture (from fast food to heavy metal) back to Guadalajara and Monterrey. This ongoing process is both massive and global, and Flores' novel account will command a significant audience across disciplines.

Focusing on the return of the diasporic second generation to Greece, primarily in the first decade of the twenty-first century, Counter-Diaspora examines migration experiences of Greek-Americans and Greek-Germans growing up in the Greek diasporic setting, motivations for the counter-diasporic return, and evolving notions of the homeland.