New ethnicities and old classities: respectability and diaspora

This article explores the contrasts between the flexibility and openness of interethnic and diasporic identifications and the fixity of class distinctions in contemporary Britain. The author draws on fieldwork conducted in the Midlands area and a suburban town in the south east of England and traces the ways in which project participants mobilised their biographies and ancestries to express feelings of empathy and relatedness across black, white and Asian identities. The author discovered the same people articulated a strong sense of classed distinction between themselves and others who were thought to lack respectability, social ambition and mobility. These observations have led me to reflect upon the theoretical contrasts between what Stuart Hall has famously called ‘new ethnicities’ and what the author calls ‘old classities’.     

Deconstructing diasporic mobilisation at a time of crisis: perspectives from the Palestinian and Greek diasporas

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the difficulties that diasporas face in relation to mobilising around helping the homeland at a time of crisis, using qualitative research on the Greek and Palestinian diasporas. Rather than assume that long-distance nationalism, emotional attachment to the homeland and diasporic obligation will galvanise diasporic populations into assisting, and mobilising around, the homeland, the paper argues that those in diasporas do not necessarily help their homelands in times of crisis, even if they have strong socio-cultural connections to it. At times of crisis these feelings are heightened but not do not always translate into direct action; this may especially be the case at times of prolonged crisis when past efforts to help do not seem to have worked. This paper argues that it is often hard for those in diaspora to find meaningful ways to help at a time of crisis and many question the effectiveness of their actions if they do not see positive outcomes over time. The paper demonstrates that trying to help the homeland can therefore be a frustrating process and can make those in diaspora feel distanced and isolated from the homeland due to their inability to find concrete ways to help.     

The microfoundations of diaspora politics: unpacking the state and disaggregating the diaspora

ABSTRACT

Recognising the need to unpack ?the ‘state’ and? ?problematise? the term? ‘diaspora’, in this special issue we examine the various actors within (and beyond) the state that participate in the design and implementation of diaspora policies, as well as the mechanisms through which ???diasporas?? are constructed by governments, political parties, diaspora entrepreneurs, or international organisations?. Ex??tant theories are often hard-pressed to capture the empirical variation and often end up identifying ‘exceptions’. We?? theorise these ‘exceptions’ through three interrelated? conceptual moves: First, ??we focus on? ??underst?udie?d? aspects of the relationships between states as well as organised non-state actors and their citizens or co-ethnics? abroad (??or at home – in cases of return migration).? Second, ??we? ??examine dyads of ?origin states and specific diasporic communities differentiated by time of emigration, place of residence, socio-economic status, migratory status, generation, or skills. T?hird??,? ?we ?consider? migration in its multiple spatial and temporal phases (emigration, immigration, transit, return??)? and ?how the???y?? inter?sect to?? constitute diasporic identities?? and policies. ??These? conceptual moves contribute to comparative research in the field and allow us to identify the mechanisms? connect?ing structural variable??s with ? specific policies by states ?(and other actors?) as well as responses? by the relevant ?diasporic ?communi?ties??.     

Identity after Kosovo's independence: narratives from within the Kosovar Albanian diaspora

The nature of national identity after the establishment of Kosovo as an independent state was explored within a small group of Kosovar Albanians living in the UK. Although Kosovan identity was expressed at times in hybrid form, e.g. British Kosovan, identity at a deeper structural level was founded upon historical origins and culture inexorably linked to Albania and people of Illyrian descent and their territories. This was particularly the case in the discursive context of perceived threats to identity. Despite significant political developments providing the psychological space for an independent national identity, within this small group at least, identity was still strongly affiliated to, or assimilated within, an Albanian identity.     

Mapping folk devils old and new through permanent exclusion from London schools

The process of permanent exclusion from school offers a heightened example of the rejections necessary to keep the English neoliberal education treadmill running. This extreme end of education’s disciplinary apparatus illuminates trends less immediately legible across the system, namely how securitization and neoliberal governance heighten inequalities. Unpicking the dynamics at work behind exclusion shows how racialization and marginalization are not reduced but reproduced through this educational format. This paper maps how securitization and neoliberal governance work together through permanent exclusion to reproduce racialized folk devils old and new, drawing on discourses of criminal blackness as well as the radicalized Islamic terrorist. It will also explore how exclusion policy is negotiated and translated into daily practice by exploring parental accounts of their child’s permanent exclusion alongside the narratives of head teachers in London.     

Beyond convergence: unveiling variations of external franchise in Latin America and the Caribbean from 1950 to 2015

A growing literature deals with the models that states have developed to reach out to their emigrant communities. The literature covers a wide range of initiatives, most notably electoral policies. In this line of research, we present a comparative view of the citizenship policies of Latin American and Caribbean states using a data set that includes information (yearly observations from 1950 to 2015) of the external franchise policies of 22 countries. First, this paper describes the scope of inclusion of non-resident citizens in terms of electoral rights. Second, we study the evolution over time of the external franchise policies of the countries under study. Despite cultural, historical and obvious geographic commonalities across countries, the analyses reveal that the convergence trend in the external franchise policies developed by Latin American and Caribbean countries is limited to a most general level. Below that level many variations in terms of specific electoral rights, types and venues of representation of emigrants are observable. These variations range from exclusion of non-resident citizens in terms of electoral rights, to full inclusion, when emigrants have active and passive electoral rights in all the national elections held in the states of origin (presidential and/or legislative).     

Diaspora policy in weakly governed arenas and the benefits of multipolar engagement: lessons from the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt

ABSTRACT

Much of the literature on diaspora policy frameworks assumes states are monolithic, with exclusively centralised decision-making and political and administrative capacity spread across decentralised units. Yet, decentralised units of government do engage directly with diasporas; and many countries seeking to engage their diasporas suffer from limited capacity and reach to jurisdictions far from their capitals. In weak governing structures, diaspora policy is likely to be less formal, and ad hoc. The Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt is the de facto public service provider to Coptic communities in Egypt. Like the Egyptian state, it suffers from limited control of its decentralised dioceses. The Church's implicit and decentralised diaspora policy demonstrates the complexity and benefits of multipolar diaspora engagement. It offers a menu of options that may maximise the deepening of diaspora identity and the material contributions diasporas make in the country of origin, and the sustenance of both. The analysis supports a political economy, and especially governmentality, explanation for differences in diaspora policy.     

Past,present and future: how the Lithuanian Diaspora in the Netherlands accumulates human capital from social capital

This paper explains how social capital activates the accumulation of human capital within a Diaspora context. Our study focused on migrants in the Lithuanian Diaspora and revealed unexpected differences in the way low- and high-skilled migrants developed and applied social capital in order to accumulate human capital. Namely, despite a less privileged point of departure, low-skilled Lithuanians appeared stronger in developing new social networks, and were more driven to strengthen their human capital than high-skilled migrants. The study provides novel empirical and theoretical insights by explaining the significance of social capital in the accumulation of human capital among Diaspora communities. In so doing, the study provides important insights for integration policy development for immigrant-receiving countries, offering a different perspective on high- and low-skilled migrant mobility and integration intentions.     

Oh,give me a home: diasporic longings of home and belonging

The conversations surrounding an ephemeral home – left behind decades ago or perhaps never even visited – always and continually begs the question: why? Why do we constantly talk about geographies to which we have little or no connection with such nostalgia and fervor? Why do immigrants pick a distant space and mark that territory as home, even as we settle into the spaces we presently occupy and slowly begin the journey toward some form of assimilation? Framed by these questions, this essay attempts to articulate – through a multi-site analysis including interviews, literary and media texts – how identities are shaped through – and in relation – to the nostalgic longings of non-white immigrant experiences. The essay contends that this nostalgic longing is constructed as a response to racial relationships in the United States that identifies non-white, in this instance South Asian Americans, as aliens and others who should go back home.     

Globalization and migration in the contemporary world order: an insight into the postnational condition and the diasporas

In the new millennium, nations and nationalism persevere despite scholarship that has both anticipated and declared their demise. Globalization, which brings flow of capital, goods, ideas, people and technology, has a tremendous undeniable impact on every sphere of the contemporary world. The growing connectivity amongst the nation-states at physical, imaginative and virtual levels facilitates transnational networks that produce new types of migrants who do not respect national borders. The diaspora communities today are no longer confined in the homeland/hostland binary. The globalized economy, technology and the world society provide enough space for those with hyphenated identities to survive as a connecting link not only with the homeland but also with other diasporic nodes with common origin and cultural/ethnic background. Thus, a new diaspora is taking shape which is highly mobile and interconnected. Viewed in this perspective, this paper aims to explore the changing configurations of diasporic identities in the context of a much eulogized postnational condition engendered by increasing transnational activities that defy the stringent idea of nation and its state’s territorial boundaries questioning the very viability of nation-states in the present era of globalization.     

Statelessness in a world of nation-states: the cases of Kurdish diasporas in Sweden and the UK

Mass displacement in the Middle East is a major political challenge for contemporary Middle Eastern and Western states. As a consequence, statelessness has emerged as one of the central political issues in relation to the collapse and weakening of the states in the Middle East. Through deploying a qualitative inquiry and interviews with 50 Kurdish immigrants, this article investigates how members of Kurdish diasporas in Sweden and the UK conceive and experience statelessness in a world of unequal nation-states and hierarchical citizenship. Since diasporas are important non-state actors in nation-building processes, it is important to analyse their diasporic visions and the ways they challenge or reinforce the power of the nation-state in the context of migration. While from a legal or a right-based approach, the solution to statelessness is found in acquisition of a nationality/citizenship, I posit that in a world structured by the political normativity of the nation-state, nations without states will continue to be in search of national self-determination, political autonomy and sovereignty in the international comity of sovereign nations.     

The Korean diaspora and belonging in the UK: identity tensions between North and South Koreans

Previous studies of North Korean migrants and refugees in the UK have focused on labour issues, inter-Korean diaspora issues and how inter-Korean peninsula geopolitics affects North Korean integration in a third country such as the UK. This paper explains the role of identity formation in processes of belonging and integration for the North Korean group. This group is significant in the sense that the group shares strong beliefs in a unified Korean ethnicity with the South Korean diaspora, and yet comes from a specific Korean state that is territorially divided from the majority of Korean migrants who emigrate from South Korea. This tension creates a number of alternative scenarios regarding expectations of the relationship between national identity, diaspora politics and processes of belonging in a host nation.     

The disinterested state: negative diasporic policy as an expression of state inclusion and national exclusion

ABSTRACT

This article engages with the understudied phenomenon of the ‘disinterested, denouncing’ diaspora state (Levitt, P., and N. G. Schiller. 2004. “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society.” International Migration Review 38 (3): 1002–1039. doi:10.1111/j.1747-7379.2004.tb00227.x) or ‘indifferent’ diaspora state (Ragazzi, F. 2009. “Governing Diasporas.” International Political Sociology 3 (4): 378–397. doi:10.1111/j.1749-5687.2009.00082.x). Focusing on U.S. citizens abroad, the article argues that there is negative diasporic outreach on the part of the state – ‘disinterested’ from the state's perspective, but ‘denouncing’ from that of the diaspora. Negative diasporic outreach is exemplified by the 2010 FATCA legislation, which sought to root out tax evaders resident in the U.S., but has, instead, affected millions of American emigrants through increased financial control and the repercussions of those policies, and has resulted in sharply higher citizenship renunciation figures. Impact on an American diaspora was not considered in the law's proposal, debate and passage into law. Second, the article argues that this negative diasporic outreach, in combination with the continued facilitation of the right to vote, is a reflection of the inclusion of these American emigrants in the American state, but their simultaneous exclusion from the American nation.     

Foreign policy priorities and ethnic return migration policies: group-level variation in Greece and Serbia

ABSTRACT

Why do ethnoculturally defined states pursue favourable policies to integrate some returnees from their historical diasporas while neglecting or excluding others? We study this question by looking at members of two historical diasporas that, in the 1990s, returned to their respective ethnic homelands, Greece and Serbia, but were not treated uniformly by their respective governments. Utilising a wide range of primary sources, we consider evidence for a number of plausible explanations for such policy variation, including the economic profile of an ethnic returnee group, its status in internal ethnic hierarchies, its lobbying power, and dynamics of party politics. We find, instead, that the observed variation is best explained by the role that each particular group played in the ruling elites’ ex ante foreign policy objectives. Elites discouraged the repatriation of co-ethnics from parts of the world they still had claims over, by pursuing unfavourable repatriation policies. Conversely, absent a revisionist claim, states adopted favourable repatriation policies to encourage their repatriation and facilitate their integration upon return. Methodologically, the article illustrates the importance of focused comparisons across dyads of states and particular sub-diaspora groups.     

(Dis)locating nations in the World Cup: football fandom and the global geopolitics of affect

The World Cup, as a tournament that pits national teams against one another, initially seems to be a site where support for sports is tied to nations. However, situating this sporting event at the intersection of discourses of globalization, transnational circulation of capital and populations, and theories of fandom, our examination of diasporic populations found that the choice is not a simple one between ‘origin nation’ and ‘residence nation.’ Instead, the decision of which team to support relies much more on an attenuated, complex notion that we call transnational affinity. We examine this concept in relation to the context of transnational flow of players, media, spectators, and capital, contending that locating nations or national preference in the World Cup requires understanding the contemporary de- or trans-nationalization of not only sports but identity itself beyond the binary of national and global.     

Sacred remittances: money,migration and the moral economy of development in a transnational African church

While remittances have come to play an important part in debates about migration and development, the link between religion, migration and transnational financial flows has yet to be understood in its full complexity. Drawing upon a multi-sited ethnography of a transnational African church, this article addresses this overlooked dimension of migrant transnationalism by analysing how religious donations converted into ‘sacred remittances’ produce a moral economy of religious life shaped by a politics of belongings at various scales. The article discusses the social meaning that diasporic actors attach to religious donations sent to the homeland (the Congo) and how this compares to the practice of sending remittances to family members. The article also argues that transnational circulation of sacralised money operates within a field of meanings and practices associated with moral expectations, entitlements and differentiated regimes of value. Sacred remittances, as ‘global money’, may generate a diversity of transnational linkages between donors and recipients but they remain embedded in landscapes of status and power.     

Towards pluralistic and grassroots national identity: a study of national identity representation by the Kurdish diaspora on social media

ABSTRACT

This study examines the distinctive roles that social media play for the diasporic Kurds in regard to the political and nationhood process. It attempts to understand how the notion of Kurdayeti [Kurdish nationalism] has been affected by the growth of Kurdish social media. It argues: although the Kurdish political activism has been accelerated by the rise of social media and the ethnic identity discussions have become much more visible, the idea of a unified imagined Kurdish nation has been affected by the existing socio-political fragmentations among the Kurds and transformed into a participatory and pluralistic imagined community.     

States and standardisation: constructing the co-ethnic migrant story in Germany

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the standardisation of stories about diaspora return (also called ‘co-ethnic migration’ or ‘repatriation’). Using the concept of ‘standards’, the author analyses how the German state distributes certain texts about diaspora history over others, forming a legible and homogenous narrative of co-ethnic migrant identity. The article is based on a critical discourse analysis of texts relating to Russian–German history and analysis of biographical narratives of co-ethnic Germans residing in Germany. The study identifies mechanisms by which states homogenise narratives, and to understand which co-ethnic history and identity constructions are reproduced by the state, and which are silenced. This approach enriches the study of diasporas in two ways: first, it sheds light on how states govern diaspora members who have migrated ‘back’ to their ‘origin’ countries; second, it departs from the state-centric approach prevalent in the study of diaspora governance by focusing on stories told by diaspora members.     

Globalization and global identification: a comparative multilevel analysis

This paper focuses on the relation between national and global identification and the impact of globalization on this relation. The multilevel approach drew survey data from 89 countries, country-level measures of globalization enabling an examination of globalization effects on the relation between national and global identification. A negative link obtained between national and global identification in most of the countries, the cross-country variation of this link is related to globalization. Countries characterized by rapid globalization exhibit a lower negative relation between national and global identification than those marked by lower levels of globalization change.     

Rethinking global sports migration and forms of transnational,cosmopolitan and diasporic belonging: a case study of international yachtsman Sir Peter Blake

The increasingly global dispersion of elite athletes pursuing sporting careers is an important aspect of the global flow of sport-capital. Such sport migration lends itself to theorising that considers questions about attachment to place, particularly in relation to citizenship, identity and nationalism. Yet only recently have theoretically valuable concepts such as transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and diaspora been foregrounded in studies of sporting migrants. Based on an analysis of British and New Zealand media coverage of international yachtsman Sir Peter Blake's death, we analyse the overlapping forms of identity attributed to this apparently model transnational citizen. We conclude that this case study raises important questions about the multiplicity of identities in a globalised world and expands our understandings of diaspora beyond the classic focus on forced dispersal and non-dominant racial groups.