Diaspora as decolonisation

Abstract

This chapter begins with a discussion on translation and anthropology to highlight how they have been central to the construction and translation of the Global South to the Global North. The aim of the chapter is to provoke a new thinking of diaspora by turning the tables on this, and focusing on how diasporas unsettle and trouble North-centric visions and epistemologies. It argues that how diasporas decolonise must be a central aspect of diaspora theorising. Through a focus on examples of diasporas in the Global North, but especially in the United Kingdom, it explores how diasporas should not simply be seen as mediators but as agents who speak back and challenge the worldviews in the Global North, aiding foreignisation and decolonisation. It considers them as the ‘Global South in the Global North’. Diasporas also speak back and challenge worldviews in the home left behind, aiding decolonisation of the homeland at a distance. The Bristol Bus Boycott, the strike at Imperial Typewriters, the Grunswick Dispute, the mobilisations following the Grenfell Fire, the Windrush Scandal, Black Lives Matter and many others are examples of how diasporas challenge and expand understandings of freedom, equality and dignity in the metropole and globally. The book introduces concepts such as ‘radical remembering’ and ‘radical inclusion’, and posits them against ‘social inclusion’. The chapter thus shows how we can rethink diasporas and conceive of them as agents of globalisation and of decolonisation rather than mere consequences of these, as conventionally constructed.