Pub Date : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.01
Sondra L. Hausner, J. Garnett
This special issue of Diaspora looks at a classic form of identity— religion—as it presents itself across space and time. Much historical and ethnographic work over the course of the last century has explored religious identity among bounded—or even unbounded—communities, but recent concerns (both scholarly and political) with the challenges of global mobility have led to new investigations into the complex dynamics of religion in sustaining, creating, and sometimes complicating connections across dispersed populations. Indeed, religion is one of the most prominent idioms through which diasporas come to produce shared consciousness, and shared practice. This volume is a way in to the problem of understanding how religion accomplishes the deep sense of belonging that it so often elicits, and how it is that religious life can bring about solidarity even when communities are not limited to one location. Neither a religion nor a diaspora is a clearly defined or finite category, however, as either is mapped out in human experience. In all their regional, religious, and historical variation, the six articles that follow show how religions and diasporas produce each other: in these cases, religious life is premised upon dispersion—and global, networked connectedness depends upon the enduring links of shared religious action. In particular, the articles in this volume ask why and how religion is deployed for the sake of communities that identify transnationally, or globally, or extra-locally, and address the terms of its engagement. Understanding the relationship between religious formations and global networks returns us to a critical nexus of belonging: religion—public and private; individual and collective; in European capitals and in African ones; in Asian contexts and in Middle Eastern ones—lays the groundwork for human attachments across space. As communities move, religions change: this observation should be no surprise to social scientists or historians attendant to the natural Diaspora 19:1 (2010) / published Fall 2016
{"title":"Introduction: Religion and Belonging in Diaspora","authors":"Sondra L. Hausner, J. Garnett","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.01","url":null,"abstract":"This special issue of Diaspora looks at a classic form of identity— religion—as it presents itself across space and time. Much historical and ethnographic work over the course of the last century has explored religious identity among bounded—or even unbounded—communities, but recent concerns (both scholarly and political) with the challenges of global mobility have led to new investigations into the complex dynamics of religion in sustaining, creating, and sometimes complicating connections across dispersed populations. Indeed, religion is one of the most prominent idioms through which diasporas come to produce shared consciousness, and shared practice. This volume is a way in to the problem of understanding how religion accomplishes the deep sense of belonging that it so often elicits, and how it is that religious life can bring about solidarity even when communities are not limited to one location. Neither a religion nor a diaspora is a clearly defined or finite category, however, as either is mapped out in human experience. In all their regional, religious, and historical variation, the six articles that follow show how religions and diasporas produce each other: in these cases, religious life is premised upon dispersion—and global, networked connectedness depends upon the enduring links of shared religious action. In particular, the articles in this volume ask why and how religion is deployed for the sake of communities that identify transnationally, or globally, or extra-locally, and address the terms of its engagement. Understanding the relationship between religious formations and global networks returns us to a critical nexus of belonging: religion—public and private; individual and collective; in European capitals and in African ones; in Asian contexts and in Middle Eastern ones—lays the groundwork for human attachments across space. As communities move, religions change: this observation should be no surprise to social scientists or historians attendant to the natural Diaspora 19:1 (2010) / published Fall 2016","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134269078","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 : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.07
D. Gellner, Sondra L. Hausner, C. Laksamba, K. Adhikari
This article examines the tension between publicly affirmed religious identification and private religious practice among Britain’s Nepali diaspora population. It compares census and survey figures for religious affiliation with religious shrines in people’s homes. In some cases there is complete congruence between religious affiliation and home worship (most strikingly in the cases of Sherpas, whose affiliation and shrines are unequivocally Buddhist). Among many other groups, however, there is plenty of evidence of multiple belonging. The most common case is singular identification for census purposes and multiple practice, but there are also many instances of multiple identification when offered the opportunity. For example, when asked for their religion, Gurungs often affirm a Buddhist identity, but when given the option to be both Hindu and Buddhist, they frequently embrace it as it more closely describing their actual practice. Many Kirats keep no shrine at home because they believe that their tribal tradition is properly aniconic. Our material clearly shows that the distribution of ecumenical attitudes is not random, but reflects particular ethnic, regional, and caste histories within Nepal. The ethnic/caste makeup of Britain’s Nepali diaspora is not identical to that of Nepal, mainly because of the history of Gurkha recruitment, and this demographic shift is reflected in the higher proportion of Buddhists in Britain. Nonetheless, we suspect that the findings of this study would be replicated in an urban context in Nepal.
{"title":"Shrines and Identities in Britain’s Nepali Diaspora","authors":"D. Gellner, Sondra L. Hausner, C. Laksamba, K. Adhikari","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.07","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the tension between publicly affirmed religious identification and private religious practice among Britain’s Nepali diaspora population. It compares census and survey figures for religious affiliation with religious shrines in people’s homes. In some cases there is complete congruence between religious affiliation and home worship (most strikingly in the cases of Sherpas, whose affiliation and shrines are unequivocally Buddhist). Among many other groups, however, there is plenty of evidence of multiple belonging. The most common case is singular identification for census purposes and multiple practice, but there are also many instances of multiple identification when offered the opportunity. For example, when asked for their religion, Gurungs often affirm a Buddhist identity, but when given the option to be both Hindu and Buddhist, they frequently embrace it as it more closely describing their actual practice. Many Kirats keep no shrine at home because they believe that their tribal tradition is properly aniconic. Our material clearly shows that the distribution of ecumenical attitudes is not random, but reflects particular ethnic, regional, and caste histories within Nepal. The ethnic/caste makeup of Britain’s Nepali diaspora is not identical to that of Nepal, mainly because of the history of Gurkha recruitment, and this demographic shift is reflected in the higher proportion of Buddhists in Britain. Nonetheless, we suspect that the findings of this study would be replicated in an urban context in Nepal.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"162 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134451540","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 : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.06
Kristine Krause, Rijk van Dijk
Abstract:The nexus between Pentecostalism and migration has been studied extensively and in divergent terms. One line of research has looked at churches founded by migrants as home away from home, helping migrants to settle in a new place and at the same time connecting them back to where they came from. Another strand has rather highlighted incorporation into a global Christendom and engagement in global spiritual warfare. Whereas the first line of research is often phrased in terms of diaspora and religion, the second one views Pentecostalism as producing globality on its own terms. With this article, we attempt to contribute to this discussion by asking how deterritorialized belonging is produced in daily Pentecostal practices. What is made present when a home is made absent? What kind of attentive practices create the presence of the Holy Spirit? In thinking with the notion of hodological care, we argue that Pentecostal churches founded by Ghanaian migrants in Southern Africa and Europe create belonging not to a “home" but to connections. They thereby produce forms of de-diasporization, which could be seen as belonging through disconnecting.
{"title":"Hodological Care among Ghanaian Pentecostals: De-diasporization and Belonging in Transnational Religious Networks","authors":"Kristine Krause, Rijk van Dijk","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.06","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The nexus between Pentecostalism and migration has been studied extensively and in divergent terms. One line of research has looked at churches founded by migrants as home away from home, helping migrants to settle in a new place and at the same time connecting them back to where they came from. Another strand has rather highlighted incorporation into a global Christendom and engagement in global spiritual warfare. Whereas the first line of research is often phrased in terms of diaspora and religion, the second one views Pentecostalism as producing globality on its own terms. With this article, we attempt to contribute to this discussion by asking how deterritorialized belonging is produced in daily Pentecostal practices. What is made present when a home is made absent? What kind of attentive practices create the presence of the Holy Spirit? In thinking with the notion of hodological care, we argue that Pentecostal churches founded by Ghanaian migrants in Southern Africa and Europe create belonging not to a “home\" but to connections. They thereby produce forms of de-diasporization, which could be seen as belonging through disconnecting.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130974325","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 : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.05
Milena Grabačić
Abstract:As a result of the Ottoman territorial conquests, the Venice of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was a site of an unprecedented influx of immigrants from its colonies in the Adriatic and the eastern Mediterranean. Venice’s own polycentric and plural legal and institutional system provided a backdrop for complex processes of accommodation and contestation of cultural difference. Both state institutions and legal categories struggled to respond to the demands of Venice’s increasingly diverse populations. Immigrants themselves negotiated the legal and social categories of the state, and drew on different conceptions of social membership, in order to formulate their own claims about identity and belonging. This article focuses on two specific social sites where notions of community and belonging were elaborated: the establishment of Venetian civic ritual and the resulting negotiation of local religion in the eastern Adriatic commune of Kotor (Cattaro), and the working of lay religious corporations of foreigners in Venice, which complicated metropolitan and colonial perspectives and created a more reciprocal understanding of the world in which both colonial administration and local populations picked their way between multiple legal, linguistic, and ethnic boundaries. Religious devotion emerges not simply as a reflection of wider social, economic, and cultural changes, but as a dynamic and active agent in their negotiation.
{"title":"Multiple and Fluid: Religious and Diasporic Belonging in Venice’s Maritime State in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period","authors":"Milena Grabačić","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:As a result of the Ottoman territorial conquests, the Venice of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was a site of an unprecedented influx of immigrants from its colonies in the Adriatic and the eastern Mediterranean. Venice’s own polycentric and plural legal and institutional system provided a backdrop for complex processes of accommodation and contestation of cultural difference. Both state institutions and legal categories struggled to respond to the demands of Venice’s increasingly diverse populations. Immigrants themselves negotiated the legal and social categories of the state, and drew on different conceptions of social membership, in order to formulate their own claims about identity and belonging. This article focuses on two specific social sites where notions of community and belonging were elaborated: the establishment of Venetian civic ritual and the resulting negotiation of local religion in the eastern Adriatic commune of Kotor (Cattaro), and the working of lay religious corporations of foreigners in Venice, which complicated metropolitan and colonial perspectives and created a more reciprocal understanding of the world in which both colonial administration and local populations picked their way between multiple legal, linguistic, and ethnic boundaries. Religious devotion emerges not simply as a reflection of wider social, economic, and cultural changes, but as a dynamic and active agent in their negotiation.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126160198","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 : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.02
S. Coleman, K. Maier
We explore the production of space and place among Nigerian Pentecostal members of the Redeemed Christian Church of God by looking at tensions and overlaps between diasporic and Pentecostal identities as verbally expressed or mapped by believers based in London, England. In doing so, we examine the utility but also the ambiguities involved in analyzing such Christians through theoretical frames suggested by scholars of diaspora. Spatial tropes of “homeland,” “horizon,” “city,” “nation,” and “globe” form much of the focus of our study as we show how they are invoked within and beyond church activity, and contribute to complex forms of mapping that are evident not only in conventional physical representations but also in sermons, conversations, and other narratives. We see such mapping as indicating the shifting saliences diasporic and Pentecostal identities may have in believers’ lives over time. Overall, we argue that it is possible to see informants as moving between different perspectives as they are positioned, and position themselves, “in,” “of,” and “beyond” a Nigerian diaspora.
{"title":"In, Of, and Beyond Diaspora?: Mapping, Migration, and the Production of Space among Nigerian Pentecostals","authors":"S. Coleman, K. Maier","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.02","url":null,"abstract":"We explore the production of space and place among Nigerian Pentecostal members of the Redeemed Christian Church of God by looking at tensions and overlaps between diasporic and Pentecostal identities as verbally expressed or mapped by believers based in London, England. In doing so, we examine the utility but also the ambiguities involved in analyzing such Christians through theoretical frames suggested by scholars of diaspora. Spatial tropes of “homeland,” “horizon,” “city,” “nation,” and “globe” form much of the focus of our study as we show how they are invoked within and beyond church activity, and contribute to complex forms of mapping that are evident not only in conventional physical representations but also in sermons, conversations, and other narratives. We see such mapping as indicating the shifting saliences diasporic and Pentecostal identities may have in believers’ lives over time. Overall, we argue that it is possible to see informants as moving between different perspectives as they are positioned, and position themselves, “in,” “of,” and “beyond” a Nigerian diaspora.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116871705","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 : 2016-09-01DOI: 10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.03
Claudia Liebelt, Gabriele Shenar, P. Werbner
Abstract:Against Ghassan Hage’s theorization of migration “guilt”—the view that migration entails a sense of rupture, animating an unfulfilled desire to recapture a lost, imaginary, subjective wholeness—this article explores the conjunctures of migration and religious pilgrimage in the creation of new, transcendent moral subjectivities away from “home.” Taking four case studies—Christian Filipino migrants working in Israel, Muslim Pakistani immigrants to the United Kingdom, Indian Jewish Bene Israel immigrants to Zion, and Hadramati Sufi itinerant migrants across the Indian Ocean—we reflect on a central theme animating the theorization of religion and diaspora: that of movement away from home as religious and moral exile, and the sense of subjective alienation and yearning it entails. By going on pilgrimage, we show, migrants deny the rupture migration has entailed, creating their own sacred geographies that recapture and renew an imaginary wholeness. They redefine their sufferings, hard labor, and difficult living conditions as a religious sacrifice or sacred journey, imbuing the act of abandoning a former home or homeland and its familiar surroundings with ethical meaning. By becoming pilgrims, migrants of diverse origins travel across international borders while extending trans-local pilgrimage cults as they migrate internationally. Migration and pilgrimage are thus, we argue, mutually reconfigured as embodied and subjectively transformative forms of movement.
{"title":"Migration, Diaspora, and Religious Pilgrimage in Comparative Perspective: Sacred Geographies and Ethical Landscapes","authors":"Claudia Liebelt, Gabriele Shenar, P. Werbner","doi":"10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/DIASPORA.19.1.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Against Ghassan Hage’s theorization of migration “guilt”—the view that migration entails a sense of rupture, animating an unfulfilled desire to recapture a lost, imaginary, subjective wholeness—this article explores the conjunctures of migration and religious pilgrimage in the creation of new, transcendent moral subjectivities away from “home.” Taking four case studies—Christian Filipino migrants working in Israel, Muslim Pakistani immigrants to the United Kingdom, Indian Jewish Bene Israel immigrants to Zion, and Hadramati Sufi itinerant migrants across the Indian Ocean—we reflect on a central theme animating the theorization of religion and diaspora: that of movement away from home as religious and moral exile, and the sense of subjective alienation and yearning it entails. By going on pilgrimage, we show, migrants deny the rupture migration has entailed, creating their own sacred geographies that recapture and renew an imaginary wholeness. They redefine their sufferings, hard labor, and difficult living conditions as a religious sacrifice or sacred journey, imbuing the act of abandoning a former home or homeland and its familiar surroundings with ethical meaning. By becoming pilgrims, migrants of diverse origins travel across international borders while extending trans-local pilgrimage cults as they migrate internationally. Migration and pilgrimage are thus, we argue, mutually reconfigured as embodied and subjectively transformative forms of movement.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114984526","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}
Drawing on a hybrid view of migrant generations (demographic and historical/political), I examine generational dynamics among Russian-Jewish immigrants in Israel. The first wave of Soviet Jewish migration to Israel in the early 1970s (some 150,000 migrants) was catalyzed by a surge of Zionist sentiment after Israel’s victory in 1967 and enabled by strong political pressure on the USSR from the West. Reflecting their Zionist persuasion, the 1970s arrivals often discarded their former identities, switched to Hebrew, and soon integrated into Israel’s social mainstream. By contrast, the 1990s wave was set in motion by the political turmoil and economic hardships of the post-communist transition, while Zionist ideals were secondary to most émigrés. About 1 million ex-Soviets of Jewish descent migrated to Israel as the most accessible destination throughout the 1990s. They have kept intense and positive ties with their former homeland, in part because one-third of them are Russians married to Jews or mixed ethnics and have family members remaining in the Former Soviet Union. At the same time, their integration in Israel has been fraught with problems. The different attitudes toward the ex-homeland among the parental generations of the 1970s and 1990s have influenced the extent of Russian cultural continuity among their children born in Israel.
{"title":"The Two Waves of Russian-Jewish Migration from the USSR/FSU to Israel: Dissidents of the 1970s and Pragmatics of the 1990s","authors":"L. Remennick","doi":"10.1353/dsp.2015.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dsp.2015.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on a hybrid view of migrant generations (demographic and historical/political), I examine generational dynamics among Russian-Jewish immigrants in Israel. The first wave of Soviet Jewish migration to Israel in the early 1970s (some 150,000 migrants) was catalyzed by a surge of Zionist sentiment after Israel’s victory in 1967 and enabled by strong political pressure on the USSR from the West. Reflecting their Zionist persuasion, the 1970s arrivals often discarded their former identities, switched to Hebrew, and soon integrated into Israel’s social mainstream. By contrast, the 1990s wave was set in motion by the political turmoil and economic hardships of the post-communist transition, while Zionist ideals were secondary to most émigrés. About 1 million ex-Soviets of Jewish descent migrated to Israel as the most accessible destination throughout the 1990s. They have kept intense and positive ties with their former homeland, in part because one-third of them are Russians married to Jews or mixed ethnics and have family members remaining in the Former Soviet Union. At the same time, their integration in Israel has been fraught with problems. The different attitudes toward the ex-homeland among the parental generations of the 1970s and 1990s have influenced the extent of Russian cultural continuity among their children born in Israel.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"131 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121518065","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}
We live in an era of globalization involving large-scale international migration and increasing transnational connectedness that have con- tributed to the emergence and growth of diaspora communities. In this context, questions of how diaspora migrants adapt to host societies and engage with their homelands are becoming increasingly important economically, politically, socially, and culturally—to diasporic groups themselves, to their homelands, and to the countries where they settle. Yet little is known about internal diversity and stratification within indi- vidual diasporas. Our understanding of how pre-migration experiences shape migrants' adaptation where they resettle and their homeland in- volvements, as well as their relations to other diaspora members settled elsewhere, remains especially inadequate. This Introduction and the special issue more generally advance the understanding of diasporas and their internal diversity, analytically and descriptively, through a his- torically grounded conceptual generational frame. The concept of generation has been fundamental to the scholarly understanding of migrant adaptation, especially within the assimilation- ist and transnational frameworks. Most typically, studies of migrant generations focus on contrasts between the foreign-born, defined as the first generation, and their progeny, born where they resettle and defined as the second generation. In these studies, generation is used in the sense of kinship descent, focused on genealogical remove from the per- son within a family who moved to a new country. Within the social sciences more broadly, as David Kertzer (1983) has shown, generation is also used to refer to age- or birth date-based cohorts with distinctive historical experiences, as in "the 1968 generation" or "generation Y" ;t o life-stage groups, such as "the college generation"; and to people living in a particular historical period, such as "the generation of 1914." These meanings of generation are distinct from each other, but as Nancy Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015
{"title":"Introduction: Reimagining Migrant Generations","authors":"Mette Louise Berg, Suzanne Eckstein","doi":"10.1353/dsp.2015.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dsp.2015.0001","url":null,"abstract":"We live in an era of globalization involving large-scale international migration and increasing transnational connectedness that have con- tributed to the emergence and growth of diaspora communities. In this context, questions of how diaspora migrants adapt to host societies and engage with their homelands are becoming increasingly important economically, politically, socially, and culturally—to diasporic groups themselves, to their homelands, and to the countries where they settle. Yet little is known about internal diversity and stratification within indi- vidual diasporas. Our understanding of how pre-migration experiences shape migrants' adaptation where they resettle and their homeland in- volvements, as well as their relations to other diaspora members settled elsewhere, remains especially inadequate. This Introduction and the special issue more generally advance the understanding of diasporas and their internal diversity, analytically and descriptively, through a his- torically grounded conceptual generational frame. The concept of generation has been fundamental to the scholarly understanding of migrant adaptation, especially within the assimilation- ist and transnational frameworks. Most typically, studies of migrant generations focus on contrasts between the foreign-born, defined as the first generation, and their progeny, born where they resettle and defined as the second generation. In these studies, generation is used in the sense of kinship descent, focused on genealogical remove from the per- son within a family who moved to a new country. Within the social sciences more broadly, as David Kertzer (1983) has shown, generation is also used to refer to age- or birth date-based cohorts with distinctive historical experiences, as in \"the 1968 generation\" or \"generation Y\" ;t o life-stage groups, such as \"the college generation\"; and to people living in a particular historical period, such as \"the generation of 1914.\" These meanings of generation are distinct from each other, but as Nancy Diaspora 18:1/2 (2009) / published Winter 2015","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130640583","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}
This article offers a comparative analysis of the multifaceted dimensions of generation in the Bangladeshi Muslim diaspora communities of Britain and the United States. Studies of Muslim immigrant communities in North America and Western Europe have noted a growing social, cultural, and political chasm between the immigrant foreign-born and their non-immigrant second-generation progeny. At the heart of this “Muslim generation gap” are the intensified engagements and identifications of youth with pan-national Muslim institutions in host societies, coupled with their distancing from the ethnonational ones that anchor the immigrant generation. In the case of the Bangladeshi-origin communities in Britain and the United States the gap has emerged quite differently, in ways that reflect the differential influence of the “1971 generation”—a political generation formed in relation to Bangladesh—in the two settings.
{"title":"Diaspora Diversity: Bangladeshi Muslims in Britain and the United States","authors":"N. Kibria","doi":"10.1353/dsp.2015.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dsp.2015.0000","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a comparative analysis of the multifaceted dimensions of generation in the Bangladeshi Muslim diaspora communities of Britain and the United States. Studies of Muslim immigrant communities in North America and Western Europe have noted a growing social, cultural, and political chasm between the immigrant foreign-born and their non-immigrant second-generation progeny. At the heart of this “Muslim generation gap” are the intensified engagements and identifications of youth with pan-national Muslim institutions in host societies, coupled with their distancing from the ethnonational ones that anchor the immigrant generation. In the case of the Bangladeshi-origin communities in Britain and the United States the gap has emerged quite differently, in ways that reflect the differential influence of the “1971 generation”—a political generation formed in relation to Bangladesh—in the two settings.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125229315","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}
For decades the Miami-based Cuban diaspora successfully represented itself globally as a monolithic bloc and influenced US policy vis-à-vis Cuba. Yet the success glosses over the diversity of the Cuban diaspora, not only in Miami, but in the United States more widely, as well as internationally. The first wave of émigrés, who are known as “exiles,” have for decades campaigned for a watertight embargo against Cuba and have on principle refused to visit their homeland. By contrast, more recent Cuban émigrés, who have left the island since the economic crisis of the 1990s and who are less affluent and have less political clout, have forged cross-border transnational links with kin and friends on the island. In this article, building on Mannheim’s thesis about the long-lasting impact that early-life experiences may have, we show that diasporic Cubans who left Cuba with shared experiences and then settled in the United States or Spain adapted similarly, and relate to Cuba in similar ways, and differently from Cubans who emigrated at other points in time with different pre-migration lived experiences. Specifically, we compare and contrast two historically grounded generations in the United States and in Spain in terms of labor market insertion, political incorporation, and linguistic and cultural acculturation in the two host countries. We thereby illustrate the explanatory power of our historically grounded thesis of diasporic generation formations that we elucidated in the Introduction. The article shows how historically grounded pre-migration experiences continue to shape and mold the ways in which immigrants relate to their homeland from abroad, in ways that neither the assimilationist nor the transnational framework can account for. The article then discusses implications of this finding for the conceptualization of “generation” within research on migration more broadly.
{"title":"Cubans in the United States and Spain: The Diaspora Generational Divide","authors":"Suzanne Eckstein, Mette Louise Berg","doi":"10.1353/dsp.2015.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/dsp.2015.0002","url":null,"abstract":"For decades the Miami-based Cuban diaspora successfully represented itself globally as a monolithic bloc and influenced US policy vis-à-vis Cuba. Yet the success glosses over the diversity of the Cuban diaspora, not only in Miami, but in the United States more widely, as well as internationally. The first wave of émigrés, who are known as “exiles,” have for decades campaigned for a watertight embargo against Cuba and have on principle refused to visit their homeland. By contrast, more recent Cuban émigrés, who have left the island since the economic crisis of the 1990s and who are less affluent and have less political clout, have forged cross-border transnational links with kin and friends on the island. In this article, building on Mannheim’s thesis about the long-lasting impact that early-life experiences may have, we show that diasporic Cubans who left Cuba with shared experiences and then settled in the United States or Spain adapted similarly, and relate to Cuba in similar ways, and differently from Cubans who emigrated at other points in time with different pre-migration lived experiences. Specifically, we compare and contrast two historically grounded generations in the United States and in Spain in terms of labor market insertion, political incorporation, and linguistic and cultural acculturation in the two host countries. We thereby illustrate the explanatory power of our historically grounded thesis of diasporic generation formations that we elucidated in the Introduction. The article shows how historically grounded pre-migration experiences continue to shape and mold the ways in which immigrants relate to their homeland from abroad, in ways that neither the assimilationist nor the transnational framework can account for. The article then discusses implications of this finding for the conceptualization of “generation” within research on migration more broadly.","PeriodicalId":119873,"journal":{"name":"Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114227945","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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