Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.03.01
Elly Musafiri, George Gona, Kenneth Ombongi
This article examines the motivations that drive Rwandan diasporans in Kenya to oppose their country's peacebuilding efforts. As findings indicate, many Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi diasporans in Kenya oppose Rwanda's post-genocide peacebuilding process mainly due to the authoritarian governance of the current regime. This type of governance is characterized by silencing critics with violence, militarizing the peacebuilding process, and unequal socio-economic development, among others. Subsequently, there is little space for Rwandan diasporans in Kenya, and Rwandans in general, to participate in rebuilding their country towards a sustainable future.
{"title":"Rwanda's Peacebuilding Fragility: Voices from the Rwandan Diaspora in Kenya","authors":"Elly Musafiri, George Gona, Kenneth Ombongi","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.03.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.03.01","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the motivations that drive Rwandan diasporans in Kenya to oppose their country's peacebuilding efforts. As findings indicate, many Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi diasporans in Kenya oppose Rwanda's post-genocide peacebuilding process mainly due to the authoritarian governance of the current regime. This type of governance is characterized by silencing critics with violence, militarizing the peacebuilding process, and unequal socio-economic development, among others. Subsequently, there is little space for Rwandan diasporans in Kenya, and Rwandans in general, to participate in rebuilding their country towards a sustainable future.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"112 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141040417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.01.04
Susan Paul Pattie
{"title":"We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora","authors":"Susan Paul Pattie","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.01.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.01.04","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"41 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141032747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.01.02
Celina de Sá
Increasingly, Brazilian experts of capoeira—an Afro-Brazilian combat game—travel to African cities for an imagined return to the sites of capoeira's origins, as well as to train African students. Focusing on a cultural festival in Abidjan, I analyze capoeira cultural exchange events across West Africa through the anthropological lenses of expertise and racial analysis. These exchanges feature displays of Brazilian nationalism embodied by West African capoeira students, while they also reveal West Africans’ creative endeavors, such as constructing new capoeira songs in African languages. I demonstrate how the diasporic position to protect “Afro” cultural forms ironically gives way to policing creative work by continental Africans, capoeira's most recent recruits in the contemporary moment. I examine the racial hierarchies that proliferate within Black performance worlds through my concept of diasporic chauvinism to argue that diasporic returns can marginalize Africans and their innovations.
{"title":"The Afro-Paradox: Diasporic Chauvinism and Cultural Expertise in Afro-Brazilian Capoeira","authors":"Celina de Sá","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.01.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.01.02","url":null,"abstract":"Increasingly, Brazilian experts of capoeira—an Afro-Brazilian combat game—travel to African cities for an imagined return to the sites of capoeira's origins, as well as to train African students. Focusing on a cultural festival in Abidjan, I analyze capoeira cultural exchange events across West Africa through the anthropological lenses of expertise and racial analysis. These exchanges feature displays of Brazilian nationalism embodied by West African capoeira students, while they also reveal West Africans’ creative endeavors, such as constructing new capoeira songs in African languages. I demonstrate how the diasporic position to protect “Afro” cultural forms ironically gives way to policing creative work by continental Africans, capoeira's most recent recruits in the contemporary moment. I examine the racial hierarchies that proliferate within Black performance worlds through my concept of diasporic chauvinism to argue that diasporic returns can marginalize Africans and their innovations.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"41 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141039028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.01.01
Edward Lemon, Bradley Jardine
Since 1997, the Chinese Party-state has engaged in a campaign of transnational repression against the Uyghur diaspora. This campaign has grown in severity since the 2014 declaration of the People's War on Terror and Strike Hard campaigns, which, taken together, involved a program of mass incarceration for the Turkic peoples of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). This article examines the everyday impacts of extraterritorial persecution on the Uyghur diaspora and their ability to successfully integrate into their new host societies and exercise their political and cultural agency. The article draws from nineteen in-depth interviews with Uyghurs living around the world and a dataset of over 7,000 incidents of China's targeting of Uyghurs globally since 1997. We examine how Chinese practices and the everyday effects of transnational repression vary between different regime types. We argue that Uyghurs experience both marginalization in their host country and the threat of transnational repression from China, a particularly precarious situation that we term double precarity. This double precarity is felt most acutely in more authoritarian contexts.
{"title":"“We Are Living in Fear”: Transnational Repression, Regime Type, and Double Precarity in the Uyghur Diaspora","authors":"Edward Lemon, Bradley Jardine","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.01.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.01.01","url":null,"abstract":"Since 1997, the Chinese Party-state has engaged in a campaign of transnational repression against the Uyghur diaspora. This campaign has grown in severity since the 2014 declaration of the People's War on Terror and Strike Hard campaigns, which, taken together, involved a program of mass incarceration for the Turkic peoples of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). This article examines the everyday impacts of extraterritorial persecution on the Uyghur diaspora and their ability to successfully integrate into their new host societies and exercise their political and cultural agency. The article draws from nineteen in-depth interviews with Uyghurs living around the world and a dataset of over 7,000 incidents of China's targeting of Uyghurs globally since 1997. We examine how Chinese practices and the everyday effects of transnational repression vary between different regime types. We argue that Uyghurs experience both marginalization in their host country and the threat of transnational repression from China, a particularly precarious situation that we term double precarity. This double precarity is felt most acutely in more authoritarian contexts.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"55 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141038930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.01.03
Sascha Krannich
While most research on the Tamil diaspora and the conflict in Sri Lanka studies the Tamil diaspora in the United Kingdom and Canada, this article focuses on the role of organized Tamils in Germany. Based on an extensive three years of qualitative field study in Germany and Sri Lanka, and using the theoretical framework of Bercovitch's (2007) conflict cycle, I analyzed the engagement of the Tamil diaspora in Sri Lanka in three phases of the conflict: conflict emergence before the war (until 1983), conflict escalation and the war (1983–2009), and post-conflict reconstruction after the war (from 2009). In each of these phases, they took different positions toward the conflict. Before the war, German Tamil organizations were reluctant to get involved in the conflict. During the war, some Tamil diaspora organizations in Germany were involved in the war to a minor degree by their active membership and political participation in larger umbrella organizations initiated by the Tamil militant organization called Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The larger part of the diaspora focused on self-initiated and independent social development projects in Sri Lanka. After the LTTE lost the war, the second generation of Tamils took over leadership positions in the diaspora in Germany and focused on new social and health projects in Sri Lanka.
{"title":"Diaspora and Conflict: The Case of Tamils in Germany","authors":"Sascha Krannich","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.01.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.01.03","url":null,"abstract":"While most research on the Tamil diaspora and the conflict in Sri Lanka studies the Tamil diaspora in the United Kingdom and Canada, this article focuses on the role of organized Tamils in Germany. Based on an extensive three years of qualitative field study in Germany and Sri Lanka, and using the theoretical framework of Bercovitch's (2007) conflict cycle, I analyzed the engagement of the Tamil diaspora in Sri Lanka in three phases of the conflict: conflict emergence before the war (until 1983), conflict escalation and the war (1983–2009), and post-conflict reconstruction after the war (from 2009). In each of these phases, they took different positions toward the conflict. Before the war, German Tamil organizations were reluctant to get involved in the conflict. During the war, some Tamil diaspora organizations in Germany were involved in the war to a minor degree by their active membership and political participation in larger umbrella organizations initiated by the Tamil militant organization called Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The larger part of the diaspora focused on self-initiated and independent social development projects in Sri Lanka. After the LTTE lost the war, the second generation of Tamils took over leadership positions in the diaspora in Germany and focused on new social and health projects in Sri Lanka.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"132 38","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141034788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.11.21
Charmane M. Perry
This article explores the ways second-generation Haitians in The Bahamas strategically manage their Haitian identity. In The Bahamas, there is a stigma of being Haitian and anti-Haitian sentiment is heavily ingrained in Bahamian society. While there are individuals who hide their Haitian identity, there are others who actively engage in processes of choosing whether to conceal or disclose their Haitian ethnicity. Using coming out literature as a framework and interviews with second-generation Haitians, I argue that second-generation Haitians who do not readily reveal their Haitian identity may not necessarily be hiding their identity, but instead actively engaging in processes of negotiating and strategically managing their identity in the context of place by choosing whether to conceal or disclose their Haitian heritage. Living in a society that is hostile to people of Haitian descent, it can be important to negotiate the spaces wherein one discloses their heritage in order to protect one's spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being. The objective is not to refute that there are individuals who deny they are Haitian but instead to explore the ways second-generation Haitians negotiate anti-Haitian spaces and strategically manage their identity as it relates to disclosing or concealing their Haitian heritage.
{"title":"Negotiating Space: Stigma and the Strategic Management of Ethnic Identity among Second-generation Haitians in The Bahamas","authors":"Charmane M. Perry","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.11.21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.11.21","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the ways second-generation Haitians in The Bahamas strategically manage their Haitian identity. In The Bahamas, there is a stigma of being Haitian and anti-Haitian sentiment is heavily ingrained in Bahamian society. While there are individuals who hide their Haitian identity, there are others who actively engage in processes of choosing whether to conceal or disclose their Haitian ethnicity. Using coming out literature as a framework and interviews with second-generation Haitians, I argue that second-generation Haitians who do not readily reveal their Haitian identity may not necessarily be hiding their identity, but instead actively engaging in processes of negotiating and strategically managing their identity in the context of place by choosing whether to conceal or disclose their Haitian heritage. Living in a society that is hostile to people of Haitian descent, it can be important to negotiate the spaces wherein one discloses their heritage in order to protect one's spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being. The objective is not to refute that there are individuals who deny they are Haitian but instead to explore the ways second-generation Haitians negotiate anti-Haitian spaces and strategically manage their identity as it relates to disclosing or concealing their Haitian heritage.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"23 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141033425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.03.05
Sandra K.Y. Tombe
This study examines the factors that influence the South Sudanese diaspora's perceptions of its role in peace, its disagreement with the creation of new states in South Sudan, and its opinion of the 2018 peace agreement. Through a survey conducted among diaspora members in Nebraska, United States, in September 2018 and May 2019, this study finds that participants with a high level of engagement in their diaspora community are significantly more likely to disagree that the diaspora's contribution towards peace in South Sudan is negative, thus viewing their role favorably. Furthermore, participants from the Equatoria region are significantly more likely to disagree with increasing the number of states and to hold a negative view of the 2018 peace agreement. Other demographic variables, such as age, number of years spent in the diaspora, level of education, and level of interest are also statistically significant in various models. This article argues for the relevance of diasporas in politically contentious and volatile contexts such as South Sudan. It contributes to the literature on peacemaking and peacebuilding by using new data to study a relatively under-explored diaspora community.
{"title":"“My Opinion This Time Is Not Good”: Determinants of the South Sudanese Diaspora's Opinion on Its Role in Peace, the Number of States, and the 2018 Peace Agreement","authors":"Sandra K.Y. Tombe","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.03.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.03.05","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the factors that influence the South Sudanese diaspora's perceptions of its role in peace, its disagreement with the creation of new states in South Sudan, and its opinion of the 2018 peace agreement. Through a survey conducted among diaspora members in Nebraska, United States, in September 2018 and May 2019, this study finds that participants with a high level of engagement in their diaspora community are significantly more likely to disagree that the diaspora's contribution towards peace in South Sudan is negative, thus viewing their role favorably. Furthermore, participants from the Equatoria region are significantly more likely to disagree with increasing the number of states and to hold a negative view of the 2018 peace agreement. Other demographic variables, such as age, number of years spent in the diaspora, level of education, and level of interest are also statistically significant in various models. This article argues for the relevance of diasporas in politically contentious and volatile contexts such as South Sudan. It contributes to the literature on peacemaking and peacebuilding by using new data to study a relatively under-explored diaspora community.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141045586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.02.14
Georges Fouron
This article analyzes the outcomes of a fortuitous gathering that brought together three groups of Haitians of different nationalities and of very distinctive financial circumstances at a festival to celebrate the patron saint of Ré, a small rural community located in Haiti's South Department. It shows the ways in which, Ré, although poor, neglected, and isolated, became, during that relatively brief period, the site of an encounter that transformed the hamlet into a microcosmic representation of Haiti's transnational space and a nodal point of transnational social relations where individuals who lived and evolved in unequal social environments, in Haiti and abroad, built upon their experiences, needs, and aspirations to benefit from that chance meeting in many different ways, but most especially, to express their different and contrastive assessments of their homeland's realities and their visions for its future.
{"title":"Tactical Partnerships in an Awkward Dance to Commodify Identities within Haiti's Transnational Space","authors":"Georges Fouron","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.02.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.24.1.2024.02.14","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the outcomes of a fortuitous gathering that brought together three groups of Haitians of different nationalities and of very distinctive financial circumstances at a festival to celebrate the patron saint of Ré, a small rural community located in Haiti's South Department. It shows the ways in which, Ré, although poor, neglected, and isolated, became, during that relatively brief period, the site of an encounter that transformed the hamlet into a microcosmic representation of Haiti's transnational space and a nodal point of transnational social relations where individuals who lived and evolved in unequal social environments, in Haiti and abroad, built upon their experiences, needs, and aspirations to benefit from that chance meeting in many different ways, but most especially, to express their different and contrastive assessments of their homeland's realities and their visions for its future.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"56 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141038923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.23.2.2023.08.08
Eliyana R. Adler, Polly Zavadivker
{"title":"Introduction: Memorial Books in Comparative and Global Perspectives","authors":"Eliyana R. Adler, Polly Zavadivker","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.23.2.2023.08.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.23.2.2023.08.08","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135782523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.23.2.2023.07.01
Eliyana R. Adler
This article examines the contemporary phenomenon of online translations of post-Holocaust Polish Jewish memorial books. The memorial books, written primary in Hebrew and Yiddish in the decades after the war, each focus on Jewish life and death in a particular prewar Jewish community. Written originally by and for people from those communities, the books are now being translated and posted online by Jewish genealogists, and, most recently, by Polish non-Jews interested in the histories of their own towns. The paper explores what is lost and gained in the process of translating these inward facing, post-genocidal diasporic volumes for entirely new communities of readers.
{"title":"Translating Trauma: The Afterlife of Holocaust Memorial Books","authors":"Eliyana R. Adler","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.23.2.2023.07.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.23.2.2023.07.01","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the contemporary phenomenon of online translations of post-Holocaust Polish Jewish memorial books. The memorial books, written primary in Hebrew and Yiddish in the decades after the war, each focus on Jewish life and death in a particular prewar Jewish community. Written originally by and for people from those communities, the books are now being translated and posted online by Jewish genealogists, and, most recently, by Polish non-Jews interested in the histories of their own towns. The paper explores what is lost and gained in the process of translating these inward facing, post-genocidal diasporic volumes for entirely new communities of readers.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135782522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}