Diaspora: The Politics of Its Meanings

Abstract

A key aspect of diaspora research in international relations should be on the ontological politics of naming migrants, travelers, nomads, guest workers, minorities, their relations, and their politics “diasporic.” Academic debates about the definitions of diaspora are endless; not only is this quest largely a waste of time, but it marginalizes a more important issue—namely, the politicality of defining a population or a set of relations as “diasporic.” I draw here on the notion of “ontological politics,” as developed within actor network theory by John Law and Annemarie Mol (Mol 1999). In her work on clinical practices, Mol demonstrates that a disease such as anemia is not a single reality. It is performed in at least two different ways that depend on the methods through which it is diagnosed and therefore “made real”: (i) the analysis of external symptoms by a doctor and (ii) the analysis of hemoglobin levels in a laboratory. What Mol shows is that these are not just different ways at getting at the same preexisting phenomenon but rather that the two methods produce two broadly similar yet distinct realities. For example, a patient might present with the external symptoms of anemia but display healthy hemoglobin levels. Similarly, a patient might feel perfectly fine yet present alarming levels of hemoglobin. Given such a context, in which ways should anemia be diagnosed? Detecting anemia with the first method implies personal one-on-one meetings with doctors as well as a large system for screening the population. The second method implies broad laboratory tests and statistical calculations. Moreover, one method will probably omit a fraction of the population that does not show signs of anemia according to the other method. This is what is entailed by “ontological politics”: Ultimately, competing enactments of reality determine the conditions of possibility for political choices. …