Diasporas

Foreword by Roger Waldinger

FOREWORD Diaspora—as both concept and social practice—is in vogue. One doesn’t have to look far for evidence of interest in this idea. We can begin in the academic world, starting with the interdisciplinary journalcalledDiaspora(inpublicationsince1991)andcontinuingon tothelibrarian’sfavoritetool,theWorldCatalog,whereasearchfor books with “diaspora” in the title, published since 2005, yields more than 450 hits. The kaleidoscope of groups mentioned—Indian, Armenian, African, Scottish, Dutch, Muslim, Catalan, Cuban, Greek, Mexican, Central American, and southern—exemplifies the phenomenon that Rogers Brubaker has labeled the “diaspora diaspora”—the wide, indeed unending, dispersion of this concept beyond the classic case of the Jews. For academic purposes, therefore, to say “migration” is now to say “diaspora,” a trend that makes it necessary for any student to understand how the concept is used and why, even though its ubiquity may deprive it of analytic utility. But even more surprising than the shift from an occult to an everyday term is the concept’s xi xii / Foreword practicalimportance.Today,diasporaisnotjustacategoryofanalysis ; it is also a category of practice. That is to say, it is a strategy or a projectundertakenbyabroadrangeofactorsinterestedinwhatthe peoplereadytothinkofthemselvesasmembersof a diaspora might be willing do. Diasporas are of interest to states seeking to organize emigrants (and their descendants) into a collectivity that can be controlledandfromwhichresourcescanbeextracted ,andtoemigrants (and their descendants) eager to use the advantages acquired from residence outside the home state in order gain leverage within the home state. Diasporas also are of interest to international organizations , such as the World Bank, that want to manage the resources generatedbydispersedpopulations,therebyreducingtheirpredilection for fomenting long-distance violence at home while increasing theircapacitytogeneratefeedbackthatmighthelpthestay-at-home populationsimprovetheirlives.WhetherIndia,Italy,Israel,Ireland, or what have you, there is no “emigration state” without a so-called diaspora that it is trying to mobilize; likewise, there are few emigrations in which self-conscious diaspora talk or social action is not to be found. But with so much activity within and beyond the academic world, the problem for the student (beginning, advanced, and professional ) is how to understand diaspora—as both an intellectual phenomenon and a social process. For that task, there is no better book than this short volume, a translation of a book originally written for the venerable French series Que sais-je?(What Do I Know?) and a model of intellectual economy. In a sense, the book reflects diaspora’s travels, as it is a view from the other side of the Atlantic, reporting on intellectual developments unlikely to be known to the great majority of Anglophone Foreword / xiii readers and doing so in a distinctive French idiom. It succeeds in giving the reader the best of both worlds, which is why it is so valuable a contribution. Dufoix’s is a cosmopolitan rendering: he is fully up to date with trends, not only on both sides of the English channel, but also on both sides of the Atlantic. His discussion is consistently right on target , fully relevant to the concerns of U.S. scholars and framed in a way that the latter will find novel. Small in size, but large in scope, Diasporas tells a coherent story, capturing the key elements needed for any effort to understand the phenomenon. The book extends well beyond the continental, or at best, hemispheric, concerns that preoccupy students and scholars in the United States: its global range befits the concept and phenomenon to which it is addressed. Likewise,Dufoixsteersclearofthepresentismthatafflictsthesocial scholars of today’s world of mass migration: an advocate of a dynamic analysis, Dufoix moves effortlessly across time, demonstrating both the continuities in diasporic experiences and the features that distinguish today’s world. Grounded in deep knowledge and extending across languages, disciplines, and times, this volume will be equally appreciated by scholars and students. Dufoix’sinterestinthecareeroftheconceptofdiasporabespeaks a sensibility more common in the French, than in the American, academic world. The American reader would do well to attend to his uncommon perspective: Dufoix extends the concept from a limited number of cases to an almost unlimited set, and from academic discourse to real-world politics, which makes the question of its meaning all the more important. As it turns out, the concept occupies an honorable place in the history of American sociological thought, notwithstanding contemporary scholars who insist that a so-called transnational perspective is new and illuminates phenomenathattheirpredecessorscouldnotsee .Indeed,Dufoix’sdiscussion shows that the “diaspora diaspora” began early, as thinkers concerned with the experience of the...