Transnational Yearnings

The global pathways that connect cities and nations are congested with people, money, and cultural transmissions. Transnational Yearnings maps a new way to look at modern contact zones and the personal interconnections that inform them by tracing circuits of migration and leisure travel between postcolonial Jamaica and Toronto, a city that has become for Jamaican Canadians both a place of promise and cultural vitality and a site of criminalization and exclusion through deportation. Innovative and provocative, this book is about the desires, intimacies, and power relations that at once inform and reflect transnational migration and the diasporization of urban space.

A pathbreaking exploration of the international and intercultural connections within Oceanian performance

In Immigrants in Prairie Cities, Royden Loewen and Gerald Friesen analyze the processes of cultural interaction and adaptation that unfolded in these urban centres and describe how this model of diversity has changed over time.

After generations of being rendered virtually invisible by the US academy in critical anthologies and literary histories, writing by Latin Americans of African ancestry has become represented by a booming corpus of intellectual and critical investigation. This volume aims to provide an introduction to the literary worlds and perceptions of national culture and identity of authors from Spanish-America, Brazil, and uniquely, Equatorial Guinea, thus contextually connecting Africa to the history of Spanish colonization. The importance of Latin America literature to the discipline of African Diaspora studies is immeasurable, and this edited collection provides a ripe cultural context for critical comparative analysis among the vast geographies that encompass African and African Diaspora studies. Scholars in the area of African Diaspora Studies, Black Studies, Latin American Studies, and American literature will be able to utilize the eleven essays in this edition to enhance classroom instruction and further academic research.

This book throws new light on the drivers of migration and explores the different ways in which aspiration and desire are involved in the generation, experiences, and outcomes of migration. The authors propose novel approaches to advancing collective understanding of migration, including reassessments of classical push and pull theory; explorations of the lexicon of aspiration, desire and voluntariness in migration; and reflections on the relationships between migration and modernity, youth and expectation, and anti-immigrant discourses. The chapters have a broad geographical scope, spanning migration on different continents and in diverse socio-economic and cultural settings. At a time when migration has become one of the most prominent areas of national and international political debate, this volume provides the tools for researchers to reconsider how we understand the forces and outcomes of global mobility. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Border Terrains examines 21st century diasporas through the lenses of identity negotiation, religious faith, language, media and representations in fiction.

The impact of the African Diaspora in Spanish America is far greater than is understood or acknowledged in the English speaking world. Connected initially to the Spanish-Caribbean through trans-Atlantic slavery, Africa is so deeply ingrained in the biology and culture of these countries that, in the words of the Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen, it would require the work of a 'miniaturist to disentangle that hieroglyph.' Through complex explorations of narratives of Spanish Blacks in the Caribbean this collection of essays builds critically on mid and late twentieth century Afro-Hispanist scholarship and thereby amplifies the terms in which Africans in the Americas are generally discussed. Each of these essays deals with a pivotal aspect of the African experience in the Spanish speaking Caribbean from the period of slavery to the present day. The essays focus on Black African cultures in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic as well as in the circum Caribbean areas of Mexico and Colombia. In the process they cover a vast and highly involved range of issues including abolition and the politics of anti-slavery rhetoric, African women's political activism, performance poetry and female embodiment of the Black Diaspora, the Cuban Revolution and its investment in African liberation struggles, race and intra-Caribbean migration, ritualised spirituality and African healing practices among others. Through their investigation of both official and popular cultures in the Caribbean not only do the essays in this volume show the indispensable functions of African cultural capital in the Spanish speaking Caribbean but they also underline the multiple demographic, socio-political and institutional imperatives that are at stake in considering contemporary understandings of the African Diaspora.

The Bosnian Diaspora: Integration in Transnational Communities provides a comprehensive insight into the situation of the Bosnian Diaspora, including not only experiences in 'western' countries, but also the integration experiences of Bosnian migrants in neighbouring territories, such as Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. The book presents the latest trans-national comparative studies drawn from the US and Australia as well as countries across Europe, to explore post-crisis interactions among Bosnians and the impact of post-conflict related migration. Examining the common features of the Diaspora, including the responses of migrants to changes within Bosnia and the position of displaced people in both Bosnian society itself and local political discourses, this volume addresses the influence of global anti-Muslim rhetoric on the Bosnian Diaspora's self-identification and refugees' relationships to their home country. The extent to which refugees and returnees can be described as agents of globalization and social change is also considered, whilst addressing the issue of Bosnian integration into various receiving countries and the influence exercised by European reception policies on receiving nations outside Europe. An extensive exploration of a major post-conflict European Diaspora, this book will appeal to those with interests in migration, ethnicity, integration and the displacement effects of Yugoslav conflicts.