SA2002 Week 2 – Movement

Lecture 3 - Diasporas

- Think of movement in many dimensions

- Allows you to approach projects from many different angles

What do we understand about diaspora? How is it different from migrants or minorities?

- Sense of community
- Group of people
- Staying in a new place for a longer time
- Long-term existence somewhere else
- Previous generations coming to a place and having kids, grandkids – theme of
permanance

Terms and analytical tools…

 Border
 Travel
 Hybridity

Diaspora in context
- Transnational movement
- Historic diasporas – long term history associated with the movement of these
particular peoples (e/g/ Jewish community)
- But the term is more than that – what we once thought of as diasporas shares
meanings with … (quote)
 “Diasporas are the exemplary communities of the transnational moment … the term
that once described Jewish, Greek, and Armenian dispersion now shares meanings
with a larger semantic domain that includes words like immigrant, expatriate,
refugee, guest-worker, exile community, overseas community, ethnic community”
(Tölölian 1991: 4-5)

Diasporas 1
- What is it that makes them different from previous types of communities we have
studied?
 Unbounded nations who re-inscribe space in a new way
- Unbounded – people who are positions somewhere between states
- Travelling cultures in that they stay in one nation state in a physical sense but travel
 Diasporas are positioned somewhere between nation states and 'travelling cultures'
in that they involve dwelling in a nation state in a physical sense, but travelling in an
astral or spiritual sense that falls outside the nation-states space/time zone (Cohen
1997: 135-6)
- Idea of longing to return or be part of the place of origin
- Not like migrants who have a strict time to stay in a place for example
- Diasporas have roots in different place/nation but their spirit (and often political
interests) connected with state of origin
Diasporas 2
 Recent literature views the theoretical implication of the concept of diaspora as
braking fixidities between place and identity
- Paradox between spirit and physical – being here and connecting with there
- Sometimes the ‘there’ isn’t even a fixed nation
 “The empowering paradox of diaspora is that dwelling here assumes a solidarity and
connection there. But there is not necessarily a single place or an exclusivist
nation”(James Clifford 1997:269, original emphasis)
- What makes diaspora different – investing in a state in a meaningful way

Crossing the borders – helps understand difference

- Regular migration involves border crossing
- Economic migration – big part of identity is where your work is
• Border theorists argue for the critical centrality of marginal histories and cultures of
border-crossing
• The idea of crossing presupposes a border and a geopolitical line that needs to be
crossed
• Diasporas defy the idea of boundary crossing as they are usually characterised by
spatial and temporal remoteness
• Multi-locale diaspora cultures are not necessarily defined by a specific geopolitical
boundary
- Dimension that characterises diasporas (defying border crossing)
- Think of themselves as part of larger group called ‘italian diaspora’, not just in
America but across the world – it is a more all-encompassing concept of dispered
communities around the world
• Diasporas are connections of multiple communities of dispersed populations

 People who were once separated from homelands in terms of geography and politics
find themselves in border relations with their country of origin due to technologies
of communication, transport and labour migration, legal and illegal trafficking
- What is happening when the people who once thought of themselves as bigger
larger community when they find themselves with relations with country of origin
due to technology?
- When someone wanted to go back to place of origin before, then they had to make
big travel
- Now you can communicate with people across the world – the place of origin
becomes closer

‘Black Atlantics’
- Concept of hybritiy –place where you belig to different spaces and identities
- When someones idendity takes influences without losing first seeds of who we are
- Hybridity is different from mixing
- Mixing implies that mixing two colour means you have a new colour
- Hybridity allows for mixing but allows for the colour to keep their identity
 - ****How do we translate these concepts into resrach?
- Lecturere looks at kinship
- Tangiable way to think about hybritiy
- Looking at generation – gives us oppurnity to make distinction between what makes
someone a local, a migrant, or part of diaspora
- E.g. working with italina diaspora in new York
- How well informed are you abou the poltics of Italy?
- Because she knows the literature first (***need to know literature first), she
assumes what they kniow about Italy is clearly informed by poltics of America –
cannot avoid the political identity of being American
- So they perceptions of Italy informwd by America – this is hybritidy
 Black Atlantic refers NOT to a clearly defined region or specific period, but to a
multidimensional and trans-cultural space characterised more by movement and
networking than by particular sites. Paul Gilroy (1993) delineates a distinctively
modern, cultural-political space that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean
or British but a hybrid mix of all these at once. He traces lines of social, historical and
cultural connection between the Americas, Africa and Western Europe.
 Lives need to be understood as hybrid
 Diaspora consciousness is focused on the social dynamics of remembrance and
commemoration
 Conscious efforts not to forget
 Rift between places of belonging and places of residence

The language of diaspora

• Kinship not reducible to race in its modern definitions, is the matrix for dispersed
Jewish populations
- Methodology used to detangle questions of history using generations
- Kinship not reducible to race – how do we arrange our lives and build our families?
How is this influcned by politics?
- In austrial, women look for male members of the diaspora to build their families
- For other diasporas, kinship not reducicble to race, not looking at specific origin of a
person*
• Diaspora ideology involves a rejection of universalism and sovereignty. It embraces
the arts of exile and coexistence in order to maintain distinction as a people whilst
maintaining relations with others
• Entrepreneurial activities, financial integration, mixing with the local/national
structures of governance
- *This is because diaspora involved in financial questions
• Jewish diasporas are the par-excellence example of peoples flowing globally, longing
at the same time to return to a ‘home-land’
- Different way to look at diaspora question

Think further …
- Become more practical
 In a neo-nationalist age, diasporas might not always be so non-absolutist
- Acceraltion fo politics to neo-nationalist age
 - After Brexit there is a clear turn to right wing politics where migration is thought of
in a particular way
 Instances of nationalism and chauvinism emanating from diasporas very often
suggest a wide spread interest in the politics of ‘homeland’
- How are diasporas affected by what occurs in there state of origin?
 See for example the diasporas in America, Australia and Canada

The language of diaspora

• The language of diaspora is increasingly invoked by displaced (and not only) people
who feel – maintain, revive or invent – a connection with a prior home
- They are embeded in place of residence but constantly maintain a connection with
prior home
- This connection is important
- How can this revival happen? How can they maintain connection?
- Opening stores and resturants of homeland – food maintaining connection
- Travel to place of origin (almost like a pilgrimage) – but some people cannot travel
- E.g. polish community centers in Britain – having polish language lessons
- Language as important connecting point (with language, there is something beyond)
- Music as another point of connection
- Literature as well
• Many minority groups that have not previously identified this way are now
reclaiming diasporic origins and affiliations
• There is a value in the diasporic discourse in the sense that it conveys a strong sense
of difference
• Diaspora people with routes and roots (Gilroy) that are connected with and expand
the nation

What about people who don’t want to physically return? Are they still diaspora?
- Yes
- Longing for place of origin doesn’t just mean travelling there
- Longing can be traced in how they lived their lives though food, language, music,
tradition
- So diaspora isn’t just a physical thing, it involves imagination
- This is where the distinction with migrants comes in – often looking to physically
return at some point

My question: when talking about how time is important to the concept of diaspora, if a
person or family have just arrived in new country and intend to stay there for the rest of
their lives, are they diaspora from the moment of arrival? Or are you only a diaspora if you
have already been in that new country for a long time?

If diaspora is a group of people why aren’t they grouped in with concept of minority groups?
- Not clear to us becayse Many minority groups are now claiming diasporic origin and
language of diaspora
- Difference in a hybrid mode – im different but at the same time I belong
- Often minorities are looked at as political pressure points between nations
Frank Sinatra
• After the Second World War and in the context of cold war in the U.S. celebrities
such as Frank Sinatra, urged Italian-Americans to write to their relatives back home
encouraging them to vote against the communists
- He was involved in politics of Italy
- Italy had a communist precense
- American Italians were urging their families and people in Italy to go against
communsits
- So their perception of what is happening in Italy poltically is informed by the politics
of their place of residence (America)

In the name of … Macedonia

Diasporas through mediascapes
• Thousands of Macedonian Australians have marched through Melbourne demanding
the federal government formally recognise Macedonia's sovereignty (Saturday, 24
May 2008) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2tb9m4G58E
- These debates were happening in Greece but this turmoil was also happening in
austrialia
- Direct connection between politics in place of origin and place of residence
- This is a particular characteristic of diaspora – they are heavily involved in politics of
their place of origin and place of residence
- So people born in Australia were arguing about something happening elsewhere
AND
• Greek Australians: Rally for our Macedonia (Sunday, 18 November 2007)
• “Right on brother! They want it? They think its theirs? Like our forefathers in Sparta
said, MOLON LABE! But I don't see nobody coming to take anything, they are too
scared. They know they wont be able to take anything, instead, we will do the
taking. MAKEDONIA ETERNAL LAND OF HELLENES!”
- Using terminology attached to nationalism
- Using ancient history (MOLON LABE – means ‘come and get it’)
- They were empowering themselves – this phrase was transported from one context
of time, space and ethncitiy to a new one
- **How is it possible for diasporas in Australia to be so passionate aboit something
they have not experienced in their lives?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz_IaGDRzhY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxSjhcdneU8
“Love to attend but it is a bit hard when you
are in Beijing but I am sure my family will all
be there”
- People imagine these global diasporas and connect through media for something
happening in Australia which is about something happening in Greece
- Example of how diaspora are spiritually, emotionally, poltically involved with what is
happening in place of origin

Looking at diaspora as a project:

 - Looking at what people say over social media
- How they talk about place of origin through music, food, jokes, media, langauge etc.

Would they want to go back?

- Lecturr thinks no because they have string roots in place of redisence
- But there is also this tension and paradox of longing