Diaspora-Homeland Relations as a Framework to Examine Nation-Building Processes

This article examines diasporization practices – practices through which homeland and diaspora communities engage each other – as a prism through which to explore the process of nation-building and the formation of national belonging. Instead of treating ‘nation’ or ‘diaspora’ as bounded entities, it explores the various ways through which members of diaspora communities negotiate their position vis-à-vis national homeland movements on the one hand and host societies on the other. Specifically, it examines practices of fundraising, diasporic lobbying, the extension of citizenship to members of diaspora communities, and the consumption of images through communication technologies. Through these ongoing, negotiated encounters, ‘homeland’ as well as ‘diaspora’ are produced. Close examination of these practices may offer fresh insights regarding the process of nation-building in the diaspora that has a heuristic value beyond this particular setting.     

Learning to be Palestinian in Athens: constructing national identities in diaspora

In this article I focus on constructions of diasporic national identities and the nation as active and strategic processes using the case study of Palestinians in Athens. I seek, thereby, to contribute to debates on national identity, the nation and long‐distance nationalism, particularly in relation to those in diaspora with a collective cause to advocate. I explore how first‐ and second‐generation Palestinians in Athens construct and narrate Palestinian national identities, the homeland and political unity. I argue that the need to ‘choose’ to be Palestinian, often for political reasons, highlights that the nation is not a ‘given’ entity. This can be a difficult process for those in diaspora to deal with, as there may be tensions between constructions of political unity and attachment to the homeland and feelings of ambivalence and in‐between‐ness that may be seen as politically counterproductive. However, I stress that ‘messy’ and contradictory narratives and spatialities of diasporic national identities that come about as a result of cross‐border or transnational (dis)connections do not necessarily lead to apathy and, therefore, can be important.     

Less than Human? Diaspora,Disease and the Question of Citizenship

The aim of this special edition of International Migration is to bring about discussion between those conducting research in Diaspora Studies and the Anthropology of Public Health and Medicine. Historically, international migration has been associated with the transport of disease. Regardless of the evidence, metaphors of plague, and infection have circulated and been used to marginalise and keep out diaspora communities in host countries in an effort to ‘exclude filth’. Migrants have been referred to in terms such as the ‘Asiatic menace’ indicating a virus‐like threat to local populations. We look at the impact the traces of these images have on current host nations’ perceptions of diaspora communities and also ask what impact does this have on the diasporic communities’ self‐perceptions, if any? Does this affect conceptions of belonging, or feed into continuing dialogues of displacement? The movement of people has long been associated with the spread of disease and infections. In light of this, we are concerned with the role of medical knowledge and practices in relation to diaspora communities, and how these discourses have contributed to the perception of diaspora populations by host societies, and helped shape wider questions of belonging and citizenship. We aim to look at these questions in their historical context, both in their continuities and discontinuities, emphasising the importance of this to an understanding of current practices. Circuits of migration, and connected medical practices are taking new forms, where, on the one hand migrants are still associated with disease and pollution, but on the other migrants are also increasingly staffing the infrastructure of western public health services. At the same time, the west can no longer lay claim to ‘superior’ biomedical provision. These shifts signal new directions in the relationship between medical discourse and diasporic ‘others’, giving rise to a contradictory language of migrants being seen as both a threat, and a solution to the ‘health of the nation’.     

A Fractured Transnational Diaspora: The Case of Zimbabweans in Britain

Millions of Zimbabweans living abroad have been described as an emerging diaspora. However, there has been little attempt to question their designation as a diaspora, or indeed, to engage with the more theoretically informed and conceptually rich literature on diaspora. The assumption in this categorisation relies heavily upon popular usage of the term diaspora among Zimbabweans themselves both abroad and in the homeland. However, instead of suppressing discussion by simply pronouncing them “a diaspora”, it is important to examine whether or not they constitute a diaspora. Drawing on the concepts of diaspora and transnationalism and on the author’s multi‐sited ethnographic research in the United Kingdom (hereafter, “Britain”), the article examines how the diaspora was dispersed, how it is constituted in the hostland and how it maintains connections with the homeland. What factors influenced people’s decisions to migrate into the diaspora and how can these phases be classified? What types of migration patterns characterise Zimbabweans’ migration to Britain? The study explores the origin, formation and articulation of the Zimbabwean diaspora in Britain, providing a conceptual and theoretical interpretation of the social formation vis‐à‐vis other accounts of global diasporas. The findings of this study suggest that Zimbabweans abroad are a fractured transnational diaspora. The scattering of Zimbabweans evinces some of the features commonly ascribed to a diaspora such as involuntary and voluntary dispersion of the population from the homeland; settlement in foreign territories and uneasy relationship with the hostland; strong attachment and connection to the original homeland; and the maintenance of diverse diasporic identities. The study represents a contribution to our knowledge of the Zimbabwean diaspora in particular and to the field of diaspora and transnational studies in general.     

Home visits,holy visits: Diasporic pilgrimage to the ‘Holy Land’ amongst Palestinian–Jordanian Christians from Amman

This paper contributes to ‘visiting friends and relatives’ (VFR) discussions within migration and diaspora literatures by proposing a closer theorization of religious mobilities through the conceptual framework of ‘diasporic pilgrimage’. It advances VFR thinking by considering religion as a productive analytical category to interrogate relationships between people and place which sustain and constitute diasporic connection and attachment. This will be explored through the experiences and encounters of Palestinian–Jordanian Christians undertaking visits to places of religious and relational significance across Israel and/or Palestine from Jordan. Through an exploration of ethnographic data collected amongst diasporic Palestinian Christians living in Jordan, diasporic pilgrimage will be theorized as a localized process critically engaging with everyday facets of familiarity and regularity. This will revolve around three main elements of diasporic pilgrimage: translocal connections, temporalities and power geometries which constitute visits from Jordan and the so-called ‘Holy Land’ a diasporic form of religious mobility.     

A reconceptualization of state transnationalism: South Korea as an illustrative case

Our reconceptualization of state transnationalism underlines the active role that states can play in generating and sustaining cross‐border flows between a nation's homeland and its diasporic communities. This represents a sort of ‘middle ground’ between formerly hegemonic state centric’ approaches to global processes (focusing heavily on the ‘international’) and more recent ones emphasizing ‘transnational’ dynamics (which primarily arise through the agency of cross‐border migrants). We discuss a typology of approaches and avoid the tendency to set nation‐states against global and transnational processes. In fact, we highlight the various ways in which states often initiate key transnational flows, such as migration and the integration of diasporic communities into the sending nation, as well as maintain and regulate various processes instigated by immigrants. As an iconic case, we present an illustrative study of the South Korean government and Korean diasporic communities in the USA. Finally, in a brief conclusion, we outline some challenges for future research.     

The Lebanese diasporic field: the impact of sending and receiving states

What is a diaspora? Can it be distinguished from a ‘transnational community’? This paper discusses the Lebanese migrants abroad and their relationships with Lebanon by deploying the Bourdieusian concept of ‘field’. It argues that Bourdieu’s concept of field helps to capture the dynamic character of diasporic relations and the power relations that underpin them. It also enables the researcher to better delineate the boundary of a diasporic community and at the same time to treat this boundary as flexible enough to identify the specific terms for entering and exiting the ‘diasporic field’. It also argues that at a time when diasporic relations are cross-national, that specifically revolve around a real or imaginary ‘homeland’, they encompass individual, group and institutional actors that belong with varying degrees to the country of origin and the countries of settlement. Finally, the paper concludes that the ‘diasporic field’ is a useful analytical tool to capture the complexities of increasingly ubiquitous diasporic relations.     

A home far away? Religious identity and transnational relations in the Iranian diaspora

Abstract In this article, I address the influence of religious identity on the discourses of national belonging that traditionally dominate transnational discussions. Many of the children of the Iranian diaspora live in a state of exile from contemporary theocratic Iran. Living at a temporal and physical distance from the homeland has resulted in differential long‐distance imaginings mediated by the diasporic context. Through the reflections of the children of Iranian migrants on the desire to ‘return’, a picture is painted of differing transnational trajectories divided along religious lines within the Iranian diaspora. For many of the second generation from a Muslim background their centrality in the discourses of national belonging, typified through the conflated ‘Muslim Iranian’ of media representations, feeds a desire for return. In contrast, for many second‐generation Baha ‘is their positionality as a minority, in both the homeland and the diaspora, combines with an eschatological problematizing of national belonging, to lead them away from Iran. In this article I draw on discussions about email communication in the diaspora(s) carried out as a part of research with the Iranian communities of London, Sydney and Vancouver.     

Diaspora mobilization and the politics of loyalty in the time of Ebola: evidence from the Sierra Leonean diaspora in the UK

Following the recent involvement of overseas diasporas and citizen groups in humanitarian crises, scholars are reconsidering how these groups mobilize and what distinguishes them from formal humanitarian organizations. In this article, I document the individual and collective mobilization of a section of the Sierra Leonean diaspora during the 2014/15 Ebola outbreak. I focus on the individual health‐related communications of Sierra Leoneans living in London, on a specific UK‐based diaspora association called the Kono District Development Association‐UK, and on efforts to coordinate the diaspora. Bolten (2012), and Van Hear and Cohen (2017), show that diasporic mobilization operates through ‘nested scales’ of loyalty to kin, association and nation, and that these different loyalties overlap and conflict. I argue that such overlapping engagements challenge policy orientations to ‘national’ diasporas and offer an alternative model of international humanitarianism.     

Visiting ‘home’: Considering diasporic practices through assemblage dynamics

Visiting ‘home’ as a migrant may not always be about going home. Exploring a case where visiting is motivated by tourism as much as – or more than – migration, I argue for using assemblage as a set of ontological premises enables alternative appreciations of how practices of ‘visiting home’ evolve. Starting from a primacy of relationality and of malleable materialities, this perspective does not rely on migration-defined polarities to frame the spectrum of belonging in a homeland but allows for influences from many sources to interact and generate new formations that exceed the sum of their parts. Within this case, I analyse diasporic practices of visiting through three entwined dynamics: a contradictory sense of attachment to a place of ancestral origin, a desire for embodied leisure on vacation, and an instinct to insulate oneself from certain others. All three simultaneously contribute to the potency and perpetuation of diasporic visiting in Morocco.     

The demobilization of diaspora: history,memory and ‘latent identity’

In the context of sustained interest in the mobilization of diasporic identities, I consider how and why diasporic identities might be demobilized over time. I use the case of an Indian Pakistani community in the UK and the USA (sometimes referred to as ‘Bihari’) to examine how historical memories of conflict are narrated in diaspora and the impact this has on the presence or absence of ‘diasporic consciousness'. The significance of memory in diasporic and transnational communities has been neglected, especially where the narration of historical events is concerned. The impact of forgetting has received particularly scant attention. I argue that, in the absence of this story, important lessons about the role of history in the formation of community are obscured. In this example, the ‘latent’ identities created on diaspora's demobilization help us to unpick the dyadic relations of ‘home’ and ‘away’ at the heart of essentialist conceptualizations of the concept.     

Diasporic youth culture of K-pop

This study examines how diasporic Korean youth engage with the recent global circulation of South Korean pop music (‘K-pop’). It explores how young diasporic Koreans negotiate K-pop as an ethnic and/or global cultural form in their transition to adulthood. Drawing on interviews with young people of Korean heritage in Canada, the study addresses how a diasporic sound, which connects the nostalgia for the ancestral homeland and the global mediascape, is appropriated for young people’s identity work. By examining diasporic Korean fans’ consumption of K-pop, this study suggests a perspective for understanding the recent K-pop phenomenon as a diasporic youth cultural practice.     

Singing Diaspora: Okinawan Songs of Home,Departure, and Return

This article examines songs of departure and return that trace the Okinawan diasporic experience as these narratives have been composed inside the Okinawa ethnic homeland. Placing these Okinawan songs of migration within historical and political contexts, I argue that they act as sites of homeland cultural memory and that, as such, they participate in the reflexive internalization of a “diaspora consciousness” in cultural identity construction in the Okinawan homeland, which may thereby also be seen as a “diaspora space.”     

Non‐state authoritarianism and diaspora politics

Diaspora politics has been celebrated as a form of transnationalism that can potentially challenge authoritarian regimes. Arguably, opposition groups and political activists can mobilize beyond the territorial limits of the state, thus bypassing some of the constraints to political organization found in authoritarian states. The literature on transnational and extraterritorial repression complicates this model, for it shows that states can use strategies of ‘long‐distance authoritarianism’ to monitor, intimidate and harass diasporic populations abroad. Yet, non‐state actors in the diaspora also sometimes use such repressive strategies to mobilize internally, gain hegemony within the diaspora, and marginalize or eliminate internal rivals. This raises the question of whether such activities can be understood as non‐state forms of authoritarianism. Cases of diasporic politics pertaining to Turkey and Sri Lanka are briefly explored with a view to examining how state and non‐state forms of transnational repression can, under some conditions, result in the dynamics of competitive authoritarianism within a diaspora. In such cases, ‘ordinary’ members of the diaspora may become caught between multiple forms of transnational repression in addition to potentially experiencing marginalization and securitization in their new home.     

A ‘desi’ diaspora? The production of ‘desiness’ and London's Asian urban music scene

Increasingly, the term ‘desi’ amongst British Asians has been commonly used to describe South Asian diasporic cultural forms and practices, particularly regarding musical genres and styles. This article opens up debate on its contested meanings and usage within the London Asian urban music scene. In unpacking the complex and contradictory meanings and uses of ‘desi’ across time, space and place, ‘desiness’ becomes exemplary of the ambivalent spaces of youthful diasporic identities in process. I argue that cultural practices, such as music production and consumption, provide critical tools to critique one-dimensional notions of ‘Britishness’ and ‘Asianness’, as well as to reassert normative notions of belonging and diaspora. The exploration of diasporic identities in the making within the spaces of London Asian cultural production highlights the importance of everyday forms and practices and fosters a better understanding of multiculture and new modes of belonging in London.     

The diasporic pursuit of home and identity: dynamic Punjabi transnationalism

This paper examines the pursuit of home within a diasporic British Indian Punjabi community. It is argued that the British Asian transnational pursuit of home is significantly shaped by the dynamic social context of South Asia as well as social processes within Britain and across the South Asian diaspora. Drawing upon a decade of original, transnational, ethnographic research within the UK and India, I analyse the rapidly changing social context of Punjab, India, and the impact of this upon the diasporic Punjabi pursuit of home. I particularly argue that increasing divisions between the UK diasporic group studied and the non‐migrant permanent residents of Punjab, which are intrinsically related to processes of inclusion and exclusion within Punjab, especially the changing role and significance of land ownership and changing consumption practices therein, in turn connected to the increasing influence of economic neoliberalization and global consumer culture within India, significantly shapes the (re)production of home and identity amongst the Punjabi diaspora. Recent manifestations of these social processes within Punjab are threatening the very lived Indian home of some diasporic Punjabis, their Indian ‘roots’.     

The British Ugandan Asian diaspora: multiple and contested belongings

In this article, I map the diverse allegiances and changing conceptions of home expressed by British Ugandan Asians. Drawing on in‐depth interviews, I situate the analysis within the wider literature on diaspora, belonging and home. By revealing their different trajectories of belonging, I challenge much of the current literature on the South Asian diaspora, which focuses on connections to India as the principal homeland. Their complex relationship to Britain in the aftermath of the expulsion provides an alternative insight to previous research, which has stressed their commitment to the UK. I trace how they constructed their sense of ‘home’ in Uganda, how their forced migration transformed this and how they responded to their contested and multiple belongings. The respondents' emphasis on their previous attachments to Uganda helps to challenge stereotypes about South Asians in Uganda and can partly be seen as an attempt to reclaim their place in Uganda's history.     

Trans‐Local Communities in the Age of Transnationalism: Bosnians in Diaspora

Today, Bosnians represent one of the newly emerging and the most widely dispersed diasporic communities from the Balkans. There are large communities of Bosnians living in almost every European country, as well as throughout North America and Australia. Most were displaced during the 1992–1995 Bosnian war, in which 2.2 million people were forced to leave their homes, 1.6 million of whom looked for refuge abroad. In contrast with, and in response to, the enforced displacement, many members of the Bosnian diaspora have retained strong family and other “informal” social ties with both Bosnians in other countries and those still living in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH, or Bosnia). Such ties – focused on preservation of cultural memory and performance of distinct local identities – form the basis of the global network of the Bosnian diaspora and its link with the original home (land). In this paper, I briefly outline the links and networks that constitute diaspora, and then go on to explore the extent to which recent scholarly literature is able to “capture” the uniqueness and complexity of the Bosnian diasporic communities in Australia, the United States (U.S.) and Europe. Finally, I attempt to define the concept of “trans‐localism” and how it is (per)formed, and suggest that the predominantly “transnational” conceptual framework within the migration studies needs to be expanded to include “trans‐local” diasporic identity formation among displaced Bosnians and similar diaspora groups.     

Unsettling connections: transnational networks,development and African home associations

With the transnational turn in the social sciences attention has now turned to ‘global civil society’, ‘transnational civil society’, ‘transnational networks’ and, most recently, ‘migrant’ or ‘diasporic civil society’. Claims are being made about the developmental potential of these new configurations of civil society, and the global connections forged by migrant and diaspora associational life have been reified into things called ‘networks’ for the purpose of enrolling them into development policy. In this article, we challenge the network model through an analysis of transnational Cameroonian and Tanzanian home associations. The idea of a network suggests an overly robust and ordered set of linkages for what are in effect often loose and transient connections. African home associations draw attention to the historically‐embedded and mundane ways in which forms of associational life can be ‘transnational’ outside the formalized structures and Eurocentric development hierarchies created by international NGOs and other development institutions. Although they form largely invisible connections operating outside these hierarchies, African home associations unsettle assumptions about the geography of civil society and its relationship with development. Close attention to the histories and geographies of African home associations reveals that power and agency more often lie with migrants and elites within Africa than with the transnational diaspora.     

Loving America and Longing for Home: Isma'il al-Faruqi and the Emergence of the Muslim Diaspora in North America

In this paper, I weave the experience of an emerging community of Muslim diaspora around a biographical narrative of the Muslim activist and scholar Isma'il al‐Faruqi. Through this narrative, I illustrate that the diasporic experience begins in the place of origin and it does not inevitably lead toward a perpetual hybridization. The latter point is particularly significant because notions of diaspora and hybridity are conceptually linked and are often understood as a unidirectional cutting and mixing between the West and the East, or between the modern and the traditional. Al‐Faruqi's experience shows that, in a Fanonian sense of colonialism, diasporic experience conveys living as a “stranger”, at and away from home. The postcolonial condition has made it possible for ethnically diverse communities of Muslims to reside in the West, but maintain strong connections with their place of origin. Adopting the allegory of the Prophet's migration or hijra, al‐Faruqi constructed a fantastic notion of the ummah and a normative homo islamicus subject. Although he was profoundly influenced by the diversity of the Muslim Student Associations' constituency, al‐Faruqi encouraged Muslims to transcend their differences and sought to conceive a discursively homogenous ummah. Ultimately, however, his project failed because it did not correspond to real life experiences of Muslims of the West. Historically, Muslim communities have negotiated the boundaries of Muslimhood and the social responsibilities it entails, both in their homelands and in their new home in the West — a new home that increasingly becomes hostile to their presence, and thereby further complicates their triangular diaspora/host society/homeland relationship.