Diasporas and Transnational Communities

The term diaspora is a signifier,not simply of transnationality and movement, but of political struggles to define the local, as distinctive community, in historical contexts of displacement. (Clifford)

Diasporas are the exemplary communities of the transnational movement

(Tololyan)

• Vast majority of Palestinians live in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon - within the territory of the "Arab nation" (al umma 'al 'arabiyya), therefor, they have no had to make cultural, religious or linguistic sacrifices (Safran).

• However, do have a return myth, homeland myth and do not get equal rights in many countries.

Diaspora Consciousness

"...diaspora consciousness is an intellectualization of an existential condition" (Safran)

"Diaspora consciousness lives loss and hope as a defining tension" -Clifford

In Summation

• Experience of suffering and displacement with the character of being decentralized.
• Experiences of discrimination, exclusion, and marginalization.
• Successful continuation of the displaced community often fosters a sense of pride in the community's ability to survive, adapt, and endure (often while maintaining cultural traditions and ways of life)

(Clifford)

'Diaspora' is an evolving term with no set definition, but a subjective, communal identity characterized by certain traits and experiences.

'Diaspora' is a political label used to identify a certain type of transnational community

As a political label, the word diaspora is powerful in pushing certain national agendas for the 'transnational' or 'diaspora' nation

Transnational communities often have their own national identity which does not align with the host nations in which these communities are located

Transnational communities challenge Westphalian notions of territorial nation-states. The idea that nations can exist without territorial claims or even a historic homeland begs the question: Are nation states necessary for the international order?

Works Cited

The Palestinian Diaspora

Clifford, J. (1994), "Diasporas", Cultural Anthropology, vol.9, n°3, 1994, p.302-­‐338

Cohen, R. (1996), "Diasporas And the Nation--‐State: From Victims To Challengers", International Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3, pp. 507--‐520

Esman, Milton. Diasporas in the Contemporary World. Cambridge : Polity Press , 2009. Print.

Tölölyan, K. (1991), “The Nation--‐State And Its Others: In Lieu Of a Preface”, Diaspora, vol.1, n°1

Kastoryano, R. (2000), “Settlement, Transnational Communities And Citizenship”, www.ceri--‐sciencespo.com/archive/mai02/artrk.pdf

Safran, W. (1991), “Diasporas In modern societies: myths of homeland and return”, Diaspora 1(1), 1991, pp. 83--‐99.

Schulz, Helena. The Palestinian Diaspora. London: Routledge , 2003. Print.

Sökefeld, M.(2006),Mobilizing In transnational space: a social movement approach to the formation of diaspora Global Networks 6, 3, pp. 265–284

Iovita, R. P., & Schurr, T. G. (2004, June). Reconstructing the Origins and Migrations of Diasporic Populations: The Case of the European Gypsies. American Anthropologist, 106(2), 267-281.

Rovid, M. (2011). One-size-fits-all Roma?: On the Normative Dilemmas of the Emerging European Roma Policy. Romani Studies, 21(1), 1-22.

"Palestinians refer to their diaspora as 'al-ghurba' which means an “absence from the homeland; separation from one's native country, banishment, exile; life, or place, away from home'" (Wehr via Schulz).

Whether one stayed put or moved, the meaning of diaspora to Palestinians is larger than referring to specific processes of migration and displacement. The diaspora is rather a condition of alienation and estrangement, of shattered lives and homes (Peteet via Schulz).

Consciousness

Diaspora and Homeland:

• Hard to define Palestinian diaspora: Usually relates to the dispersal in the late 1940s and 1967, but not all members of the Palestinian diaspora community are refugees or descendents of refugees from this time. In particular, Christian migration to avoid conscription in the Ottoman army or to attempt to make a better life in the 'new world' began in the late 18th century (Tsimhoni via Schulz).

• Homeland: Consider their homeland to be pre-1948 Palestine.

Before the establishment of Israel, Palestinians in Transjordan and the West Bank did not regard themselves as living in a diaspora (Al Shuaibi via Safran)

However, according to Sokefeld, it does not matter when the idea of diaspora is accepted. As long as it was, it is legitimate.

"They continue to relate, personally or vicariously, to that homeland in one way or another, and their ethnocommunal consciousness and solidarity are importantly defined by the existence of such a relationship" (Safran).

World Wide Support

A Genuine Diaspora?

UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees)

• provides assistance, protection and advocacy for some 5 million registered Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the occupied Palestinian territory, pending a solution to their plight.
• Funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions from UN member states ( In 2009, US gave $268 million, European Commission gave $232.7 million)
• Also provides services to refugees and people displaced by the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1967 and subsequent hostilities.

(UNRWA Website)

Support Groups

• In every country, including Israel.
• Strong student movement in North America and Europe
• Israel Apartheid Week across the world
• BDS Movement (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions)

Myth of the Homeland

Roma Politics and Political Identities

Roma Nationhood as Challenging the International Order?

The Roma: Non-Territorial Nation, Transnational Community, or Diaspora?

Where is the Ancestral Roma "Homeland?"

Who are the Roma?

Possible Migration Route of Some Roma Communities

Do the Roma Identify as a Single Community?

Like other diaspora communities, the Gypsies (and those perceived to be Gypsies) in Europe have experienced a history of persecution and exclusion from their host states, contributing to a diaspora consciousness that they can never fully assimilate into their host states

Today many self-identified Roma's and those who have been historically perceived as Roma want nothing more than to fully integrate within their host state.

More commonly known as "gypsies," the Roma are a transnational minority community spread across the European continent.

The Myths of Return

For many years scientists had wondered at the origins of the Roma people. Recent DNA evidence has traced the various Roma communities back to the Punjabi region of Northern India (Iovita, Schurr).

in 2000, the Fifth World Romani Congress adopted a manifesto, which outlined an agenda to achieve international recognition for Roma as a non-territorial nation

..."moreover the manifesto claimed that the Romani nation offers to the rest of humanity a new vision of stateless nationhood that is more suited to a globalized world than is affiliation to traditional nationstates (Rovid)"

Implications? Challenges territorial democracy and the Westphalian international order.

Do we need nation states anymore? Seems a bit Post-nationalist to me.

There is no 'unified' culture among them.

They are separated by location, language, and customs

Many of those labeled as 'Roma' communities do not identify as Roma,

"For over 500 years, the Gypsy diaspora has been characterized by its extreme political and structural fragmentation, and by the weakness of any overarching Gypsy imagined community" (Rovid (Guy y Blasco))

Are the Roma a Diaspora community?

Emerging Roma cultural institutions have adopted the term diaspora for political reasons. Political agenda's advanced by Roma activists deal with the main topics of equal opportunity employment, non-discrimination policies, and minority rights

The Roma community possesses only two of the six diaspora traits as defined by Safran, yet it is commonly accepted as a diaspora community

The Roma are lacking a major element required by Safran of diaspora communities....The Roma have no homeland, real or imagined. In fact, Roma communities do not have a cultural remembrance of their land of origin

The many fragmented Roma communities, while all are thought to have be originally from North India, took different migration routes through time. Moreover, the Roma moved in migration waves at different periods in history, further contributing to their separation from one another

• Many communities with a diaspora consciousness feel alienated from their host countries and desire to one day return to their idealized homeland.
• People of a diaspora do not need to have a homeland.

(Clifford)

• Not all diasporas have a wish to return home.
• "Although a homeland may exist, it is not a welcoming place with which they can identify politically, ideologically, or socially; or because it would be too inconvenient and disruptive, if not traumatic, to leave the diaspora. In the meantime, the myth of return serves to solidify ethnic consciousness and solidarity"

(Safran)

The current debate in Europe is whether Roma culture should be preserved or whether the Roma should be assimilated into their host countries. Do the Roma have national minority rights or do they fall under a different categorization?

"non-territorial nation?"

"Transborder national minority?"

"Nation without a state?"

• Those who are considered to be in diaspora usually perceive themselves as exiled from the homeland, therefore diaspora consciousness creates an idealized version of the homeland (or Heimat) and tries to maintain a connection with the homeland.

Homelands need not produce diasporas, diasporas can produce homelands (Sokefeld)

What is a Diaspora?

Diaspora has no objective definition

Diaspora as a Function of Time or a Result of Causal Experience?

Time has to pass before we can know if any community that has migrated is really a diaspora (Cohen).

VS.

"There can be a temporal gap between migration or dispersal and the development of a transnational imagination of community....a diasporic imagination may arise coevally with the migration" (Sokefeld).

Even after an initial period of migration a traumatic event in the homeland (or alienating event in the host country) can unite a fragmented transnational community into a diaspora

Etymology of 'Diaspora'

• Greek: "to sow widely"
• Used to describe the colonization of Asia minor and the Mediterranean in the Greek Archaic period - in this context 'Diaspora' was a positive term
• Now, the term is associated with an idea of exile, rather than colonization (Cohen)

The Jewish Diaspora

•The language of diaspora is invoked by displaced peoples who feel (maintain, revive, invent) a connection with a prior home. This sense of connection must be strong enough to resist erasure through the normalizing processes of forgetting, assimilating, and distancing.

Though ages the Diaspora had a very specific meaning: the exile of the Jews from the historic lands, signifying as well the oppression and moral degradation implied by that dispersion.

The Latin Diasporas?

Diaspora members share several characteristics:

-They or their ancestors have been dispersed from a specific, original center to two or more foreign regions.

-They retain collective memory, vision or myth about their original homeland.

-They believe that they are not, or cannot be fully accepted by their host country and therefor feel alienated or insulated, for they regard their ancestral homeland as their true home, and a place to which they or their decedents would or "should" eventually return.

-They believe that they should collectively be committed to the maintenance, and restoration of their original homeland and to its safety and prosperity.

-They continue to relate personally or vicariously to that homeland in one way or another, and their ethno communal consciousness and solidarity are importantly defined by the existence of such a relationship.

• (Safran and Clifford)

•The Hispanic or Latino community in the U.S. has not generally been considered a diaspora. The Mexican Americans, the largest component of that community are either descendants of those who settled in the US before the arrival of the Anglos or first or second generations immigrants from Mexico who came in search for a better future.

•Although subject to periodic discrimination, they are assimilating at a steady pace.

While they occasionally deplore the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (in 1848 by which Mexico was forced to cede territory to the US), celebrate Mexican folk festivals and maintain contact with relatives left behind, Mexican Americans do not cultivate a homeland myth (Garza) perhaps because the homeland cannot be easily idealized. The poverty and political corruption of Mexico stand in too sharp a contrast with the conditions of the US.

•The Cuban diaspora on the other hand, is different. Half of the almost one million of Cubans who left their island, voluntarily or forcibly after Catro’s government installation, found refugee in nearby Miami area. They kept alive the hope of returning to their homeland as soon as the Castro regime was overthrown and initially resisted the idea of giving up their citizenship. Moreover, as the time passes, the Castro regime endures and as Cubans become more involved in the US politics, the myth of return becomes attenuated with the second generation.

Since the Babylonian exile the homelessness of the Jews has been a leitmotiv in Jewish literature, art, culture and of course, prayer.

In the age of modernity, Jews’ primary loyalties were to their countries of settlement rather than to their religion, even less to their ethnicity.

Some emancipated Jews like Daniel Halevy said “to the Jews as Jews, nothing. To the Jews as citizens, everything.” Because a Jewish identity plus emancipation were from time to time confronted with crises of dual loyalty.

But the, the Damascus Affair [1840] and the Dreyfus Affair [1894].

Transnational Community

Who is in Diaspora? How Does a Community become a Diaspora?

"As a consequence I suggest defining diasporas as imagined transnational communities, as imaginations of community that unite segments of people that live in territorially separated locations" (Sokefeld).

• Diaspora's must be part of a transnational community (national movements within a 'homeland' are not diaspora's)
• Members of the potential diaspora community identify themselves as being part of a diaspora
• There must be a shared identity and perception of common belonging to the group

"International migration has given rise to emerging communities which may be described as transnational. This term refers to communities made up of individuals or groups, settled in different national societies, sharing common interests and references – territorial, religious, linguistic – and using transnational networks to consolidate solidarity beyond national boundaries" (Faist via Kastrayano).

“Long distance networks” (Vertovec via Schulz).

Diaspora and Transnational Community as a Threat to the Host State

Transnational is meant exchange and interactions of various forms such as visiting, traveling, spending vacations, going to weddings, looking for jobs, i.e. activities that for dispersed populations are transnational/ cross border by their very nature (Schulz 12).

"There has recently been a shift of emphasis in the definition of diaspora, from concentrating mainly on geographical displacement to viewing diaspora as a form of social organization, as a form of transnational community" (Schulz 9).

Diaspora and Transnational Politics

Transnational Community as a Function of Modernity

"Without communication facilities the chance of a dispersed collection of people developing a shared imagination of community is rather small" - Sokefeld

• "This reconstitution of identity threatens the nation-state by a form of semi-detachment or indifference" (Cohen).

• The current threat of violent attacks by elements of terror organizations, many associated and inspired by al-qaeda, has cast suspicion on several diaspora communities (Esman).

• Diasporas may attempt by direct action to influence events in their country of origin.
• Diasporas attempt to influence their host government or international organizations to act in favor or in opposition to the interests of the current government of their home country.
• A host government may call on a resident diaspora to support its strategic economic goals.
• Diasporas contribute to the political, educational and economic development of their former homeland.

(Esman)

"Imaginations of transnational communities are not established once and for all but have to be reproduced time and again in order to continue" - Sokefeld

In order to foster a sense of community and shared identity, diaspora's/ transnational communities rely on global communications to keep the diaspora alive. Technology keeps members of transnational communities connected with each other

Deferred diasporas are able to emerge because of global information and news, which keeps the migrant community informed about the homeland and in touch with relatives back home

Diasporas & Transnational Communities