Global Diaspora Research Articles

Re-encoding Glamour from Ghana to England: Illustrated Magazines, Gender Norms and Black Identities through the Lens of James Barnor (1950s–1980s)

How have gender and racial norms conveyed by illustrated magazines—whose circulation exploded in Africa in the 1960s—affected photographers’ local practices? And how, in turn, have they themselves generated this gendered visual order? This article aims to shed light on this two-fold question by proposing a diachronic analysis of the influence of models of femininity transmitted by the illustrated press on the visual imagination of a Ghanaian photographer—as seen in his photographs taken between the 1950s and the 1980s. It explores the links between the publications of the pan-African magazine Drum (the most widely circulated magazine in English-speaking Africa at the time) and its translation into the art of portraiture as practiced by James Barnor (1929-), a photographer with a transnational career, between Ghana and England. Because his professional and personal career path tracked the evolution of these gendered norms, James Barnor became both the repository and the instigator of an idealized vision of “the” African woman.By means of an intersectional focus, the issues of gender norms and of racial biases are examined in parallel to better understand how the photographer appropriated throughout his career the shifting codes of a “female glamour” reinvented for Africa during the post-independence period. While numerous studies have examined the modalities of this codification, in the present paper they are addressed through an in-depth exploration of the photographer's archives, now held in Paris, and combined with an analysis of early issues of Drum. The aim is to juxtapose images intended for publication, i.e. public, with private images in order to consider how the standards of fashion photography infused Barnor’s practices which lie at the crossroad of different social worlds. The corpus composed of portraits of young women is also informed by numerous interviews with the photographer and some of his models, which provide behind-the-scenes insights relative to the published images by exploring their political and social contexts.We first look at Drum’s editorial strategy from its launch in South Africa to its expansion throughout West Africa. While the magazine initially borrowed from white Western references such as Life, it gradually became, to some extent, a showcase for black pride on the continent and in the global diaspora. Then, we study Barnor’s early studio practice as already acutely aware of the codes of femininity enacted by the magazine: this is shown through his “recycling” of the poses and the composition of the images. During the ten years he spent in England, from 1959 to 1969, his collaboration with Drum gave rise to a gallery of portraits of anonymous young women, who became ordinary icons for an ideal African femininity in the context of the diaspora. Finally, in the 1970s, Barnor’s return to Ghana saw the reuse of these codes inherited from the globalized fashion industry combined with the emerging iconography produced by African-American models as a means to create social documentary. In this way, he contributed to an aesthetic of blackness that was constructed within a transnational framework.

From Divided to Diasporic: Re-envisioning Italian American Texts through Transformative Translingual Practices

From Divided to Diasporic: Re-envisioning Italian American Texts through Transformative Translingual Practices

Conference Notes on the Tibetan Women Writing Symposium: A Celebration of Tibetan Women’s Literature

A conference report on the Tibetan Women Writing Symposium held at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, in April 2022. The symposium focused on exploring and celebrating the recent emergence of Tibetan female writers in their Tibetan and Himalayan homelands and in the broader global diaspora.

The Nepali diaspora’s role in national development

United Nations data shows that the number of global diaspora had reached 281 million in 2020, and it continues to grow. Diasporas have contributed significantly to the development of their native lands through remittance, technology and knowledge transfer, philanthropy, and diplomacy. Many countries have designed policies to engage the diaspora more deeply by providing concessional citizenship and visa regimes, and attractive investment opportunities. Yet, there is room for improvement in policies and programs to enhance these prospects. Since the 2010s, the size and expanse of Nepali diaspora has grown dramatically, the number of permanent expatriates in the more developed parts of the world reaching about 800,000 in 2022. In addition, at any time, there are 2–3 million temporary migrants from Nepal working in foreign countries outside of India. With the enhanced level of education and experience, and their growing economic prowess, the Nepali diaspora is in a strong position to become a significant partner in Nepal’s development efforts. The diaspora’s potential contribution to Nepal’s development remains vastly underutilized for mainly two policy-related reasons. The Nepali government’s supporting policies, regulations, and programs to effectively engage the diaspora are inadequate. The diaspora groups too have not been able to fully assess and chart out their capacities, and create proper institutional, and policy mechanisms to mobilize their resources. This paper reviews some examples of diaspora in development, and the current situation of the Nepali diaspora, and provide recommendations for improving the strategies, policies, and programs both for the diaspora, and the Nepali government, and for similar developing countries.

Theorizing the Afropolitan Past and Present

AbstractThe term Afropolitan—evoking the image of mobility, cultural production, and consumerism in Africa and the African diaspora—has enjoyed some salience in popular culture. However, much of the scholarly debate has focused on the elitism associated with the concept. Linked initially to short reflective pieces by Taiye Selasi in 2005 and Achille Mbembe in 2007, Afropolitanism has rarely been analyzed in historical contexts. The contributors engage the concept of the Afropolitan across a broad time and space that spans the fourteenth to twenty-first centuries and locates the Afropolitan in Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia. This introduction analyzes their written and photographic essays along three themes: visual culture, narrativity, and intersectionality, recognizing that their work also pushes against and expands on these frameworks. By engaging with the Afropolitan as a historical phenomenon, the issue highlights new methods and theories for analyzing global diasporas—past, present, and future.

The Huguenot Global Diaspora

The Huguenot Global Diaspora Rebecca K. McCoy (bio) Owen Stanwood, The Global Refuge: Huguenots in an Age of Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. xii + 300 pp. Notes and index. $40.95. Owen Stanwood's examination of the Huguenot refuge follows the historiographical trend of placing events, once viewed mainly as European, in a global context. Many studies have examined the impact of the Huguenots in specific national contexts in Europe: Switzerland, the Netherlands, the German states, and England. Others have focused on the Huguenot diaspora in specific regions of overseas empires, including the American colonies and South Africa.1 Edited volumes have addressed the issue of integration by including nation- or colony-specific articles but offer little direct comparison.2 Another approach that does move beyond national borders has been analyses of Huguenot networks, such as financial, mercantile, or familial networks.3 Stanwood integrates these approaches into an account that emphasizes the connections among the Huguenots "on the edges of empire" as well as within Europe. Stanwood sets his research in the context of an age of overseas expansion and mercantilism, one in which religious tensions informed international rivalries. His argument compliments recent revisionist examinations of the Refuge by challenging the image created by the Huguenots themselves, one that portrays them as emigrating primarily for religious reasons.4 He argues that empire builders, particularly the Dutch and English, were, indeed, horrified by the persecution of fellow Protestants and saw the Huguenots as victims. But he also demonstrates that they viewed the French refugees as industrious workers who could people and develop their overseas empires, particularly by producing wine and silk. The Huguenots promoted themselves as God's chosen as shown by their resistance to intolerance, but were far from responding only to religious imperatives, because they needed powerful patrons to survive. Driven by pragmatism, they also styled themselves as people with special skills in order to attract patrons. Stanwood argues against the idea, promoted in later memory, that the Huguenots were simply martyrs for religious liberty. Instead, he suggests they had had multiple motives as they parlayed their international mercantile and family ties across the globe to survive in an age of empire. [End Page 257] Stanwood organizes his book thematically, escaping the national framework that has characterized much of the historiography on the Refuge. His thematic arrangement also proceeds roughly chronologically, capturing continuities and discontinuities over the period from 1685 to the revolutionary period. Chapter 1, "The Beginning of the End of the World," chronicles the immediate impact of the Revocation and the ways in which the Huguenots shaped their image from the outset. Stanwood uses the pastor Pierre Jurieu, to illustrate the intersection of the creation of an engaging story of the French Protestants, an appeal to Protestants to aid the refugees, and the mobilization of an international Protestant network, one that linked merchants, pastors, publications, and families.5 Jurieu, based in Rotterdam, immediately emphasized the religious reasons for leaving France. He emphasized their martyrdom in leaving all behind for the faith, characterizing those who stayed and abjured as less true to God. Those who left had a special status and were among the elect. This is the image that persisted until recent revisionist accounts began to show the complexity of the Huguenot experience in the Refuge. Jurieu, however, had the immediate practical goal of inspiring Protestants around Europe to aid the Huguenots by providing safe havens and monetary assistance. Jurieu and other apologists were successful in raising awareness of the dangers presented by Catholicism. The political situation contributed; the 1680s were also the period of the Glorious Revolution in England and the victory of William III, who helped make England a leader in the Protestant world. Stanwood traces the movements of the Huguenots as they used existing networks to migrate from cities on the French Atlantic coast to Dutch and English ports, or overland to Geneva and from there to other Swiss cantons and onto the Netherlands, Brandenburg, and England. In so doing, they expanded the networks that were crucial to their survival and to the idea of a Protestant International. Jurieu also provides the ideological link between religious refuge and colonization. The goal was...

From Guanxi to Social Capital and Back Again: A Qualitative Study of Australian Chinese Migrants

ABSTRACT The global diaspora of Chinese migrants maintains vital economic, social and cosmopolitan connections between China and many Western countries. These migrants face the challenge of navigating and building social capital within Western host countries. Previous studies show that Chinese networks make use of pre-existing strong guanxi ties based on shared cultural expectations to support members. However, the thinness of guanxi networks in foreign countries raises doubts about their capacity to support the migration experience. This study uses qualitative interview data to show that both Chinese migrants and non-migrant Australians use strong ties to acquire resources, such as favours. However, Chinese migrants also make use of weak guanxi ties to seek favours in ways Australian non-migrants typically do not. This indicates a more important role for weaker – or what we call peripheral – ties in Chinese migrant guanxi networks than previous studies suggest, but also points to a lack of alternative resources amongst Chinese migrants struggling to build non-guanxi social capital ties with non-migrant populations.

Depopulation of Ukraine

Blessed by its geology but a prisoner of its geography, the inhabitants of Ukraine have suffered repeated destructive depopulation. The population loss in the Ukraine 1914–21 was over five million. The second modern depopulation culminated in 1932 during Stalin’s manmade famine, with estimated total population losses of 4.6 million people. A third depopulation followed as over 7 million Ukrainians lost their lives in the Second World War. Between the censuses of 1959 and 1970 population of Ukraine recovered briskly. Total fertility remained at about replacement level until the end of the Soviet Union, then declined. A relatively strong recovery of fertility was reversed in 2012, presumably as a consequence of the Russian invasion in Eastern Ukraine, and total fertility dropped to 1.2. The population in early 2022 was around 37 million. The Ukrainian global diaspora is one of the most widely-distributed populations in the world, with 6.1 million Ukrainians living abroad already in 2020. After Russia’s invasion in February 2022 thousands have died and millions have been forced to flee. The article ends by considering how Ukraine’s demographic situation might evolve in the future. This issue of the Yearbook was finalised after Russia attacked Ukraine the 24th of February, 2022. In this invited reflection, professor David Coleman provides an overview of Ukraine’s demographic history and previous challenges. (Editor’s note)

Pagulase suhtlusvõrgustiku kujunemisest lähikondsetega. Ilmar Laabani juhtum / On the Formation of a Refugee’s Contact Network with Kith and Kin: The Case of Ilmar Laaban

Pagulase suhtlusvõrgustiku kujunemisest lähikondsetega. Ilmar Laabani juhtum / On the Formation of a Refugee’s Contact Network with Kith and Kin: The Case of Ilmar Laaban

The Study of Australian Jazz and the Issue of Methodological Nationalism

The Study of Australian Jazz and the Issue of Methodological Nationalism

When sarees speak: Saree pacts and social media narratives

Through an ethnographic study of online saree pacts and social media groups, this article charts the emergence of digital saree storytelling as women from India and the global South Asian diaspora post stories about their personal and professional lives while also talking about their sarees. The article examines how saree stories are told and consumed in these online spaces, and the role new media plays in encouraging individual and collective self-expression through fashion. In doing so, it highlights how saree pacts allow for alternative models of fashion opinion leadership and style to emerge in ways that are uplifting and empowering for women who are otherwise underrepresented in print and popular fashion media. It argues that such sites are critical spaces shifting the narrative around women in the Global South from victimhood to pleasure. Additionally, saree pacts represent a new form of digital community formation centred around the appreciation of traditional fashion, which can alter our perception of the intersection of traditional fashion and feminism while also decolonising fashion's existing Eurocentric frameworks.

Health Implications of Racialized State Violence Against South Asians in the USA.

South Asians, one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the USA today, trace their roots to countries in the Indian subcontinent (e.g., Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka) and its global diaspora. With a wide range of cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity, as well as immigration experiences and inequality, South Asians have experienced racialized violence and discrimination since first arriving in the USA in the 1700s. Following September 11, 2001, South Asians and other groups racialized as "Brown," including Muslim, Sikh, Middle Eastern, and Arab Americans, have experienced a marked increase in state violence, including racist laws, policies, and immigration enforcement. Despite abundant evidence of the adverse effects of violence on mental and physical health, there is limited research examining the impact of this racialized state violence on the health of South Asians in the USA. We summarize and synthesize existing peer-reviewed and gray literature on the prevalence and types of violence experienced by South Asians in the USA and enumerate their potential detrimental health impacts. We highlight the paucity of public health data and propose a conceptual framework describing how racialized violence and hate have significant implications for health among South Asians in the USA. Ultimately, these findings illuminate the need for change at the highest levels of governance to mitigate and resist hate violence, including through political participation and inclusion and equitable allocation of social and economic resources, to improve the health of South Asians in the USA.

Writing the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature by Joseph Ford

Reviewed by: Writing the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature by Joseph Ford Stephen Wilford Writing the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature. By Joseph Ford. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2021. viii+168 pp. $95; £73 (ebk $45; £35). ISBN 978–1–4985–8186–8 (ebk 978–1–4985–8187–5). The civil conflict that took place in Algeria throughout the 1990s, referred to as the décennie noire in French, has received relatively little scholarly attention, particularly in the Anglophone world. For Algerians living in both North Africa and throughout a global diaspora, however, the decade radically reshaped postcolonial Algeria, with its consequences still felt within politics, culture, and society more broadly. Joseph Ford’s Writing the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature therefore makes an important contribution to an underexplored area of contemporary Maghrebi culture, not least in his critical reading of the role that the literature under review has played in constructing and challenging schematically binary understandings of the conflict. The book is composed of five main chapters (as well as an Introduction and a Conclusion), which focus upon seven contemporary Algerian authors who write in French: Habib Ayyoub, Salim Bachi, Maïssa Bey, Mustapha Benfodil, Kamel Daoud, Assia Djebar, and Rachid Mimouni. These authors will be of varying levels of familiarity to non-Algerian audiences, with Djebar and Daoud the most widely read outside of North Africa. At the heart of the book is Ford’s critical reading of each author’s relationship to, and depiction of, a highly contested period of Algerian history. He notes the ways in which scholarship and journalistic reporting of the conflict have too often relied upon reductive and essentializing myths of Algerian violence, and have promoted a facile and Orientalizing binary that depicts the décennie noire as a ‘clash of civilizations’, fought between a Westernized government and zealous Islamist insurgents (Ford quotes the term used by Samuel P. Huntington in ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, 72.3 (1993), 22–49). Ford does an excellent job of destabilizing this binary and unpicks the interweaving of fact and fiction in testimonial literature. He critiques ideas of representation, arguing that these authors ‘offer very different understandings of what it means to be a “spokesperson”’ (p. 140). The role of journalists, academics, and publishers in perpetuating myths about this period of history is also closely examined. A real strength of the book is Ford’s analysis of the differences between intention and actuality through the works of these writers, and he underscores the ways in which the likes of Mimouni and Bachi inadvertently reinforce the ‘clash of cultures’ trope. Nevertheless, he refrains from depicting the authors in absolute terms, showing the ways in which their writing about the ‘black decade’ develops and functions on multiple levels. One detail that is perhaps underexplored in the book is the relationship between French and the other languages spoken in Algeria, including Arabic, Darija (a vernacular form of Arabic, used in daily life throughout Algeria and Morocco), and the various Amazigh (or ‘Berber’) languages. In the Introduction, Ford notes the widespread influence of Francophone Algerian literature, writing that ‘throughout [End Page 129] the 1990s and since, French-language [Algerian] writing has by far received most media attention in France and internationally’ (p. 1). While this is undoubtedly true, there remains a lack of detailed discussion about the ways in which language reflects ideas of wealth, education, and class within contemporary Algeria. This is particularly apparent in Chapter 3, which focuses upon Ayyoub, who ‘styles himself as defending the downtrodden masses against the worst excesses of the powerful’ (p. 85), while writing in a language that retains strong connotations of power and privilege in Algeria. This is undoubtedly a thorough and well-argued book, which offers an important source for those interested in contemporary Algerian literature, and Algerian culture more broadly. The author provides a rigorous and critical reading of a body of Francophone Algerian literature too often ignored by the Anglophone world, and highlights the complexities and contradictions that lie in depicting and understanding Algeria’s décennie noire. Stephen Wilford University of Cambridge Copyright...

Global Diaspora in the Modern Era: Carving Space Beyond the Borders, Reshaping Practices and Belonging

Global Diaspora in the Modern Era: Carving Space Beyond the Borders, Reshaping Practices and Belonging

Walking the Doors—to Be to Become

In the context of global diaspora and its mobilization via educationally enabled tertiary qualifications, the dynamics of a complex and hyphenated diasporic self, emerge out of an interplay where professional probabilities and eclectic cultural possibilities entangle to spin a complicated maze of doors. When diasporics with varying professional competencies and cultural backgrounds endeavor to become embedded in new settings, their everyday engagement with new contexts calls for both cultural and professional re-initiation. This dual re-initiation may occasion resettlement struggles for these in-transition individuals because some previously ascribed symbols of personal and professional selves enter an involute play. The translation of these struggles could form liminal spaces of professional and cultural in-betweenness. As a diasporic re-settler, I (Kanwarjeet) walk through many doors each day. In this autoethnography, I utilize the metaphors of “storytelling,” “walking,” and “doors” to consider the intricacies of the journey a diasporic self makes, peregrinating through professional and cultural hyphens, concomitantly. I invite my readers to co-tread, walking the story that I tell.

Declarations of Independence: Sovereignty, Identity, and the Constitution of the “Other”

ABSTRACTWith the rise of Indigenous awareness, the formation of groups to argue for native title, and the global diaspora coming together in their pursuit of landed recognition, claiming sovereignty takes many forms: declaration, contestation, governance, land reclamation, and enterprise formation. These forms, examined as a collective whole, may be seen as the first pragmatic steps in self-determination for, often Indigenous, minorities. More importantly, they may be seen as a stage in the evolution of expressing spiritual and cultural ontology of the “other.” Not only is this expression, the seeking of an acknowledgement of a changing cast of actors in the global regime for self-determination, spiritual, and ontological recognition, but also underlies the need for recognizing a plurality of thought that one system of jurisprudence may not be able to defend.

Participation in genetic research among Latinx populations by Latin America birth-residency concordance: a global study.

Latinx populations are underrepresented in DNA-based research, and risk not benefiting from research if underrepresentation continues. Latinx populations are heterogenous; reflect complex social, migration, and colonial histories; and form strong global diasporas. We conducted a global study using a survey tool (Amazon's Mechanical Turk portal) to ascertain willingness to participate in genetic research by Latin America birth-residency concordance. Participants in the global study identified as Latinx (n=250) were classified as the following: (1) born/live outside of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), (2) born within/live outside LAC, and (3) born/live within LAC. Latinx were similarly likely to indicated they would participate DNA-based research as their non-Latinx counterparts (52.8% vs. 56.2%, respectively). Latinx born and living in LAC were significantly more willing to participate in DNA-based research than Latinx born and living outside of LAC (OR: 2.5; 95% CI: 1.3, 4.9, p<.01). Latinx indicating they would participate in genetic research were more likely to trust researchers (<.05), believe genetic research could lead to better understanding of disease (<.05), and that genetic research could lead to new treatments (p<.05) when compared with Latinx not interested in participating in genetic research. In summary, significant variation exists in genetic research interest among Latinx based on where they were born and live, suggesting that this context itself independently influences decisions about participation. Cultivating and investing in a research ecosystem that addresses, values, and respects Latinx priorities, circumstances, and researchers would likely increase research participation and, even more importantly, potentially impact the inequitable health disparities disproportionately represented in Latinx communities.

The Diaspora Network of ASEAN-5: Centrality Analysis and Implication on Diaspora Engagement

The highly skilled diasporas (HSDs) are increasingly recognised as the critical resources of the economic development of their home countries. Many countries have implemented diaspora engagement initiatives to outreach and connect with their HSDs. However, there is lack of understanding of the mechanism on how to tap the economic opportunities from the destinations of the HSDs. Using a novel approach based on the centrality metrics of social network analysis (SNA), this study quantitatively assessed the capabilities of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand (ASEAN-5) to engage their HSDs through the global diaspora network (GDN). It was found that Thailand and Philippines are relatively more capable to channel overseas economic opportunities from heterogeneous destinations due to stronger connectivity in the GDN. The difference in connectivity suggests that ASEAN-5 should complement each other by establishing a collaborative platform to pool together the expertise and transnational networks of their HSDs.

Revisiting race and ethnicity in Peru: intersectional and decolonizing perspectives

ABSTRACT We introduce this special issue of LACES by first offering a critical overview of recent work that engages questions of race and ethnicity in Peru. Against the backdrop of contemporary developments at the national level, we argue for a decolonial, intersectional approach that recognizes and theorizes differences that are complex and cross-cutting, embracing not only ethnoracial but also gender-, class-, and sexuality-based differences. Contributors to this issue offer diverse perspectives on commingled vectors of difference and inequality in a variety of settings, from Andean communities to lowland, urbanizing contexts, and from coastal, cosmopolitan Lima to Peru’s global diaspora. The pieces that follow our introduction include research articles, review essays, and interviews with performance artists and social activists, affording readers the opportunity to rethink with us the shifting landscape of race and ethnicity in Peru and beyond.

Second-generation British Somali women: The translocal nexus of London and global diaspora

Drawing upon ethnographic investigation, this article analyses the digital media practices of second-generation British Somali women who live in London. It addresses the dynamic relationships between digital media and diasporic identity formation by focusing on how second-generation women articulate their diasporic urban and transnational identities via youth-oriented online cultural spaces. It demonstrates that they use the internet and social media platforms to position themselves as urban dwellers in London and members of the global Somali diaspora at the same time. In this context, the author proposes that these young women’s digital practices create a translocal nexus that intertwines urban and transnational social fields in line with their gendered and generation-specific experiences and aspirations. Through this translocal nexus, these young women produce multilayered identities and negotiate their multiple belongings with a youth-oriented perspective and style in a digitally interconnected world.