Diaspora Nationalism: The Case of Ethnic Korean Minority in Kazakhstan and its Lessons from the Crimean Tatars in Turkey

Abstract

A diaspora is a migrant community which crosses borders, retains an ethnic group consciousness and peculiar institutions over extended periods (Cohen, 1997, p. ix). It is an ancient social formation, comprised of people living out of their ancestral homeland, who retain their loyalties toward their co-ethnics and the homeland from which they were forced out (Esman, 1996, p. 317). The Jews were the most ancient and well-known diasporic people. For a long time, “diaspora” meant almost exclusively the Jewish people. Hence diaspora signified a collective trauma, a banishment, where one dreamed of home but lived in exile. However, in recent years other peoples, such as Palestinians, Armenians, Chinese, Tatars, etc., who have settled outside their natal territories but maintain strong collective identities, also have defined themselves as disasporas. As Cohen states, “the description or self-description of such groups as diasporas is now common,” which allows a certain degree of social distance to displace a high degree of psychological alienation. Accordingly, during the last decades, disaspora has been rediscovered and expanded to include refugees, gastarbeiters, migrants, expatriates, expellees, political refugees, and ethnic minorities (Safran, 1991, p. 83).