Diaspora: A Loose Term?

• Diaspora discourse is being widely appropriated.

• It is loose in the world, for reasons having to do with decolonization, increased immigration, global communications, and transport-a whole range of phenomena that encourage multi locale attachments, dwelling, and traveling within and across nations.

Studying Diaspora

• Four dimensions of study of single diasporas :

• (l) the reasons for and conditions of the relocation;

• (2) relationships with the homeland; • (3) relationships with host states; • and (4) interrelationships within the

diasporan group.

Classification of Diaspora: Process of Diasporization

• The process of diasporization is the logical starting point for diasporan studies. Variations in the experience of the initial dispersal may, in ‘fact, be the key to distinguishing between types of diasporas.

• Eg.: trade diasporas, victim diasporas, labor diasporas, imperial diasporas

• John Armstrong differentiates between– Mobilized Diaspora– Proleterian Diaspora

Classification of Diaspora: Process of Diasporization

• Emphasizes the major causes of the initial dispersal, but it involves other rationales as well, such as the status of diasporan communities in their respective host states.

• Clearly, diasporas are too complex a form of community to conform easily to simple category.

Importance of Understanding the Nature of Dispersal

• The dispersal itself stands out as a fundamental basis for understanding a given diaspora and, therefore as a basis for establishing a comparable typology of diasporas.

• Why did these people move? • What segments of society left to constitute the diaspora? • A people that is expelled will necessarily develop a

different cultural ethnos . • A group that leaves en masse also differs from a group

that gradually constitutes over a protracted period of individual emigrations.

• The reasons for dispersal may also be a defining element in diaspora´s relations vis-a-vis the homeland and the host state.

Diasporic Identity• Not a fixed one• At different times in their history, societies may wax and

wane in diasporism, depending on changing possibilities-obstacles, openings, antagonisms, and connections-in their host countries.

• If the concept of diaspora is rooted in the group itself, it encourages reification of a diasporan identity. Such an approach is unsustainable because identities are never fixed; different intrinsic characteristics become salient based on the contexts in which people and groups identify themselves.

• Rather than being viewed as an ethnicity, diaspora may be alternatively considered as a framework for the study of a specific process of community formation

Diasporic Identity• Diaspora status is not necessarily conferred

automatically based on the location of a specific community outside the homeland, or on the fact that most of its individual members were born in dispersal.

• Rather, they differentiate between a symbolic, ethnic identity of “being” and a more active, “diasporan” identity requiring involvement

• Such a concept of diaspora calls attention to the relationship between identity and active participation in the politics of host state and homeland

Diasporic Identity• Gellner refers to diaspora nationalism as “a distinctive,

very conspicuous and important sub-species of nationalism.

• Diaspora nationalism is a different kind of nationalism that is developed by diaspora communities in which they direct their loyalties to their homeland, host country and the diaspora communities at the same time.

• This type of nationalism is transnational as being not based on just one state. The members of the diaspora continue to preserve a sense of ethnic distinctiveness in the host country whereas their ethnic identity is also different from that of the community at the homeland; therefore forming a ‘hybrid’ culture

Diasporic Identity

• Diasporas are caught up with and defined against:

• (l) the norms of nation-states and • (2) indigenous claims by “tribal” peoples

Diasporic Identity• Anti-Nationalist Nationalisms: Diaspora´s own national aspirations and

resistance to assimilation can take the form of reclaiming another nation that has been lost, elsewhere in space and time, but powerful as a political formation here and now.

• Diasporic cultural politics are NOT somehow innocent of nationalist aims or chauvinist agendas.

• Indeed, some of the most violent articulations of purity and racial exclusivism come from diaspora populations. But such discourses are usually the weapons of the relatively weak.

• Diasporas have rarely founded nation-states: lsrael is the prime example, but such “homecomings” are, by definition, the negation of diaspora.

• When claims to “natural” or “original” identity with the land are joined to an irredentist project and the coercive power of an exclusivist state, the results can be profoundly ambivalent and, violent as in the Jewish state of Israel.

• Indeed, claims of a primary link with “the homeland” usually must override conflicting rights and the history of others in the land.

Diasporic Identity

• Whatever their ideologies of purity, diasporic cultural forms can never in practice, be exclusively nationalist.

• They are deployed in transnational networks built from multiple attachments.

• And they encode practices of accommodation. • The specific cosmopolitanisms articulated by

diaspora discourses are in constant tension with nation-state/assimilationist ideologies.

Diasporic Identity-Host State• Whether the national narrative is one of common origins or

of gathered populations, a host state cannot assimilate groups that maintain important allegiances and practical connections to a homeland or a dispersed community located elsewhere.

• Peoples whose sense of identity is centrally defined by collective histories of displacement and violent loss cannot be “cured” by merging into a new national community.

• Diasporan nationalism can become a transcendent, “stateless” form of patriotism superseding allegiance to the various countries in which the diaspora has settled. This possibility has caused concern, most notably it countries with high rates of immigration, that efforts to advance their own interests would lead diasporas “to hold national policy a hostage”

Diasporic Identity-Host State

• How the host society affects the diasporan community’s ability to interact with the homeland, with other diaspora groups, and with the host state majority is an important issue.

• Another impact of the host state´s conditions: xenophobia could lead to reprisaIs against expressions of diasporan (as opposed to patriotic) nationalism.

Diasporic Identity-Host State• Members of diaspora communities are by turns

mistreated by the host country as strangers within the group or exploited for the · sake of the domestic and diplomatic interests of the host country.

• Internal social unity has on some occasion required that minorities be kept as diaspora the isolation of the Jewish diaspora based on a convenient and even necessary element of Christian theology.

• the “wandering Jew” provided daily proof of the superiority of the Christian faith, strenghtened the belief that they the Jews were exiled from their land as a collective punishment for their sins.

Diasporic Identity-Host State• The diaspora consciousness of an immigrant

community is more likely to develop in countries whose citizenship criteria are based on jus sanguinis principle(e.g., Germany and Switzerland)

• And it is less likely to maintain itself in countries with jus soli principle (e.g., the United States, Canada, to a lesser extent France)

• Or, In the contrary, does the institutional and ideological pluralism that exists in the latter countries alleviate the pressures against the expression of diasporic sentiments.

Diasporic Identity-Host State• Diaspora sentiments may be manipulated by the

government of the host country in order to influence the behavior of the homeland.

• US government officials attempted on several occasions to have American Jews exert pressure on Israel;

• Or during the post-World War II period, the Soviet Union cultivated the fear among Turks that it would someday use Armenian claims to Eastern Anatolia as a lever for further Russian expansion.

Diasporic Identity-Host State• Occasionally, a host state may use a diaspora’s interest

in its homeland for stimulating for the promotion of a foreign-policy goal and ignored later when the direction of foreign policy has altered.

• This occurred when the United States at the end of World War I made grandiose promises to Armenians in the United States of an independent Armenia in Eastern Anatolia in order to weaken the Ottoman Empire

• But lost interest after the war as a result of a growing rapproachement with Turkey

• It occurred during World War II, when the British encouraged the formation of a Polish brigade to fight for a free Poland. Only to sacrifice that aim in the interest of a postwar accommodation with the Soviet Union.

Diasporic Identity-Host State• During the 1950s, US politicians stressed the diaspora

aspect of Latvian and other immigrants from the “captive nations,” in order to delegitimate the political regime in the Soviet Union.

• In the 1960s, when the Cuban immigrants’ homeland sentiments were fanned· for the purpose of recruiting them for the fight against Castro;

• Arab governments since the 1960s, when they helped foster a diaspora conscioussnes among Palestinians in order to mobilize them against lsrael

• German authorities at present, when they emphasize the provisional character of the Turkish workers’ residence in order to increase the latter’s incentive to return to their homeland.

Diasporic Identity-Homeland• It is likely that a common bond to the homeland would be the

foundation of the diasporan identity.• By the fourth generation however, the situation is likely to be quite

different. At that point, diasporan populations may need to actively reinforce identity in order to counteract assimilation.

• Because diasporization often arises from extremely traumatic conditions, it is common for the homeland to no longer exist, or for it to change dramatically.

• Yet the construct of the homeland is essential; it functions as the constituting basis of collective diasporan identity.

• To what degree does the diaspora participate in the affairs of the homeland? What is the flow of political and policy influence in both directions of diasporas and homelands? How do changes in power resources affect homeland/host state relationships?

Diasporic Identity-Homeland• A “homeland” government may exploit diaspora sentiments for its

purposes. • Early in the twentieth century, Sun Yat-sen solicited support among

overseas Chinese in his efforts at overthrowing the Ch’ing dynasty later. • The Nazis manipulated the Germans of Eastern Europe to promote

German territorial expansion• Again they tried (without success) to have German Americans exert

pressure on the United States government to stay out of World War II. • The Greek government has attempted to use the Greek diaspora in the

United States to lobby against Turkey• The Israeli government has used American Jewish leaders as

interlocutors for the promotion of pro-Israeli policies• France under de Gaulle attempted to use the Francophone diaspora in

Quebec to promote French cultural influence • Some factions of the PLO have tried to enlist the support of a second

diaspora the Armenian against the homeland of a third diaspora the Jewish.

Diasporan Consciousness within the Diaspora Groups

• Third, there must be self-awareness of the group’s identity. Diasporan communities are consciously part of an ethnonational group; this consciousness binds the dispersed peoples not only to the homeland but to each other as well.

• Especially in the cases of diasporas whose homeland no longer exists, or who have been separated from the homeland for many generations, this element of consciousness held and constructed identity has been pivotal to their survival as a cultural unit.

• The African diaspora existed for nearly four centuries before that identity became operative, until they came to . know each other and group identity coalesced around “blackness.”