Young People in the Greek, Jewish and Palestinian Diasporas: Emotional Attachments to Multiple Homelands

Abstract

This essay examines how children and young people aged 11–25 in the Jewish, Greek and Palestinian diasporas in England feel towards homelands, by exploring the range of emotions that homelands elicit. Using qualitative research with young people and their parents, the essay discusses and complicates assumptions around the relationships between diasporic youth and their homelands from the perspective of mainly second- and later-generation young people. In particular, the essay contributes to the growing realisation of the importance of emotions in diaspora, as it focuses on the complexities of belonging, attachment and identity. It adds to work which stresses the need for flexible notions of diaspora, in which people are positioned differently: in this case, young people who very much feel part of a diaspora and have differing and sometimes complicated relationships with the idea(l) and reality of a defined homeland.