Is the classic diaspora transnational and hybrid? The case of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress

Scholars studying migration processes through the transnational prism have expanded the concept of ‘diaspora’ with a new meaning as a transnational, hybrid identity and condition, which has displaced the classical interpretation constructed around ethnicity and territory. By analyzing the activities of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which represents the organised Ukrainian community in Canada, an old‐type diaspora, this paper argues that transnationality and hybridity have always been the inner attributes of diaspora identity and experience and stresses the importance of an essential characteristic of diaspora: the conscious effort to maintain a distinctive collective identity. Only if a community succeeds in maintaining its collective identity throughout multigenerational change can it qualify as a diaspora. These two dimensions – the self‐consciousness of diaspora as a distinctive group and the survival of its distinctive identity through multigenerational change – set diasporas apart from transnational communities.     

The ‘Iranian Diaspora’ and the New Media: From Political Action to Humanitarian Help

This article looks at the shifting position of the ‘Iranian diaspora’ in relation to Iran as it is influenced by online and offline transnational networks. In the 1980s the exilic identity of a large part of the Iranian diaspora was the core factor in establishing an extended, yet exclusive form of transnational network. Since then, the patterns of identity within this community have shifted towards a more inclusive network as a result of those transnational connections, leading to more extensive and intense connections and activities between the Iranian diaspora and Iranians in Iran. The main concern of the article is to examine how the narratives of identity are constructed and transformed within Iranian (charity) networks and to identify the factors that contribute to this transformation. The authors use the transnational lens to view diasporic positioning as linked to development issues. New technological sources help diaspora groups, in this case Iranians, to build virtual embedded ties that transcend nation states and borders. Yet, the study also shows that these transnational connections can still be challenged by the nation state, as has been the case with recent developments in Iran.     

Forging a ‘Good Diaspora’: Political Mobilization among Somalis in the UK

This article is about a campaign that was initiated by Somalis in London in 2013 against Barclays Bank's decision to shut down the accounts of four Somali remittance companies in the UK. It explores how young Somalis mobilized politically around the issue, and how, in the process, they created and reified a particular ‘imagined community’. By drawing on multicultural notions of community, and development idioms of diaspora engagement, they fashioned themselves around a notion of ‘good diaspora’ based on generation, pan‐Somali unity, and ideas of ‘professionalism’. In so doing, they were able to mobilize politically as both national and transnational actors, but were also confronted with some of the limits of the ‘good diaspora’ identity category. This article establishes a dialogue between the literature on diaspora engagement and that on migrant political mobilization by exploring how young Somalis navigate across these different national and transnational conversations, discourses and social categories.     

The tyranny of transnational discourse: ‘authenticity’ and Irish diasporic identity in Ireland and England

Through the prism of current state discourses in Ireland on engagement with the Irish diaspora, this article examines the empirical merit of the related concepts of ‘diaspora’ and ‘transnationalism’. Drawing on recent research on how Irish identity is articulated and negotiated by Irish people in England, this study suggests a worked distinction between the concepts of ‘diaspora’ and ‘transnationalism’. Two separate discourses of authenticity are compared and contrasted: they rest on a conceptualisation of Irish identity as transnational and diasporic, respectively. I argue that knowledge of contemporary Ireland is constructed as sufficiently important that claims on diasporic Irishness are constrained by the discourse of authentic Irishness as transnational. I discuss how this affects the identity claims of second‐generation Irish people, the relationship between conceptualisations of Irishness as diasporic within Ireland and ‘lived’ diasporic Irish identities, and implications for state discourses of diaspora engagement.     

Making and remaking Tibetan diasporic identities

The fifty-year long Chinese occupation of Tibet has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and has produced a refugee flow that continues today. Although the plight of Tibetans commands international attention, this diaspora remains understudied and undertheorized. To speak to this silence, we follow Patterson and Kelley (2000) and argue that the Tibetan diaspora can be analysed as both a condition and a process. Diaspora as condition emphasizes the structural features of an exile population, such as race, gender, class and religion. Diaspora as process draws attention to lived refugee experiences--the making and remaking of diasporic identities. In the Tibetan diaspora, His Holiness the Dalai Lama holds a central position. Through his global profile, and a transnational nationalist political structure, he creates images of Tibet, builds community and works toward Tibetan self-determination. Within this nationalist frame, Tibetan identities assume a singular, unified and homogeneous form. Further analysis that focuses on individual voices, however, shows how Tibetan diasporic identities are contested, complex and embedded in not one but multiple narratives of struggle.     

Harnessing the sending state: Pragmatic improvisations and negotiated memberships of the Chinese diaspora in Laos

As a form of state-led transnationalism, diaspora strategies have garnered much scholarly attention over the past two decades. Yet, the robust intellectual field still sees a dearth of works addressing how the power of the sending state is lived and experienced in the prosaic lives of transnationality. This paper fills the gap by examining the grounded ramifications of a specific approach that the Chinese government deploys to cultivate diaspora. It prioritizes coopting civil association leaders (hui-zhang) from populations abroad for diaspora governance. I unpack how street-level bureaucracies involved in the execution of this sending state strategy has been exploited by the Chinese entrepreneurs in Laos through qualitative fieldwork. My analysis reveals that these situated actors scrambled to set up their own diaspora associations in an attempt to make themselves hui-zhang eligible for the home country government's targeted engagement. In doing so, they accessed opportunities to appropriate and rework resources from the Chinese state for self-interested accumulation of symbolic and social capital. Both forms of capital are crucial to propel their wealth amassment in private career as intermediaries who extract commissions and kickbacks by brokering Chinese investments into Laos. Detailing these dynamics, the paper elucidates how the power of the sending state is disseminated and enacted through mundane and pragmatic improvisations of diasporic actors. Empirics presented also bring forward a nuanced understanding of the de facto convoluted relations between the Chinese government and the overseas Chinese populations.     

Debating diaspora: Securitization framework and the Turkish state's making of dissent abroad

A burgeoning scholarly interest in diaspora governance has recently established that state policies of engagement and mechanisms of control exist simultaneously. While the sending state aims at fostering relations with some groups, it devises strategies to monitor and control some others in diaspora. In explaining this discrepancy, the scholarship points at the heterogeneity in diaspora as well as state perception of political migrants as a security threat due to their role in long-distance opposition. Referring to the legitimacy of the political apparatus in defining their subjects, the literature indicates that migrants are framed as dissent when the political authority classifies them as such. This article contributes to the existing literature by examining how certain diaspora groups are politically constructed as dissent. Using securitization theory as an analytical framework and taking Turkish parliamentary debates (1960–2003) as a case study, this research explores the politics of establishing three major dissent groups in Europe, namely the communists, Islamists, and Kurds. The article shows that based on distinct narratives each category has its own course of construction though at times these processes occur simultaneously. It also demonstrates the agreements and conflicts among political parties over how to frame diaspora groups and the role of symbolic power as a constitutive element in the practice of securitization. Finally, it argues that while securitization rests on the symbolic power of political actors, under certain circumstances they do not need to occupy a position of authority as they can mobilize securitization despite being in the opposition.     

A transnational millet in the Jewish state: A Judeo-Spanish diaspora between Israel and Turkey, 1948–1958

Between 1948 and 1956, 36,302 Jews migrated from Turkey to Israel, forming the largest Turkish diaspora hub at that time. Drawing on the nine newspapers published by Turkish Jews in Israel in their vernacular, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), this article sheds light on the complex nature of the migrants' transnational affinity to the Turkish Republic and on how it coexisted with their Jewish nationalism. In addition to situating this development within the broader context of post-WWII Turkish transnationalism, we also delineate their unique historic status as ethnic Jewish communities or millet. Examining the post-Ottoman era, we show how they leveraged their political, commercial and leisure-related ties with Turkey—deemed more developed in those terms than Israel—to empower themselves as an ethnic community and to facilitate their integration into the Jewish state. In so doing, this study bridges some of the gaps in the analyses of Muslim and non-Muslim migrations, and it suggests that we rethink the languages used to explore Turkish transnationalism as well as its geographical borders and underlying characteristics.     

Japanese Saris: Dress,Globalisation and Multiple Migrants

In this article, which is based on research in Leicester and Nairobi undertaken for the Cultural Olympiad exhibition Suits and Saris (New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester, 2012), we examine the phenomenon of Japanese saris — fashion-forward synthetic saris manufactured in Japan — and Leicester sari shop owners’ role in their design and popularity in the 1970s and early 1980s. We use this previously untold story to explore transnational identities as manifested through cultures of dress. We investigate the transnational space in which these saris were produced and used, and we focus in particular on the multiple migrant experiences of East African Asians, many of whom emigrated to Britain during the late 1960s and 1970s. We argue that the truly global phenomenon of Japanese saris would not have been possible without the transnational and multiple migrant nature of the South Asian diaspora.     

Homecoming or tourism? Diaspora tourism experience of second-generation immigrants

Diaspora tourism is often considered a form of ‘homecoming,’ but for the children of immigrants who are born in the new country, the question remains as to whether they perceive their parents’ homeland as ‘home’ or destination. Moreover, advancements in transportation and communication technologies allow contemporary immigrants to maintain transnational ties to their homeland, which in turn may affect the nature of diaspora tourism. The purpose of this study is to understand the lived experience of second-generation immigrants when they travel to their ancestral homeland, and explore the extent to which second-generation transnationalism shapes their diaspora tourism experiences. Using a phenomenological approach, 26 second-generation Chinese-Americans who had the experience of traveling in China were interviewed. Four themes were identified from semi-structured interviews: language and appearance, search for authenticity, family history, and sense of ‘home.’ Proficiency in their parental language was found to be a main cause of negative experiences, yet occasionally a source of pride and attachment. Their search for authentic experiences was not unlike other tourists, while familial obligations sometimes limited their experience. Traveling back to the homeland not only allowed them to understand their parents and family history, but also reflect upon their life through experiencing contemporary China. Finally, as the transnational attachment of second-generation immigrants was not rooted in a specific locale, they could feel connected to the homeland without actually visiting their family's place of origin. Findings contribute to transnationalism and diaspora tourism literature by comparing first- and second-generation immigrants and identifying the difference between contemporary transmigrants and classic diaspora groups with regard to their diaspora tourism experience.     

Contested spaces of illiberal and authoritarian politics: Human rights and democracy in crisis

The global moral appeal of human rights and democratic governance appears to be in severe crisis. In both the Global North and the South, many countries have witnessed the rise of racist, sexist, and illiberal politicians into the highest positions in the government. As one of Asia's oldest electoral democracies, the Philippines is not an exception in this global pattern of decline in civil liberties and democratic governance. Considering the case of the Philippines, this article addresses the following core question: How and under which conditions do contestations as well as legitimations of the Duterte regime emerge across domestic and transnational spaces? This article examines the transnational and domestic contestations and legitimations of the Duterte regime based on a spatially-oriented analysis of the official results of the 2016 and 2019 elections, while demonstrating the multispatial contestations against and in support of global human rights and liberal democratic norms. While the role of geography and spatialization in the formation of illiberal and authoritarian politics remains underappreciated, this article contributes to the disciplinary fields of political geography, comparative politics, and International Relations. Specifically, the article deploys a spatial approach in understanding the territorially-contingent patterns of contestations and legitimations of liberal democratic politics.     

Multilevel (mis)governance of palm oil production

The palm oil industry exemplifies the ‘regionalisation without regionalism’ pattern seen in other industries in Asia: extensive, regionally concentrated transnational economic integration accompanied by a low level of formal regional institution-building. Production is concentrated in Malaysia and Indonesia, and Asian countries account for a major share of the market for intermediate products. The ownership structure of palm oil production reflects the dominance of transnational Malaysian and Singaporean firms. There is no authoritative regional institution governing production, investment standards or labour in the industry. A patchwork of both enabling and regulatory governance institutions supports the industry. These are formal and informal, public and private, and are situated at multiple levels: within, below and across the nation state. Although the governance structure surrounding the palm oil industry has supported it well in terms of production volumes and profits, large externalities—environmental and social costs—persist. This article argues that the governance failures associated with the industry stem from different stakeholders' competing interests in contexts of highly unequal wealth and power distribution. Misgovernance is not an unintended consequence of institutions failing to keep up with markets in scale and scope, but is embedded in the multilevel governance regime that supports, and partially regulates, the industry.     

Issues of mutuality and sharing in the transnational spaces of heritage – contesting diaspora and homeland experiences in Palestine

Wars, colonialism and other forms of violent conflict often result in ethnic cleansing, forced dispersion, exile and the destruction of societies. In places of diaspora and homelands, people embody various experiences and memories but also maintain flows of connections, through which they claim mutual ambitions for the restoration of their national identity. What happens when diaspora communities ‘return’ and join homeland communities in reconstruction efforts? Drawing on heritage as metaphorical ‘contact zones’ with transnational affective milieus, this study explores the complex temporalities of signification, experiences and healing that involve both communities in two specific sites, Qaryon Square and Al-Kabir Mosque, located in the Historic City of Nablus, Palestine. Conflicts at these two sites often become intensified when heritage experts overlook the ‘emotional’ and ‘transnational’ relationships of power that revolve around the diverging narratives of both communities. This study proposes new methodological arts of the contact zone to enhance new ways in heritage management that can collective engage with the multiple and transnational layers of heritage places beyond their geographic boundaries and any relationship with defined static pasts. Such engagement can help explore the contentious nature of heritage and the resonances it may have for reconciliation in post-violent conflict times.     

Protestantism,nation and diaspora in Imperial Germany

This article examines the close connection between Protestantism and nationalism in Imperial Germany within a transnational context. In the years before 1914, the Prussian State Church in particular strengthened the legal and organisational framework for an increasing number of diaspora congregations to become attached. These acted as an important vehicle to embed the nationalist rhetoric produced within the Reich into emigrants' notions of belonging. Whilst previous scholarship has noted this connection in general, the article sheds more detailed light on the mechanics and structure, but also on the limits, of this process. Feedback processes from periphery to centre, in turn, had an impact on German national identity construction as that of a nation that was not confined to state borders. Applying a constructionist theoretical framework, the contested question of whether the heterogeneity of Germans abroad allows for the application of the diaspora concept is answered affirmatively.     

De-censoring an Iranian-American “Memoir”: Authorship and Synchronicity in Shahriar Mandanipour's Censoring an Iranian Love Story

In the literature of the Iranian-American diaspora, the memoir genre has become a predominant lens through which Western audiences “read” contemporary Iran. While many bestselling life narratives have relied on hostage crisis-era tropes of gendered repression and subsequent liberation in exile, new amalgams of style and theme, distortions of perspective, and complicated renderings of the “subject” are now beginning to cross borders. One of these is Shahriar Mandanipour's 2009 novel, Censoring an Iranian Love Story, which this paper examines as an auto-fictional commentary on the memoir genre that both arises from and responds directly to censorship using a self-referential and layered text. Through three central dialectics—ambiguous violence, encoded desire and resistance to diachronic historicization alongside the nation—this paper demonstrates how Mandanipour's auto-fictional and often magical realist attempts elude what Gillian Whitlock terms the transnational “economy of affect” that publicizes, protects and ultimately drives the reception of memoir across borders.     

The strange case of ‘John Black’ and ‘Mr Hyde’: constructing migrating Jamaicans as (un)worthy nationals

This paper examines how migrating Jamaicans were constructed as ‘worthy’ or ‘unworthy’ of Jamaican diasporic membership in the early years of statehood, to demonstrate the role of nationalist cultural repertoires in constructing particular diasporic imaginaries. I conduct a discourse analysis of Jamaica's national newspaper, The Daily Gleaner, between 1962 and 1966, a period encompassing crucial transitions in Jamaican migration movements and from colony to statehood. I argue that tropes of respectability present in Afro‐creole nationalist ideology form the cultural repertoires used to distinguish migrants' actions as worthy or unworthy of national membership. These distinctions specify who ‘counts’ as part of the diaspora and how migrants of different social positions may claim and articulate their membership.     

跨境流动背景下族裔社区研究进展及启示

随着全球化的不断推进，跨境流动成为一种常见的地理空间现象，塑造着城市空间和景观，同时作用于族裔社区及族裔经济等，由此带来的多元文化协商进而成为城市发展和城市治理的重要话题。本文通过梳理国内外关于跨境流动和跨国族裔社区的相关研究，发现：①国内外关于移民族裔的人文地理学研究仍较倾向于关注跨国空间的特征、演变以及脉络；②西方人文地理学界的移民或是跨国族裔研究已展现出较为鲜明的“文化转向”印迹，而国内的相关研究仍处于起步阶段；③中国城市族裔空间的研究仍以具体的描述性和解释性研究居多，多尺度、多地方的对比研究较为缺乏。研究立足于国内外移民研究进展，以期更多的跨境流动研究为城市综合治理提出“中国经验”。     

The politics of genocide recognition: Kurdish nation-building and commemoration in the post-Saddam era

This article explores genocide recognition politics (GRP) with a specific focus on Saddam Hussein’s Anfal campaign (1988) against the Kurdish population in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). In the context of a pending referendum on independence in the KRI, this study investigates the evolution of GRP in relation to secession, nation-building and commemoration as well as the social, political and economic drivers in the process. In addition, the study zeroes in on the internationalization of genocide recognition claims via diaspora lobbying and the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq (KRG)’s bureaux of representation in Europe. The results are based on extensive fieldwork conducted with KRG representatives, diaspora entrepreneurs and other stakeholders between 2012 and 2016 in Europe and Iraqi Kurdistan. The KRG’s genocide recognition claims are not explicitly associated with secession, but instead are employed to legitimize local rule by referencing collective trauma and shared victimhood. In this way, Anfal – as the ‘chosen trauma’ – has become a component of (local) nation-building mechanisms. Nevertheless, recognition claims can become instrumentalized for secession so long as the political circumstances in the region become favourable to Kurdish independence. In the diaspora context, GRP serve to establish a link to homeland through commemoration practices, but they also provide greater space for lobbying and transnational advocacy networking.     

Exploring textures of Irish America: a new perspective on the Fenian invasion of Canada

Within an Irish nationalist history, for those at “home” and especially for members of the Irish American diaspora, venerating heroic rebels and recollecting attempted insurrections are quintessential narratives used to define Ireland's turbulent past. However, on the fringes in that regard has been the American-based Fenian Brotherhood's attempted invasion of Canada in 1866. Arguably a successful effort – although a very brief one, due to the American authorities' obstruction – its international camber and transnational implications may have kept this history apart from premier narratives of an Irish nationalist past. This paper suggests that although in the long term the Fenian invasion of Canada was largely expunged from the Irish/Irish American nationalist canon, initially it was retained, for a short time at least, in popular expressions of Irishness. By turning to “texts” that contemporaneously venerated the Fenians' efforts and uncovering transnational undertones in the process, this paper offers new suggestions concerning the changing textures of Irish America.     

The in-between lives of Japanese immigrants in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria,Spain

Over the past 20 years, the theoretical frameworks of population mobility studies have undergone profound changes. The redefinition of the term diaspora, the rise of transnational analysis, the formulation of the embodied experiences of migration, the increasing interest in migrants' attachment to places, gendered expectations and transcultural processes have coalesced to enrich knowledge. This article explores the culturally mediated experiences of migration and the individual change processes among the members of the Japanese community that from the 1960s onwards settled in the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), a meeting point for East and West in the Mid-Atlantic. In spite of its small size, this community displays some characteristics that afford new conceptual insights into cultural in-betweenness. Our aim is to contribute to the burgeoning literature on migrants' sense and ways of being and belonging and on their experience of return, within the analytical framework of diaspora and transnationalism. This article makes use of an interpretative approach, and contrasts relevant local news items and biographical interviews with Japanese residents with the narrative texts of three returnees. This contrapuntal focus reveals their ambivalent sense of belonging ‘here and there’, their in-betweenness or their lives in aidagara.