Diasporas

Introduction

Introduction A simple word . . . “diaspora.” For a long time, it referred only to physically scattered religious groups (peoples, churches, or congregations ) living as minorities among other people and other faiths. Then, starting in the 1970s, this ancient word underwent an amazing inflation that peaked in the 1990s, by which time it was being appliedtomostoftheworld’speoples.TherewereBritish,Chechen, Somali, Tibetan, Caribbean, Algerian, Iranian, Latin American, Romanian, Russian, and Afghan diasporas. Some involved components of a national population. France had Corsican, Breton, Auvergnat, and Alsatian diasporas. The word was applied to professional groups, including scientists, intellectuals, and engineers, and even to French and Nigerian soccer players!1 An all-purpose word,“diaspora”isnowatermcurrentamongprint,radio,andtelevisionjournalists ;itisinthevocabularyofrepresentativesofnational and religious communities, as well as state authorities careful not to lose touch with the descendants of former emigrants; and it is part of the conceptual arsenal of scholars in migration topics. 1 2 / Introduction In this way, “diaspora” has become a term that refers to any phenomenon of dispersion from a place; the organization of an ethnic, national, or religious community in one or more countries; a population spread over more than one territory; the places of dispersion; any nonterritorial space where exchanges take place, and so on. For somepeople,thisflexibilityisasignofmigration’sdiversity.Forothers ,itisabetrayaloftheword’smeaning.Inthefirstcase,“diaspora” means nothing more than the idea of displacement and the maintenance of a connection with a real or imagined homeland. In the second, the only real question is, Does this population deserve the name “diaspora”? I have chosen not to choose between these two options—catchall or private club. Instead, I consider both extremes by showing that they belong to the history of the word. Because “diaspora” is just a word. Like all words, it serves only to denote part of reality, one that isn’t always the same each time it is used. It is never that which it denotes, to the point where the word alone is enough to describe what it expresses. There is no phenomenon called “diaspora” that is independent of each individual case and independent of the use of the word “diaspora” and its corresponding terms in different languages. The current use of this word, contradictory though it may be, raisesissuesaboutthevoluntaryorinvoluntarymigrationofpeople; the maintenance or the re-creation of identification with a country or a land of origin; and the existence of communities that claim their attachment to a place or, to the contrary, to their spatially free- floating existence. It is true that the history of certain peoples seems toargueinfavoroftheirsingularitycomparedtoothers.Butamore careful analysis shows that, unless one is satisfied with a simple statistical , atemporal, and unifying reality, “diaspora” often fails to present the workings of the thing it ought to best describe: the relationship to what I call a “referent-origin.” This is why I argue for the establishment of a broader, more complex analytical framework that takes into account the structuringofthecollectiveexperienceabroadbasedonthelinkmaintained with the referent-origin and the community stance this creates. Dispersion implies distance, so maintaining or creating connections becomes a major goal in reducing or at least dealing with that distance. Language causes the impossible to exist, and makes it believable. Words outline things, give them one or more definitions, and— depending on the authority of those who speak them—have the power to create meaningful objects. Today, “diaspora” builds and gives meaning to links between people by weaving guiding threads that stretch across tens of thousands of miles and shine like a familiar light in the labyrinth of others. Introduction / 3 ...