Members Of Diaspora Research Articles

Voices of Africa: Podcastas a New Form of Oral History

At the beginning of the 21st century, the digital revolution has become global. Digitalization has overcome the boundaries of the field of information technology and began to provoke the metamorphosis of sociocultural reality. Gradually, society itself and, as a consequence, social sciences are changing. African studies, despite the fact that digital transformations in the region have been slow, is no exception. New plots and sources started to appear; new practices and methods began to develop and apply. This article is devoted to the evolution of the oral tradition of the Africans and representatives of the global African diaspora in terms of the “digital turn”. It emphasizes the importance of oral history as one of the main directions in the study of the history and culture of Africa, introduces and analyzes the terms of “orature” and “cyberture”. The author focuses on the transformation of the form and content of African narratives in the post-colonial era. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that it is the first time an African podcast is considered as an oral historical digital source. The article provides a brief overview of podcasts created by people from Sub-Saharan and Southern Africa in the 2010s, describes the prerequisites for creating these projects, their thematic field, and analyzes their features. Particular emphasis is placed on issues of representations and interpretations of the cultural and historical experience of Africans and members of the African diaspora. The main dilemmas of placing podcasts into the context of oral history are articulated at the end of the article. The author also concludes that African podcasts are in line with the metamodern discourse.

Subtle Asian Traits and COVID-19

This paper studies how members of Subtle Asian Traits (SAT), a massive Facebook group of over 1.8 million members, congregate and commiserate online over their growth pains and experiences as (diasporic) East Asians. Founded in September 2018 by a group of Asian-Australian teenagers ‘as a joke’, SAT members share ‘Asian positive’ stories, resources, and memes through an average of 1,200 new posts daily. Alongside global milestone events, such as the rise of K-pop in the Global North and Korean film Parasite’s unprecedented four awards at the Academy Awards, SAT has also evolved into a space to celebrate Asian excellence, tease out identity politics, and discuss issues of injustice. However, upon the onset of COVID-19, the posts on SAT have swiftly pivoted to the everyday lived experiences of (diaspora) East Asians around the world. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences as East Asian diaspora members on SAT, and share our observations of meaning-making, identity-making, and community-making as East Asians who are collectively coping with our cultural identities and with COVID-19 aggression. Specifically, we study how Asianness is negotiated, circulated, and commodified on SAT, and offer the concept of ‘platformed Asianness’ to understand how being Asian online is co-constructed by an international Asian diaspora, group admins, and the technological affordances of Facebook.

Indian Covid Crisis

India is going through its second surge of COVID-19 pandemic caught off-guard, after it declared rather publicly that India had vanquished the enemy in September 2020. In the last 2 weeks of April 2021, India has beaten several world records for new cases and deaths by official estimates. The real numbers are likely to much higher as the testing and reporting infrastructure remains in shambles. The triple whammy of mass gatherings, lack of administrative and infrastructure preparedness and low vaccination is probably to blame.
 The humanitarian catastrophe that is played out so visually in heart-wrenching stories across the interconnected digital world is of scrambling for oxygen, scarcity of hospital beds, lack of medication and the incessant burying or cremating of the dead. The desperation in the eyes of the people as they queue outside of locked hospital gates, the oxygen cylinders supplying minutes of life to patients in cars or auto-rickshaws as they wait is heartbreaking. For members of the Indian diaspora, these pictures hurt deep and one is bound to feel helpless.
 Yet through all this, there is hope. The Gurudwara’s with their oxygen langars, the elderly vacating beds for the younger and often sicker patients, the journalists who are using every social media access to request essential oxygen and drugs, the volunteers who ferry, bury and burn the abandoned dead are testimony of the good that exists in humanity. The world is rising to the call of India including efforts by the Indian diaspora. There are lessons to be learnt but first, let us help and heal.

“Either we defend our polishness or there will be no Polonia”. Practices of negotiating national identity among the Polish diaspora members in Cleveland

The article presents the findings of a pilot study on the ways of negotiating national identity within the Polish community (Polonia) in the American city of Cleveland. The study showed the complex ways of maintaining and building cultural boundaries (and thus constructing collective identity) by the Polish diaspora in the situation of unequal power relations with the host society, but also within Polonia itself. These practices are conducted not only in opposition to the American society but also to members of their ethnic group, as a result of which there are simultaneous processes of strengthening and weakening diasporic ties, including and excluding individual members and groups. These processes are being reinforced by the existence of multifaceted divisions within this community (generational, social class-based, spatial, and political), which shape its condition and the patterns of its members’ participation.

Push/Pull Factors, Networks and Student Migration from Côte d’Ivoire to France and Switzerland

Since 2011, the Ivorian government has invested heavily in higher education to meet its labour market’s growing demand. In this article, we analyse the drivers of Ivorian student mobility from Côte d’Ivoire to France and Switzerland, highlighting the central role of migrant networks. We focus on the decision-making process and find that migration networks play an important role at every step: from initial aspirations to concrete plans and efforts to study abroad. Using 38 in depth interviews and two focus groups with Ivorian students who aspire to study in France and Switzerland, members of the education board, migration officers, and members of the Ivorian diaspora, we reveal that the functioning of the Ivorian higher education system is a factor of uncertainty for many students who consider that salvation can only come from migration. In addition, social representations linked to foreign diplomas inspire Ivorian students to choose international mobility. Migrant networks further encourage Ivorian students to move abroad because stories from successful migrants sharing their mobility experience are coupled with the provision of key resources to support mobility projects.

SOUTH CAUCASIAN ETHNIC COMMUNITIES IN RUSSIA: SPECIFICS OF FORMATION AND ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTION TO THEIR HOMELANDS

This study has been suggested by the huge importance of labor migration for the social and economic development of the South Caucasian post-Soviet space. Confronted with an unprecedented outflow of their citizens and acutely aware of the problems associated with migration of able-bodied population to other countries, Russia among them, these countries have arrived at a conclusion that their migration policies need reforms. The article analyzes the trends of labor migration from the South Caucasian countries to Russia and other equally popular destinations. The migration trends up to and including Russia’s regions with the maximum numbers of labor migrants from the Southern Caucasus and the structure of their employment by industry are also analyzed. The paper contains statistics on the amounts of remittances sent by labor migrants from Russia to their homelands and assesses their impact on the economies of corresponding states. The cultural and economic contacts between the diasporas and the countries of their origin suggested a comparative analysis of their emergence and development. We have identified the typical industries preferred by representatives of each of the South Caucasian states in Russia, and the documents required of migrants to be employed in Russia. Conclusions related to the specifics of influence and the role of the diasporas in the structure of their employment are contained in the final part of our article along with the identified patterns and trends of these processes. Today, the situation on the market is unbalanced when it comes to job availability and the positions of members of these diasporas. The situation will remain the same as long as diasporas preserve their influence and the migration flows, their proportions. We have identified the most attractive regions in terms of job availability, the spread of migrants from the Southern Caucasus across the regions of the Russian Federation and the rivalry between Azeris, Armenians, and Georgians for jobs in various employment spheres.

Transformed by contested digital spaces? Social media and Ukrainian diasporic ‘selves’ in the wake of the conflict with Russia

AbstractThe ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has had a profound effect not only on the warring countries but also on diasporas that are related to them. Bringing together theories of diasporic identities and new media, this paper explores how Ukrainian diasporic ‘selves’ are affected by the ongoing conflict with the focus on the role of social media in the formation of their national and ethnic identities. With a series of in‐depth interviews conducted in Europe and North America, this study identifies the functions of social media in diasporic self‐understanding, representation of national culture and online commemoration and mourning. The findings reveal that social media provide diasporic subjects with a space for the negotiation and performance of ethnic and national identities. Within this space, however, they experience ongoing contestation that makes ‘new’ diaspora members more prone to relate to the radicalised discourses on national history, explanations of the conflict and Ukrainian monolingualism.

Transnational land and property disputes: the British-Bangladeshi experience

ABSTRACT This article examines the issue of ongoing transnational tensions and disputes around land and property ownership that the members of the British-Bangladeshi diaspora are encountering in rural Sylhet, their origin region in their home country. While the existing literature on transnational communities documents migrants’ land-purchasing and house-building practices in their country of origin, too often in a celebratory way, the material disputes and tensions that arise from these investments, and their effect on transnational personal, familial and social relationships, have yet to be exposed. For British Bangladeshis, these disputes are rife and in some cases are being articulated through intimidation and even violence. My research suggests that these evolving phenomena of land and property disputes threaten to disrupt the transnational relationships that were established and maintained by one generation after another.

Not Here, Not Now: Remaking Singapore's Chinese Diaspora in The Inlet

Through an examination of characters' relationships and encounters in Claire Tham's novel The Inlet (2013), I argue that state narratives of racial identity and national progress may dislocate Singaporean Chinese subjects from a sense of homeliness by engendering nostalgia for an uncertainly located cultural hinterland. My analysis, which addresses the heterogeneity of class and linguistic identities among these subjects, corrects the common misidentification of the Chinese in Singapore as de facto members of a universal Chinese diaspora. Instead, my reading grounds characters in the homeland of Singapore but explores their attitudes toward social and spatial elements that produce a feeling of cultural alienation and challenge their sense of national belonging. In this way, I assert that the pressure to constantly reinvent themselves can unmoor Singaporean Chinese from their psychic and physical landscape, especially amid recent immigration from China as well as historical and ongoing urban redevelopment. This process of reinvention leads to a nostalgic yet anxious subjectivity that characters—and critics—may confuse with belonging to a global Chinese diaspora.

Global Sounding Options for Libyan Independence. 1937

Many figures of the Libyan national liberation movement, after the defeat of the Italian fascist colonial troops were in exile where they tried to fight a political struggle. The article deals with the activities of the “League for the protection of Tripoli and Cyrenaica” with its headquarters in Damascus, headed by the Bashir Saadawi. It was created in 1928, united many members of the Libyan diasporas in the Mashriq, and in 1937 proved itself by another anti-fascist appeal, which was recorded by Comintern staffers in Moscow. This struggle is placed in the broad context of global ideological and political confrontation and the work of the Comintern in the Arab East. The article presents the international reaction to the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936-1937 of the countries of the fascist “axis” united against the “communist threat” in the context of the redistribution of the North African colonies. The article analyzes the possibility of contacts between the League and the Comintern in the wave of opposition to Italian colonialism. The fascist Alliance was gaining strength and preparing for war. Italy was no exception: if was going to fight for its possessions in North Africa, where its interests were disputed by Britain, which also tried to use the energy of Libyan patriots in exile, especially in Egypt. Thus, the League could well be seen by the Executive Committee of the Communist International as a tactical partner in opposing to both sides, namely the Italian fascists and the British imperialists.

Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean by Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof

Reviewed by: Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean by Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof Alexa Rodríguez (bio) Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof. 2019. Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 369 pp. ISBN: 978-0-6911-8353-4. Histories of the late-nineteenth century struggle for Cuban independence typically highlight the actions and voices of white Cubans such as José Martí and Tomás Estrada Palma. Jesse E. Hoffnung-Garskof’s Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean, 1850–1902 details the story of the nineteenth-century Cuban revolution beyond these traditional narratives. It follows Rafael Serra, Sotero Figueroa, Gerónimo and Juan Bonilla, Gertrudis Heredia, and other Afro-Puerto Rican and Afro-Cuban members of La Liga, an “educational and recreational society” that became a hub for the Cuban nationalist movement in the early 1890s, as they emerged as integral figures in the battle for Cuban independence. This trans-national microhistory spans across Cuba, Puerto Rico, Key West, and New York City, and uses a narrative-style to document the ways these Afro-Caribbean artisans organized themselves, navigated, and negotiated racialized spaces within the United States and Greater Caribbean. By employing a “‘migrants’ eye-view of the world,” Hoffnung-Garskof finds that notions of racial inclusion were intensely debated and molded by Puerto Rican and Cuban multiracial communities, publications, and institutions (12). Therefore, Martí’s memorialized declarations for racial inclusion and universal male suffrage were shaped by the ideas, efforts, and experiences of these Afro-Caribbean migrants. Yet, one of the unintended consequences of assisting Martí’s rise to prominence was that by doing so, these Afro-Caribbean migrants diminished their own contributions to the independence movement. As a result, they have [End Page 176] largely been forgotten in histories of the period. In Racial Migrations, Hoffnung-Garskof artfully weaves the story of this group of Puerto Rican and Cuban migrants from their birth, through their travels throughout the Caribbean and US, their convergence at La Liga in New York City, and concludes with the emergence of Tomás Estrada Palma as the new leader of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. Chapter 1, “Beginnings,” provides a detailed account of their personal histories, or “self-making,” as Hoffnung-Garskof terms it (12). It describes the family histories of Rafael Serra, Gertrudis Heredia, Sotero Figueroa, Manuela Aguayo, Juan Gualberto, and José Martí, several of the main historical actors in the book. He traces the ancestry of their parents and situates their families within the social hierarchies of the time and their countries of origin. Using baptismal records, Hoffnung-Garskof draws attention to how racial distinction, determinations of legitimate and illegitimate births, as well as access to wealth and social status, all impacted how these actors were able to move across spaces. Information about the early years of schooling and work of the historical actors also provided a foundation for why these individuals intentionally sought to create an educational space like La Liga for men of the “class of color” and demonstrates how doing so was a political act. Chapter 2, “The Public Square,” contextualizes the development of La Liga within the history of previous efforts in both Puerto Rico and Cuba that combined politics of reform and revolution. Examining how the struggle for civil rights, suffrage, and revolution were all heavily divided by race, the chapter makes evident how race shaped how individuals like Serra and Figueroa were able to enter the public sphere and become prominent public figures. This chapter also introduces two new characters, the brothers Gerónimo and Juan Bonilla, both of Cuban descent and living in Key West, and who eventually worked with Serra in New York City in La Liga. Hoffnung-Garskof examines the spaces the actors navigated as members of the Cuban diaspora in Florida and recreates their racially and ethnically based communities and networks. Chapter 3, “Community,” explores the racial and ethnic networks created by other Afro-Caribbean migrants when they first arrived in New York City and that helped them navigate the racially segregated US. Interested in the understanding the experiences of those...

German-Balkan Entangled Histories in the Twentieth Century ed. by Mirna Zakić and Christopher A. Molnar

Reviewed by: German-Balkan Entangled Histories in the Twentieth Century ed. by Mirna Zakić and Christopher A. Molnar M. Blake Morley German-Balkan Entangled Histories in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Mirna Zakić and Christopher A. Molnar. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021. Pp vii + 381. Cloth $35.00. ISBN 978-0822966753. Twentieth-century Balkan history is often presented through the legacies of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. By the end of World War I, both empires ceased to exist. The essays in Mirna Zakić and Christopher A. Molnar's edited volume take up the question of Germany's involvement in southeastern Europe when this imperial void presented itself. This work brings to light an important chapter in Germany's destructive drive for power during the first half of the twentieth century while highlighting the ways that ethnic Germans from the Balkans and West Germany came to terms with this tragic history in the postwar period. The book is organized into an introductory essay that familiarizes the reader with the history of German-Balkan relations, followed by two sections of essays linked by the themes of war, empire, migration, and memory. The first section, titled "War and Empire in the Balkans," focuses on German-Balkan entanglements during the first half of the twentieth century and how actors [End Page 614] within the region negotiated Germany's political, economic, and military ambitions. David Hamlin opens this section with a challenge to Fritz Fischer's thesis that Germany's war aims during World War I reflected longstanding prewar ambitions for domination. Rather, Hamlin argues that German-Romanian relations during the war, which culminated in the signing of the Treaty of Bucharest in 1918, were dictated more by Germany's need to fortify its wartime domestic economy. Bernd Robionek's study of the economic cooperative Avis, an ethnic German organization in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, shows how attempts to fortify a local self-sufficient ethnic community aligned with Germany ultimately forced the cooperative into a double bind caught between the shifting economic demands and racial policies of the Nazi state and the complex realities of an ethnically diverse Yugoslavia. Christian Promitzer explores Germany's entanglements in the Balkans through the development of Nazi racial science (Rassenkunde), highlighting the often-overlooked links between SS racial policies and earlier anthropological studies of Serbian prisoners of war during World War I and German ethnographic research throughout southeastern Europe in the interwar period. Mirna Zakić's essay focuses on the "misremembering" of Prince Eugene of Savoy among ethnic Germans in the Serbian Banat as they sought to position themselves as equals in the Third Reich and how the Prince's image was put to work to support Nazi claims in the Balkans during the 1930s and 1940s. Mark Biondich's chapter on the Holocaust in southeastern Europe shows how the scale of genocidal violence in Croatia was not the result of Nazi policies alone but more so determined by preexisting anti-Jewish and anti-Serb domestic policies of the Ustaša, the Independent State of Croatia's (NDH) fascist regime. Closing out the first section of essays, Kateřina Králová and Jiří Kocián's analysis of Holocaust survivor testimonies demonstrates the inherent difficulties of overcoming traumatic memory and how this process is challenged by different attitudes toward German collective guilt and individual responsibility, attitudes ultimately determined by whether the survivor came from an occupied state or a collaborationist state in southeastern Europe. The second section, "Aftershocks and Memories of War," turns to the question of memory as the collected essays explore German-Balkan entanglements in the postwar period. Jannis Panagiotidis adds a global dimension to these entanglements by showing how Gottschee Germans utilized preexisting transcontinental business and familial networks in North America to negotiate the complexities of postwar migration and German identity. Gregor Kranjc's chapter continues the discussion on Gottscheer German postwar experiences by focusing on the ways individual traumatic memories of loss and suffering from different events before, during, and after World War II allowed members of the Gottscheer diaspora in the United States to develop a collective memory of victimization that occluded their own Nazi past. Similarly, Gaëlle Fisher's essay...

ЕТНОКУЛЬТУРНА ДІЯЛЬНІСТЬ РОСІЙСЬКОЇ ДІАСПОРИ ЯК «ПАРАСОЛЯ» ДЛЯ ПРОСУВАННЯ ПОЛІТИЧНИХ ІНТЕРЕСІВ РФ ТА ВНУТРІШНЯ ЗАГРОЗА В УКРАЇНІ

The ethnocultural activity of the Russian diaspora in Ukraine is analyzed in this article. The analysis shows that the political component is decisive in the activities of most pro-Russian NGOs and some members of the Russian diaspora in Ukraine. It was found that the ethnocultural activity of the numerous Russian diaspora organizations created in Ukraine by the Russian authorities, declared in normative legal documents, actually serves as a kind of "umbrella" to cover their political work among the general Ukrainian community. At the same time, their "ethnoculturalism" is filled with the ideology of Russian chauvinism, great power and anti-Ukrainianism. Given the crisis, which covered all spheres of Russian public life and lost its total influence on Ukraine, and, consequently, the possibility of restoring the neo-empire, the ruling elite of the Kremlin has high hopes for the so-called soft power - the large Russian diaspora in Ukraine. The activities of "professional Russians" serve as an official cover not only for their own funding, but also for many other Russian-language cultural and educational institutions in all regions of Ukraine. One of the "significant results" of the so-called ethnocultural activities of Russian diaspora organizations in Ukraine have been and continue to be their active support for the occupation of Crimea in 2014 and military aggression in ORDLO, processing the mass consciousness of the population, especially south and east of Ukraine on the alleged deployment of civil conflict in the country on Eastern Ukraine. The idea of Crimea as "originally Russian territory" is also being actively planted. These Pyrrhic victories are a clear indication of Russia's imperial encroachments on the territory of neighboring states. However, they are doomed to inevitable defeat in pursuing a decisive and sensible policy on the part of the Ukrainian state and the country's civil society, as well as the politicized ethnocultural activities of the Russian diaspora in Ukraine.

Francophobia as an expression of Pan-Africanism in Francophone Africa: An exploration of the Cameroonian political and media discourse

There has over the decades been a recrudescence of francophobia in many francophone African countries. This has attracted the attention of scholars across the world and has fuelled a discourse which has myopically constructed francophone Africans’ francophobic sentiments either as a purely xenophobic movement or a nationalist feeling. Meanwhile, for many members of the African diasporas and intelligentsia, francophobia is essentially an expression of their pan-African convictions. In effect, for many francophone pan-African political activists, the act of fighting and mitigating neocolonialism in their countries is inextricably tantamount to exhibiting francophobic sentiments. Such an act is also tantamount to deploying various forms of animosity against France. This is so perhaps because France is arguably perceived as the most dominant neocolonial force in their countries. In this paper, this popular trend is illustrated with close respect to the Cameroonian experience. Using secondary sources and critical observations, the paper specifically looks at how various manifestations of French neocolonialism have given birth to waves of anti-French sentiments among the intelligentsia and in the media; and how this anti-French feeling is mostly expressed in the name of Pan-Africanism. The paper thus examines how Pan-Africanism has, to both the Cameroonian intelligentsia and the media, meant adopting a virulent anti-French discourse or rhetoric. In line with this central objective, the paper answers three principal research questions: what body of evidence proves that there is French neocolonialism in Cameroon? How has French neocolonialism engendered a virulent pan-African discourse that is basically anti-French? And how has this pan-African francophobic discourse been observed or manifested among the Cameroonian intelligentsia and in the country’s private media?

Mobilizing diaspora during crisis: Ukrainian diaspora in Canada and the intergenerational sweet spot

ABSTRACT Canada’s Ukrainian diaspora occupy an enviable, if not rare, ‘intergenerational sweet spot’. This sweet spot endows them with a high degree of positionality within Canada, enabling both long and short-term support for Ukraine since the crisis began in 2014. In examining Ukrainian diaspora positionality in the Canadian context, we find there are varied strategies that help offset hardship at the community and household level while addressing the long-term fragility of the country. While new migrants and temporary workers are actively remitting back home, older generation diaspora members compensate for smaller remittance volumes by lobbying and by influencing the state apparatus through various forms of political and social activism. This has the effect of shifting the costs borne by individuals to the host state and is consistent with our insights on principal-agent relations between states and diaspora. Although Ukraine’s macroeconomic performance will remain fragile for the foreseeable future, we identify four complementary forms of diaspora engagement in times of crisis, namely the mobilization of aid, political activism and volunteering, remittances and other financial flows, and delegating responsibilities to host-country institutions.

EXPLORING NETWORKED IDENTITY AND TRANSNATIONAL MOBILIZATION IN UKRAINE’S EUROMAIDAN PROTEST

Social media are a prominent space for diasporic mobilization and activism, opening new avenues for studying transnational communities living outside of their countries of origin. This study uses a hybrid methodological approach to consider how Ukrainians living in the United States engaged with homeland politics during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protest and how their use of social media intervened in their transnational protest politics. This study contributes to the broader scholarship on studying transnational mediated protest participation by examining a case of diasporic mobilization of the Ukrainian community in the United States. Triangulating semantic mapping data from online diasporic communities on Facebook with in-depth interviews, we show how diaspora members engaged in the protest despite distance and how their activity and tactical decisions were mediated by social networks. We specifically examine how diasporic personal networks and networked technologies enmesh into a set of hybrid networked practices, circumscribing how Ukrainian Americans interpret political engagement and how they strategically use the affordances of social media for protest participation.

Diaspora: Dislocation, Development and Drawback

This study focuses on painful feelings and bitter experiences of diasporas while they are living in the host land. It stresses on their efforts to maintain connections with people in their homeland. Besides, the research talks about diasporas' attempt to assimilate, acculturate and integrate in the host countries in their dislocated and un-homely state. The study also explores the changing attitude of intellectuals, writers, journalists and politicians of host countries towards diasporas, that they have recognized diasporas' positive culture and economic contribution to host societies. Gradually and cautiously host societies and their governments accept diaspora members' affiliations as legitimate and sought for their permanence. Moreover, in some host countries, and in liberal circles, membership of such entities has been regarded as exciting and advantageous but not as an obstacle. Yet, the migrants constantly face criticisms and detriments. They establish networks back in their country of origin and try to influence homeland's politics and sometimes support the violent activities. On top of that, the continued migration and increase in remittances encourage chain of migration and brain drain, and create instability in homeland economy.

Islamist Unofficial Legal Pluralism in Turkey: The Rise of Islamist Fatwas

Unlike other administrations, the AKP government has justified this ideological, Islamist turn with the fatwas of government-sponsored religious preachers. The Government has not only blurred the divide between religion and state, but it has also vilified and securitised, as a ‘traitor’ or a ‘heretic’, anyone who stands against any government policies or actions. As a well-funded ideology, Erdogan’s Islamist populism has found its way to different Muslim communities in the West, and Erdogan’s AKP has used any means possible – mosques in Europe and the US, sponsoring conferences and keynote speakers, trips for Muslim diaspora members to Turkey, among other methods – to influence Muslims living in the West, with some success. The last section of this chapter will look at the preliminary signs of the impact of the AKP’s Islamist turn on the grassroots at home and abroad, because these fatwas and propaganda do not only affect the Turks living in Turkey but also abroad and other non-Turkish Muslims that live in the West. In this chapter, we focus only on Turkey, the Turkish diaspora, and how the fatwas issued by the pro-government preachers have affected them, beyond the school, the mosque, and foreign policy.

Reaching out, inviting in: Pakistan’s approach to diaspora engagement

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the multi-dimensional approach through which the Pakistani state envisages, cultivates and practices state–diaspora relations. It examines the bureaucratic initiatives and official narratives to understand how the state extends its reach across its borders to bring the overseas population into its domain to fulfil the national agendas. The paper further argues that the state-diaspora relations in Pakistan are being developed through two main shifts: a) the way the state moulds its own identity in relation to the diaspora, and b) the way the state attempts to shape or create a diasporic identity for the overseas population. The paper adopts the analytical lens of why, who and how, to describe the motivations behind diaspora engagement, the discrepancies created between different diaspora groups and modes of engagement with these groups. From a neoliberal governmentality optic, these processes explain how the Pakistani state involves the diaspora members as partners in development, politics and governance and also treats them as subjects of governance and surveillance through identification and categorisation. It concludes that the Pakistani state’s enhanced interest in diaspora engagement is to articulate nationhood in a transnational setting to reconfigure state hegemony in a globalised context.

Putin's Olympics: The Sochi Games and the Evolution of Twenty-First Century Russia by Orttung Robert W. (review)

SEER, 98, 3, JULY 2020 592 could afford?) to have her text style-edited by a knowledgeable native speaker. To give just one example, Mikhail Shatrov’s influential 1986 play is called, in English, The Dictatorship of Conscience, not The Dictatorship of Consciousness (p. 184). Any chance of an improved second edition? The contents deserve it. University of Glasgow Martin Dewhirst Orttung, Robert W. and Zhemukhov, Sufian N. Putin’s Olympics: The Sochi Games and the Evolution of Twenty-First Century Russia. BASEES/ Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies, 109. Routledge, London and New York, 2017. xiv + 135 pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £115.00. In Putin’s Olympics, Robert Orttung and Sufian Zhemukhov analyse the bidding for, preparation for, and running of the Sochi Winter Games within the broader context of Russian domestic and foreign policy goals. In doing so, they argue that the Games ‘facilitated widespread corruption, the development of extensive security forces, and a crackdown on civil society’, which they consider ‘defining features of the Putin era’ (p. 1). The authors place their analysis of the Sochi Olympics within the growing body of literature on ‘mega events and mega-projects’ which they claim offers ‘a new conceptual path in the study of Russia politics’ (p. 2). Considered as part of Vladimir Putin’s overall preference for development through mega-projects, the Sochi Olympics, they assert, ‘promote[d] regime stability by providing a sense of national pride for the masses and a source of rent distribution for key elites whose support is crucial for the leadership to maintain the status quo’ (p. 32). The second and third chapters explore the contribution of the Sochi project to endemic corruption and repression of civil society in Russia. Cost overruns resulted in a price-tag of over 50 billion dollars which lined the pockets of Putin’s cronies and the scale of the project allowed powerful state and business authorities to use the games to ‘impose their developmental preferences on society with little oversight or accountability’ (p. 39). Citizens had their property seized without adequate compensation, public parks and forests were encroached upon without due environmental impact taken into account, and political opposition groups were largely silenced by anti-demonstration measures, anti-NGO laws, as well as laws banning ‘propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations’ to repress the LGBTQ community (p. 52). Chapter five considers how these measures influenced the international perception of the Sochi Games. Because of the Olympics’ global significance, members of the Circassian diaspora were able REVIEWS 593 to bring international attention to their historical and ongoing repression by Russian authorities and Russia’s anti-LGBTQ legislation spawned an international campaign to boycott the event. While a boycott and serious political demonstrations at the games were avoided, internal repression and external aggression marred Russia’s image internationally. The most significant contribution of the volume to understanding recent Russian politics lies in chapter four which analyses security at the games. According to the authors, the Sochi Olympics provided Putin’s regime with the military strength and coordination necessary to launch a successful annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine before the Olympic torch was extinguished. Seeking to draw an impenetrable cordon around Sochi to protect the region from terrorist attacks, Putin moved away from earlier soft-power efforts, resorting to a series of ‘anti-terrorism operations’ in the region, which caused the deaths of hundreds of insurgents, civilians, and Russian law enforcement officers. The operations prevented any terrorist attacks in Sochi during the games, despite the bombings in nearby Volgograd months before the Olympics. This militarization of Olympic security aided the authorities’ crackdown on dissent and provided an opportunity to showcase ‘the newest military technologies’ as ‘foreign orders for Russian weapons grew’ by $14 billion in the months after the games concluded (p. 74). The expansive security apparatus and centralized administration created for the games provided the perfect conditions for a successful military action as Olympstroi became Krymstroi and its head Dmitrii Kozak transferred his mega-project organizing skills to reintegrating Crimea into Russia. In their final assessment, Orttung and Zhemukhov conclude that the games mostly served to enrich Putin’s associates, increase regime stability, and provide...