Diaspora Research Articles

South Asian Gulf migration to the Gulf: a safety valve or a development strategy?

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States have remained the main corridor for South Asian migration since the oil boom of the early 1970s. The paper reviews migration trends and policies in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, especially related to movements in GCC countries. While overseas migration has acted as a safety valve providing relief to local labour market pressures and earning much needed foreign exchange earnings in the context of poverty and slow growth, South Asian countries seem to have gone beyond this in informally promoting migration as a development strategy. This is indicated by the persistence of Gulf migration from South Asia for well over three decades, policy pronouncements on the important role of migration, the continuing high share of Gulf migration in total migrant outflows, and remittance inflows, bilateral MOUs on labour migration signed, and the growth of migrant and diaspora populations. Despite the rhetoric on protection of migrant workers, and prevention of abuse and exploitation, most countries seem to encourage out-migration for employment relief and remittances. A thriving migration industry and social networks sustain flows of migrant workers to meet the demand of GCC countries, especially their employers, for cheap labour. Thus, reliance on migration may arrest serious attempts at transforming domestic economies for higher growth resulting in a low-level development trap. The paper reviews recent migration trends and raises the issue of long-term sustainability of relying on migration as part of national development strategies for origin countries of South Asia. It argues for a phased approach to reducing dependence of labour migration in origin countries.

Promoting Russia abroad: Russia's post-Cold war national identity and public diplomacy

ABSTRACTAs the Soviet Union fell, the ideological glue that was the source of national unity and identity was no longer present in post-Cold War Russia. Recently, however, Russia has made attempts to redefine itself in the post-Cold War world, establish a new national identity, and project it to the world. Russia's exercise of public diplomacy and soft power differ starkly from most Western countries, as the Russian approach is defined by a top-down, centralized nature that emphasizes a nationalist message to its target audiences. The Russian approach has been marked by a tendency to locate and mobilize sympathetic Russian diaspora populations, but an aversion to building networks among those who do not presently share Russia's foreign policy goals. This approach has led to significant limitations on Russia's ability to persuade foreign publics and build new partnerships. Such tendencies are especially evident through an examination of Russia's public diplomacy in Ukraine, where attempts are made to mobilize Russian diaspora communities, while other potential audiences are diminished. This paper argues that the inherent contradictions, limitations, and divisive nature of Russian public diplomacy are especially evident in the case of the Crimean annexation and inhibit Russia's ability to influence and persuade non-Russian audiences.

The Case for “Assimilation” and Diaspora

The Case for “Assimilation” and Diaspora

New Maps for the Diaspora

New Maps for the Diaspora

CAUCASIAN MINORITIES OF KRASNODAR REGION: CLASSIFICATION AND CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL REPRODUCTION

The article analyzes the retrospective transformation of ethno-demographic structure of the population of Krasnodar region from the perspective of representation, dynamics and characteristics of reproduction of Caucasian ethnic groups in the post-Soviet period. On the basis of census data in 1989, 2002 and 2010 describes the general trends, and compares the demographic development of the Caucasian ethnic groups in the region. The concept of Caucasian ethnicity used in its geographical rather than linguistic or cultural and historical significance. The authors classify living in the Caucasus region, minority, into several groups: indigenous peoples of the region, internal diaspora indigenous peoples of the Russian Federation, the Diaspora peoples who have their own national state or ethnic core outside of Russia. A comparison of the natural reproduction and migration of Caucasian ethnic groups in the region, analyzed the regional dynamics of migration as a factor of change in the population of the Caucasian diaspora. At the same time the features of the regional identity of the Caucasian communities, causes the appearance of new forms of ethnic identification. On the example of "Circassian issue" through the process of ethnic mobilization in modern conditions, and on the example of the Turkish community analyzes the problem of ethnic segregation in the province, spread ethnophobia, which resulted in mass re-emigration. At the end of the article presents forecast of development of processes of ethno-demographic reproduction of Caucasian minorities in the Krasnodar Territory.

The Vodou Ethic and the Spirit of Communism: The Practical Consciousness of the African People of Haiti by Paul C. Mocombe

The Vodou Ethic and Spirit of Communism: The Practical Consciousness of African People of Haiti. By Paul C. Mocombe. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2016. ISBN 978-0-7618-6702-9. 147 pp. $28.99.Review by Ama MazamaThis book, comprising five chapters, presents itself as a structural Marxist analysis of Vodou in Haitian society, with ultimate purpose of applying author's own phenomenological structural sociology (6) to Vodou. Thus, unsurprisingly, and typical of most works couched in European paradigms, The Vodou Ethic and Spirit of Communism is articulated around principal dichotomies. The first one opposes Haitians to African people worldwide, with strange claim that Haiti is only place in world where Africans have rejected European cultural values and held on to African culture. Indeed, according to author, the majority of black people in Africa and African diaspora, contemporarily, internalize and recursively reorganize a European way of life as black (other) agents of Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism seeking equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with their former white colonizers (32). On contrary, he continues,the majority of Africans on island maintained their African structuring structure [sic], what I am calling here Vodou Ethic and spirit of communism social class language game, which they reified as nature of reality as such via language of Kreyol; ideology of Vodou; its ideological apparatuses, i.e., lakous, peristyles, ounfo, Iwa yo, herbal medicine, songs, dances, and zombification; and modes of production, i.e., komes, husbandry, and subsistence agriculture. (33)The second dichotomy, within Haiti, opposes bourgeoisie to masses. This results in emergence of social systems: one is structured by Catholic/Protestant ethic and its spirit of capitalism and is embraced by bourgeoisie; other revolves around Vodou ethic and its spirit of communism and is sustained by masses. Bois Caiman, we are told, was defining moment when masses decided to hold on to African worldview, including Vodou. The author argues particularly adamantly against any notion of syncretism, creolite, or hybridity in Vodou. The images of white saints with which Vodou iconography is replete were simply, according to Mocombe, a strategy used by ougan-yo and manbo-yo to familiarize and re-Africanize those Haitians who were leaving plantation and who knew very little about Vodou while being well versed in Christianity due to their proximity to Europeans and their subsequent embrace of European culture (91). Those images were to facilitate their transition back into African culture. The conflicts that have marred Haitian history, author affirms, are ultimately caused by clashes between European and African cultures, between Catholicism/ Protestantism and Vodou and agents and worldviews that sustain them.Here, Mocombe is introducing Cheikh Anta Diop's two cradle theory, which argues that an abundant African environment produced a culture of sharing and peacefulness on African continent, while an environment marked by scarcity produced European aggressiveness and individualism-and, ultimately, capitalism. Such a twist is a bit surprising, to say least, coming from a self-professed Marxist. …

Unsettling India: Affect, Temporality, Transnationality by Purnima Mankekar

Purnima Mankekar, Unsettling India: Affect, Temporality, Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. 301 pp.Purnima Mankekar's monograph, Unsettling India: Affect, Temporality, Transnationality, is a dazzling example of the melding of ethnography and theory at its best. It is replete with detailed ethnographic vignettes, rich theoretical insights, and methodological, analytical, and conceptual innovation. Mankekar's project is to highlight the constitution and production of India and through the study of cultures among Indians both home (in India) and abroad (in the San Francisco Bay Area in the US). In doing so, she examines the production of India and Indianness through feminist analysis of textual and ethnographic archives of affect and temporality.I read the book-taking meticulous notes-while conducting follow-up fieldwork research in Kampala, Uganda. I often marveled at the ways in which analyses in the text spoke to the conditions and nature of the multiple South Asian diaspora communities that I was studying-as well as the of ethno-racial insecurity that circulate in postcolonial East Africa. Indeed, this work highlights both the analytical possibilities and limitations of predominant usages of diaspora in South Asian studies. It argues for the need to focus on connectivities between home and abroad diaspora populations via an analysis of cultures, as well as focusing on themes of affect and temporality in the study of diasporas and cultures. Critically, Mankekar provides the reader with a conceptual and theoretical framework for studying affect and temporality within a anthropological framework.Chapter 1 outlines the concept of as both an ethnographic and an analytic lens in the study. Mankekar noted that unsettlement occurs at two registers: at the level of subject formation, as when subjects are formed through unsettlement, and as a framework for thinking about the relationship between media, culture, and culture/ change (19). Through the selective staging of evocative ethnographic vignettes, Mankekar explores the sense of unsettlement among her informants in India and in the San Francisco Bay Area, examining how cultures enable the reconstitution of India and Indianness for these subjects. As a part of her broader political project, she deploys the notion of unsettlement, rather than diaspora, as a tool for denaturalizing the claims of the nation. This chapter, entitled Unsettlement, offers a rigorous and at times dense outline of the methodological, conceptual, theoretical, and epistemological interventions of the book. Indeed, I found it more helpful to go back to this first chapter to help grasp its arguments once I had read the analyses in the other chapters. It contains a lot of theoretical jargon that demands slow reading and needs to be unpacked by the reader in order to understand the construction of Mankekar's complex arguments.Embedded in her analysis is a re-theorization of public culture such that she conceives of public cultures in terms of and sensorial ecologies produced by the circulation of media and commodities (6). She builds on the work of Raymond Williams (1977); Benedict Anderson (1991); Charles Peirce (1958); feminist anthropologists who have studied the relationship between emotion and (such as Rosaldo 1984, Lutz and Abu-Lughod 1990, Yanagisako 2002); and, in particular, Sara Ahmed's (2004) work on affective regimes in order to draw out the relationship between cultures and the that undergird processes of in/habitation, being moved, feeling attached, and feeling in or out of place (Mankekar 2015:15). Mankekar notes that transnational cultures participate in the production of phantasmic notions of India in both the homeland and the diaspora by generating a range of affects spanning nostalgia and longing, as well as disaffection, alienation, and at times antagonism (15). …

Two Lithuanian artists who became part of Western cultural history

Today Lithuanians are a diaspora people dispersed throughout the world. Among them, some are important to world cultural history; this article is about two of them. They were World War II refugees and currently are perhaps the most famous Lithuanian artists alive: Jonas Mekas (b. 1922) and Aleksandra Kasuba (Kašuba, Kašubienė; b. 1923). Their fates, like those of many postwar emigrants, were affected by the trauma of war and the problem of being a refugee, a “displaced person”. But in contrast to some other Lithuanian artists to whom such an existence in exile meant being creatively unproductive, Jonas Mekas and Aleksandra Kasuba found an environment conducive to their creativity in both the European DP camps and in the United States to which they emigrated. Both were able to participate in the international world of art and to leave their mark on 20th century art history. Jonas Mekas and Aleksandra Kasuba belong to the same generation of Lithuanian emigrants. Forced to leave their homeland early in their lives and not yet having had time in Lithuania to fully acquire and indentify with the national artistic canon, they created unique works in the West– creations born of artistic curiosity, a spirit of protest against the world’s imperfection, and the need to find a way of living in it. It is the purpose of this paper to explore both how war and the postwar condition influenced the lives of these young and gifted creators as well as what factors might have been responsible for the high quality of their artistic achievements. These factors are perhaps not so much the external conditions they faced as those internal, psychosocial constraints for an artist’s success that lie in his or her nature and individual qualities. [...]

Babylon's Fall: Figuring Diaspora in and through Ruins

Babylon's Fall: Figuring Diaspora in and through Ruins

Different Evolutionary History for Basque Diaspora Populations in USA and Argentina Unveiled by Mitochondrial DNA Analysis

The Basque Diaspora in Western USA and Argentina represents two populations which have maintained strong Basque cultural and social roots in a completely different geographic context. Hence, they provide an exceptional opportunity to study the maternal genetic legacy from the ancestral Basque population and assess the degree of genetic introgression from the host populations in two of the largest Basque communities outside the Basque Country. For this purpose, we analyzed the complete mitochondrial DNA control region of Basque descendants living in Western USA (n = 175) and in Argentina (n = 194). The Diaspora populations studied here displayed a genetic diversity in their European maternal input which was similar to that of the Basque source populations, indicating that not important founder effects would have occurred. Actually, the genetic legacy of the Basque population still prevailed in their present-day maternal pools, by means of a haplogroup distribution similar to the source population characterized by the presence of autochthonous Basque lineages, such as U5b1f1a and J1c5c1. However, introgression of non-Basque lineages, mostly Native American, has been observed in the Diaspora populations, particularly in Argentina, where the quick assimilation of the newcomers would have favored a wider admixture with host populations. In contrast, a longer isolation of the Diaspora groups in USA, because of language and cultural differences, would have limited the introgression of local lineages. This study reveals important differences in the maternal evolutionary histories of these Basque Diaspora populations, which have to be taken into consideration in forensic and medical genetic studies.

Applying the Situational Theory of Publics to the first external voting process for Costa Ricans abroad: Lessons for international public relations and public diplomacy / Aplicación de la Teoría Situacional de los Públicos al primer proceso de voto en el

Using information gathered from 40 interviews with Costa Ricans who live abroad (some who decided to vote in the newly granted external voting right and others who did not vote in the Costa Rican National Elections of 2014), the variables that impacted the voting intention and/or behavior of these Costa Rican diaspora members were categorized using the independent variables presented by the Situational Theory of Publics: problem recognition, constraint recognition (internal and external constraints), and level of involvement. This theory was used to better understand what is moving these potential external voters to vote or not, in order to suggest what kinds of efforts should the Costa Rican government undertake to increase the number of external voters. The implications for public diplomacy and international public relations are explored

Anchoring to Identity Through Exploring Another Land: The Iranian Diaspora in New Zealand

Diasporas' travel back to their original home country has often been regarded as one of the main strategies diasporas employ to maintain their cultural ties with home, as well as to (re)connect with their identity. Questions remain, however, as to how these cultural and emotional needs are met by diaspora populations who, for many reasons, either temporarily or permanently, are not able to travel back to their original homeland. Based on a qualitative study of a multiday domestic trip undertaken by a group of Iranian diaspora living in Dunedin, New Zealand, this article illustrates how an Iranian community in New Zealand (re)connects with their identity and culture through domestic tourism within their country of settlement. The study shows how this group utilizes their sense of being together through the cultural milieu within a trip that allows for a process of becoming in a new place. This article therefore offers alternative ways to understand identity maintenance for those in diaspora and, in so doing, challenges current dominant understandings of “diaspora tourism,” which tend to limit ideas of identity within diaspora to certain forms of travel back to countries of origin.

Frequency-Dependent Social Transmission and the Interethnic Transfer of Female Genital Modification in the African Diaspora and Indigenous Populations of Colombia.

We present a quantitative account based on ethnographic and documentary research of the prevalence of female genital modification (FGMo) in the African diaspora and indigenous populations of Colombia. We use these data to test hypotheses concerning the cultural evolutionary drivers of costly trait persistence, attenuation, and intergroup transmission. The uptake of FGMo by indigenous populations in Colombia is consistent with frequency-dependent hypotheses for the social transmission of the FGMo trait from the African diaspora population in the period following the era of slavery in Colombia. The prevalence and severity of practices related to FGMo decline with level of sociocultural integration into mainstream Colombian culture. Our results provide empirical support for the cultural evolutionary models proposed by Ross et al. (2015) to describe the transmission dynamics of FGMo and other costly traits. Analysis of costly trait dynamics contributes knowledge useful to applied anthropology and may be of interest in policy design and human rights monitoring in Colombia and elsewhere.

Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora by Brigid Cohen (review)

Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora by Brigid Cohen (review)

Memory and exile: The transatlantic and diasporic dimensions of the myth of Ashanti Princess Abla Pokou

Transmis par la tradition orale à travers les contes, le mythe de la reine Pokou a traversé les âges pour être perçu de nos jours par certains critiques, sociologues et anthropologues comme le mythe fondateur de la nation ivoirienne. Selon le mythe originel, la confédération Ashanti créée en Afrique de l’ouest vers 1690 fut âprement déchirée par une guerre de succession après la mort d’Osei Tutu en 1718. Cette guerre intestine prit une ampleur significative au point que la princesse Abla Pokou dut fuir le royaume avec ses partisans. Mais, pour pouvoir échapper à leurs ennemis qui les poursuivaient, Pokou fut obligée de sacrifier son fils unique afin de rendre possible la traversée du fleuve Comoé. Le but de cet article est de montrer que ce mythe d’origine, longtemps confiné aux oeuvres littéraires des écrivains ivoiriens, a récemment pris une dimension littéraire transatlantique et diasporique grâce aux écrivains migrants et multiculturels tels que l’Ivoirienne Véronique Tadjo et le Britannique d’origine jamaïcaine Dean Atta.

“Creating a Home away from Home”: Chinese Undergraduate Student Enclaves in US Higher Education

This paper draws on the theory of ethnic enclaves to study Chinese international student communities and their role in constructing Chinese undergraduate student experiences on US campuses. Enclave theory has primarily been used by sociologists to study immigrant and diaspora populations, but it can also provide an important analytical tool for scholars examining the internationalisation of student populations in higher-education settings. Student interviews and participant observation at a representative research-intensive, doctoral-granting institution in the American Midwest indicate that institutional and media characterisations of Chinese international student communities as closed and segregated are far too simplistic. Chinese student enclaves provide their members with crucial information, support, and social spaces that help them adapt to – and in turn change – their host institutions. Chinese students are active participants in and creators of campus cultures that are often invisible to university administrators, faculty, and peers.

Civilizing Humans with Shame: How Early Confucians Altered Inherited Evolutionary Norms through Cultural Programming to Increase Social Harmony

To say Early Confucians advocated the possession of a sense of shame as a means to moral virtue underestimates the tact and forethought they used successfully to mold natural dispositions to experience shame into a system of self, familial, and social governance. Shame represents an adaptive system of emotion, cognition, perception, and behavior in social primates for measurement of social rank. Early Confucians understood the utility of the shame system for promotion of cooperation, and they build and deploy cultural modules – e.g., rituals, titles, punishments – with this in mind. These policies result in subtle alterations to components of the evolved shame system that are detectable in data form contemporary cross-cultural psychology that show that populations in the Confucian diaspora have a unique shame profile compared to Western and non-Western populations. The status of Confucian diaspora populations as outliers in the context of shame is partially explained by appeal to the cultural transmission and historical endurance of relevant Early Confucian cultural modules.

Book Review: Transnational Diaspora Politics: Cross-Border Political Activities of Zimbabweans in the United Kingdom

Review of the monograph: Jenny Kuhlmann, Transnational Diaspora Politics: Cross-Border Political Activities of Zimbabweans in the United Kingdom , Leipzig: Leipziger Universitatsverlag, 2013, ISBN 9783865837417, 412 pages

Network Dynamics of Descending Diaspora Entrepreneurship: Multiple Case Studies with Japanese Entrepreneurs in Emerging Economies

Entrepreneurial activities of the Diaspora attracted increased research attention in the recent years, as the phenomenon of migration is rapidly growing. The Diaspora refers to the migrants and their descendants who maintain a strong relationship with their country of origin (Safran, 1991). The previous research has, however, predominantly focused on diaspora entrepreneurs from developing or emerging economies and those who originate from developed countries are almost invisible, even though they are empirically observable (cf. Elo, 2013; Horiuchi, 2010). In fact, their entrepreneurial activities have mostly been neglected by previous research in diaspora as well as international entrepreneurship. This study coins a new concept 'Descending diaspora entrepreneurs' for the entrepreneurs from developed countries who migrate to less developed ones and explores their entrepreneurial activities through the network perspective. The literature review on entrepreneurial networks as well as diaspora networks identifies three potentially significant benefits of networks on entrepreneurial activities: (i) opportunity recognition, (ii) access to resources and (iii) motivation sustainment. Explorative multiple case studies with Japanese diaspora entrepreneurs in emerging economies (Philippine, Guatemala and Argentina) was conducted and the empirical findings were descriptively analyzed in line with the identified network benefits. Finally, the model of network dynamics for Descending Diaspora Entrepreneurs is developed based on the findings.

A atualidade do pensamento de Guerreiro Ramos: branquidade e nação

O presente ensaio tem como objetivo mostrar que a reflexão sobre relações raciais no Brasil do sociólogo baiano Guerreiro Ramos, da década de 1950, continha elementos do que mais tarde iria se consolidar como Teoria da Branquidade, cujo ponto fulcral é examinar a constituição do branco em um sistema de relações raciais, e não o “problema do negro”. Em seguida, demonstro como a questão da branquidade, em Guerreiro, está intimamente ligada à sua concepção normativa de nação, para, em seguida, examinar pontos de tensão entre sua concepção e as teorias da negritude, as quais ele bebeu e lhe serviram de inspiração, tanto quanto teorias mais recentes, como as do Atlântico Negro e da Diáspora Africana. Concluo defendendo que as questões apontadas por Guerreiro, como a crítica da branquidade ligada a um projeto emancipador de nação, continuam atuais no mundo de hoje, tanto para o Brasil quanto para o mundo no qual ele se insere.