Pub Date : 2020-02-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.20.3.002
Yen N. Vu
Abstract:Tracing various historical and literary iterations of the trope of the prodigal son in the early context of Vietnamese travel abroad, this essay puts into question what it means to feel kinship to one's native culture and land. By focusing on important particularities of Vietnamese life and culture in the first half of the twentieth century, including increased diasporic mobility, a shift from ideographic to alphabetic writing systems, and new cultural influences from France, the author advances the argument that kinship, though uncanny and difficult to define, is not merely an automatic transfer of connection or relation from one generation to the next. Rather, kinship operates on a scale beyond the family, requiring a conscious questioning of one's identity in relation to one's place of origin.
{"title":"Contested Kinship: Vietnamese Prodigal Sons and Ideas of Rootedness","authors":"Yen N. Vu","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.20.3.002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.20.3.002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Tracing various historical and literary iterations of the trope of the prodigal son in the early context of Vietnamese travel abroad, this essay puts into question what it means to feel kinship to one's native culture and land. By focusing on important particularities of Vietnamese life and culture in the first half of the twentieth century, including increased diasporic mobility, a shift from ideographic to alphabetic writing systems, and new cultural influences from France, the author advances the argument that kinship, though uncanny and difficult to define, is not merely an automatic transfer of connection or relation from one generation to the next. Rather, kinship operates on a scale beyond the family, requiring a conscious questioning of one's identity in relation to one's place of origin.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126845301","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 : 2020-02-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.20.3.005
Miriam Berg
Abstract:This study focuses on the consumption of Turkish cultural products (TV serials) among second- and third-generation members of the Turkish diaspora. It provides a comparative analysis of diasporans aged between eighteen and thirty years who have higher education with those who have undergone a vocational education. It attempts to determine whether basic education is heightening an audience's preference for Turkish television content and if receiving a higher education leads to a greater interest in German media. Focus group discussions conducted in Hamburg, Germany, reveal that level of education is not a significant factor in determining an audience's choices. Instead, Turkish cultural products have been filling a void for young diasporans that German cultural products are failing to satisfy. This research establishes that the more Turkish diasporic audience feels ignored by German media and society, the greater their proximity toward Turkish cultural products, as these are able to satisfy their longing for a true home and sense of belonging.
{"title":"Cultural Proximity or Cultural Distance? Selecting Media Content among Turkish Diasporic Audiences in Germany","authors":"Miriam Berg","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.20.3.005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.20.3.005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This study focuses on the consumption of Turkish cultural products (TV serials) among second- and third-generation members of the Turkish diaspora. It provides a comparative analysis of diasporans aged between eighteen and thirty years who have higher education with those who have undergone a vocational education. It attempts to determine whether basic education is heightening an audience's preference for Turkish television content and if receiving a higher education leads to a greater interest in German media. Focus group discussions conducted in Hamburg, Germany, reveal that level of education is not a significant factor in determining an audience's choices. Instead, Turkish cultural products have been filling a void for young diasporans that German cultural products are failing to satisfy. This research establishes that the more Turkish diasporic audience feels ignored by German media and society, the greater their proximity toward Turkish cultural products, as these are able to satisfy their longing for a true home and sense of belonging.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"14 2 Suppl 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131131849","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 : 2020-02-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.20.3.001
K. Thorsteinson
Abstract:Despite scholarly agreement that the Flying African myth has emerged throughout the Americas from every location with a history of transatlantic slavery, this article is the first to analyze that myth in Canada. Taking this scholarly absence as evidence for larger erasures of Black culture in Canada, I trace variations of the myth in order to reframe the nation's ambivalent history of transatlantic slavery. Dominant narratives commemorate the Underground Railroad while ignoring the country's longer collusion in slavery and racial oppression. Comparing iterations of this myth across Canada—and considering these in light of Caribbean, Latin American, and US versions—offers a unique opportunity to theorize the relationships between nation, diaspora, and the histories of transatlantic slavery. Moreover, the multiplicity of identifications and definitions of Blackness in Canada offers a particularly salient microcosm for theorizing the diaspora writ large. In particular, I consider the Flying African myth within the specific context of Black Canada to expand on Gilroy's project in The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness.
{"title":"National Roots and Diasporic Routes: Tracing the Flying African Myth in Canada","authors":"K. Thorsteinson","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.20.3.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.20.3.001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Despite scholarly agreement that the Flying African myth has emerged throughout the Americas from every location with a history of transatlantic slavery, this article is the first to analyze that myth in Canada. Taking this scholarly absence as evidence for larger erasures of Black culture in Canada, I trace variations of the myth in order to reframe the nation's ambivalent history of transatlantic slavery. Dominant narratives commemorate the Underground Railroad while ignoring the country's longer collusion in slavery and racial oppression. Comparing iterations of this myth across Canada—and considering these in light of Caribbean, Latin American, and US versions—offers a unique opportunity to theorize the relationships between nation, diaspora, and the histories of transatlantic slavery. Moreover, the multiplicity of identifications and definitions of Blackness in Canada offers a particularly salient microcosm for theorizing the diaspora writ large. In particular, I consider the Flying African myth within the specific context of Black Canada to expand on Gilroy's project in The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129635566","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 : 2020-02-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.20.3.007
A. Fyfe
{"title":"Tracing the Memory of Africa across the Atlantic Divide","authors":"A. Fyfe","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.20.3.007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.20.3.007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132882039","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 : 2020-02-01DOI: 10.3138/diaspora.20.3.003
Nyíri Pál, Beck Fanni
Abstract:The recent wave of the emigration of well-to-do Chinese from the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been attracting attention. Like earlier migrants, these individuals go abroad to seek a better life—but they no longer define that as higher income, better welfare, or even better education. Rather, these migrants pursue better environmental quality, safer food, and a more relaxed environment in which to raise children. Although the wealthiest of these lifestyle migrants, who move to North America, Australia, or New Zealand, have attracted the most attention, middle-class migrants have been taking advantage of lower-cost residence-for-investment schemes. This article explores the motivations of some of the twenty thousand Chinese who moved to Hungary between 2013 and 2017 and argues that the country's official xenophobia and law-and-order policies make it a more, rather than less, desirable destination for those Chinese pursuing a "European lifestyle." This migration wave represents a turn in the long history of how Chinese migrants interact with the world and relate to China, a turn that requires more attention in the studies of Chinese overseas. Simultaneously, it sheds light on how cosmopolitanism and global mobility can coexist with support for the new global populism.
{"title":"Europe's New Bildungsbürger? Chinese Migrants in Search of a Pure Land","authors":"Nyíri Pál, Beck Fanni","doi":"10.3138/diaspora.20.3.003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.20.3.003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The recent wave of the emigration of well-to-do Chinese from the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been attracting attention. Like earlier migrants, these individuals go abroad to seek a better life—but they no longer define that as higher income, better welfare, or even better education. Rather, these migrants pursue better environmental quality, safer food, and a more relaxed environment in which to raise children. Although the wealthiest of these lifestyle migrants, who move to North America, Australia, or New Zealand, have attracted the most attention, middle-class migrants have been taking advantage of lower-cost residence-for-investment schemes. This article explores the motivations of some of the twenty thousand Chinese who moved to Hungary between 2013 and 2017 and argues that the country's official xenophobia and law-and-order policies make it a more, rather than less, desirable destination for those Chinese pursuing a \"European lifestyle.\" This migration wave represents a turn in the long history of how Chinese migrants interact with the world and relate to China, a turn that requires more attention in the studies of Chinese overseas. Simultaneously, it sheds light on how cosmopolitanism and global mobility can coexist with support for the new global populism.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125827065","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 : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.001
Melissa Tandiwe Myambo
Abstract:First, I begin by interrogating why blood as kinship, ethnicity, nationality, identity, etc., has been so clinically removed from so much Humanities-oriented poststructuralist and postcolonial diaspora theory, rendering it both bloodless and hostile towards the notion of a return to an ethnic homeland. Second, I analyze policies based on the "migration-development nexus" promoted by organizations like the World Bank with its reliance on a conception of bloody roots and an enduring ethnic homeland that is both essentialist and static. To point out the limitations of these theories, I examine some recent frontier heritage migrations in which Asian and African diasporic elites raised in Euro-America are "returning" to their ethnic homelands. Finally, I attempt to lay out some of the parameters of a more fluid, supple theory of diaspora for the twenty-first century that explores blood as an analytic tool that takes into account not only mobile yet bloody identities but also mutable places, dynamic economic change, and new forms of spatiotemporality. In other words, returning to the homeland is not what it used to be, hence new constructions of blood identification are now possible.
{"title":"Bloody Diaspora Theory for the Twenty-First Century: African and Asian Heritage Migrants Return","authors":"Melissa Tandiwe Myambo","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:First, I begin by interrogating why blood as kinship, ethnicity, nationality, identity, etc., has been so clinically removed from so much Humanities-oriented poststructuralist and postcolonial diaspora theory, rendering it both bloodless and hostile towards the notion of a return to an ethnic homeland. Second, I analyze policies based on the \"migration-development nexus\" promoted by organizations like the World Bank with its reliance on a conception of bloody roots and an enduring ethnic homeland that is both essentialist and static. To point out the limitations of these theories, I examine some recent frontier heritage migrations in which Asian and African diasporic elites raised in Euro-America are \"returning\" to their ethnic homelands. Finally, I attempt to lay out some of the parameters of a more fluid, supple theory of diaspora for the twenty-first century that explores blood as an analytic tool that takes into account not only mobile yet bloody identities but also mutable places, dynamic economic change, and new forms of spatiotemporality. In other words, returning to the homeland is not what it used to be, hence new constructions of blood identification are now possible.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127499459","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 : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.006
Ohannes Kılıçdağı
Scholarly studies of the history of the Armenians of Turkey in the post-genocide period are quite rare. Research from within Turkey has been difficult for political and academic reasons. There has not been a free political atmosphere in Turkey that would permit or encourage the production and making public of such works. Writing about Armenians from a perspective other than the official one would and in some cases did bring about trouble for those who engaged in such work. Moreover, until very recently, not many researchers in the Turkish academy pos sessed the essential historiographic and linguistic skills to study the his tory of the Armenian community.1 As for the members of the Armenian community, again, until the last two decades or so, young Armenians avoided the study of Armenian history, indeed of the social science and humanities altogether, because miscalculations concerning what would be permitted could lead young scholars to serious trouble. Scholars, whether of Armenian origin or non-Armenian, who live and produce in Europe or the United States have not been interested in much of what happened to the community of Armenian survivors after the genocide. At least one reason for this negligence must be the thought that the genocide was the ultimate end of the Armenian com munity in its homeland. Considering how enormous the loss was, study ing and talking about what remained may not have seemed worthwhile. Moreover, talking about the ongoing existence of Armenians in Turkey might have brought about the questioning of the genocide and its char acteristic of being a “final solution.” Yet some Armenians survived, re mained in Turkey, and created a third way of being Armenian; they
{"title":"From Failed Recovery to Mutation: Armenian Women and Community in Post-Genocide Turkey","authors":"Ohannes Kılıçdağı","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.006","url":null,"abstract":"Scholarly studies of the history of the Armenians of Turkey in the post-genocide period are quite rare. Research from within Turkey has been difficult for political and academic reasons. There has not been a free political atmosphere in Turkey that would permit or encourage the production and making public of such works. Writing about Armenians from a perspective other than the official one would and in some cases did bring about trouble for those who engaged in such work. Moreover, until very recently, not many researchers in the Turkish academy pos sessed the essential historiographic and linguistic skills to study the his tory of the Armenian community.1 As for the members of the Armenian community, again, until the last two decades or so, young Armenians avoided the study of Armenian history, indeed of the social science and humanities altogether, because miscalculations concerning what would be permitted could lead young scholars to serious trouble. Scholars, whether of Armenian origin or non-Armenian, who live and produce in Europe or the United States have not been interested in much of what happened to the community of Armenian survivors after the genocide. At least one reason for this negligence must be the thought that the genocide was the ultimate end of the Armenian com munity in its homeland. Considering how enormous the loss was, study ing and talking about what remained may not have seemed worthwhile. Moreover, talking about the ongoing existence of Armenians in Turkey might have brought about the questioning of the genocide and its char acteristic of being a “final solution.” Yet some Armenians survived, re mained in Turkey, and created a third way of being Armenian; they","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128884591","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 : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.005
Yiorgos Anagnostou
Abstract:Evangelia Kindinger's Homebound: Diaspora Spaces and Selves in Greek American Return Narratives and Theodora Patrona's Return Narratives: Ethnic Space in Late-Twentieth-Century Greek American and Italian American Literature discuss identity-making in Greek American and Italian American texts that narrate return to the historical homeland. Their interest lies in the poetics—how the returnee Self is constructed in a text—and politics—the impact of these constructions on collective belonging. Both authors mark return as a creative, self-transformative process, a fashioning of identity that is built systematically and achieved copiously, a product of commitment and intensive investment in the value of roots. Writing return also mobilizes an interest in rendering women's experiences visible and rewriting gender with the aim of empowering diaspora women. There is interest too in the ways in which extratextual economies, such as the publishing industry, and dominant discourses of belonging shape the meaning of roots. In this review essay, I closely analyze how Home-bound and Return Narratives bring together the making of textual selves with the political implications of these constructions, and I discuss the way the two books contribute to the (re)thinking of the category "European Americans" as well as its wider social valence, including itsplace in the US academy. Further, I build on their approaches to the topic of roots to offer a wider reflection on what is at stake in writing and reading return. I make a case that this particular historical moment, when diaspora return is valorized by states and corporations for the purpose of development as well as nation-building, calls for an approach to return that centers on the ethics of commitments to home and homeland and a politics beyond the Self-Other dialectic. The notion of transnational citizenship offers a productive route to chart the ethicopolitical facets associated with the claiming of roots.
{"title":"Roots, Return Narratives, Reclaiming \"European Americans\": A Review Essay","authors":"Yiorgos Anagnostou","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Evangelia Kindinger's Homebound: Diaspora Spaces and Selves in Greek American Return Narratives and Theodora Patrona's Return Narratives: Ethnic Space in Late-Twentieth-Century Greek American and Italian American Literature discuss identity-making in Greek American and Italian American texts that narrate return to the historical homeland. Their interest lies in the poetics—how the returnee Self is constructed in a text—and politics—the impact of these constructions on collective belonging. Both authors mark return as a creative, self-transformative process, a fashioning of identity that is built systematically and achieved copiously, a product of commitment and intensive investment in the value of roots. Writing return also mobilizes an interest in rendering women's experiences visible and rewriting gender with the aim of empowering diaspora women. There is interest too in the ways in which extratextual economies, such as the publishing industry, and dominant discourses of belonging shape the meaning of roots. In this review essay, I closely analyze how Home-bound and Return Narratives bring together the making of textual selves with the political implications of these constructions, and I discuss the way the two books contribute to the (re)thinking of the category \"European Americans\" as well as its wider social valence, including itsplace in the US academy. Further, I build on their approaches to the topic of roots to offer a wider reflection on what is at stake in writing and reading return. I make a case that this particular historical moment, when diaspora return is valorized by states and corporations for the purpose of development as well as nation-building, calls for an approach to return that centers on the ethics of commitments to home and homeland and a politics beyond the Self-Other dialectic. The notion of transnational citizenship offers a productive route to chart the ethicopolitical facets associated with the claiming of roots.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130393994","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 : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.004
Madeline Y. Hsu
Abstract:This review situates Shelly Chan's analysis of temporality in Chinese migrations as "diaspora moments" in response to leading opponents of the application of diaspora in Chinese overseas studies. Chan's astute and carefully framed identification of key moments when Chinese overseas significantly influenced national culture, ideologies, and institutions complicates but does not ameliorate the political pressures driving articulations such as Shu-mei Shih's call for Sinophone studies as strategies for ethnic Chinese around the world to claim localized identities and belongings.
{"title":"Decoupling Peripheries from the Center: The Dangers of Diaspora in Chinese Migration Studies","authors":"Madeline Y. Hsu","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.20.2.004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This review situates Shelly Chan's analysis of temporality in Chinese migrations as \"diaspora moments\" in response to leading opponents of the application of diaspora in Chinese overseas studies. Chan's astute and carefully framed identification of key moments when Chinese overseas significantly influenced national culture, ideologies, and institutions complicates but does not ameliorate the political pressures driving articulations such as Shu-mei Shih's call for Sinophone studies as strategies for ethnic Chinese around the world to claim localized identities and belongings.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114623035","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}
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