As a historical and religious term "diaspora" has existed for many years, but it only became an academic and analytical concept in the 1980s and ’90s. Within its various usages, two broad directions stand out: diaspora as a dispersion of people from an original homeland, and diaspora as a claim of identity that expresses a form of belonging and also keeps alive a sense of difference. Between Dispersion and Belonging critically assesses the meaning and practice of diaspora first by engaging with the theoretical life histories of the concept, and then by examining a range of historical case studies. Essays in this volume draw from diaspora formations in the pre-modern Indian Ocean region, read diaspora against the concept of indigeneity in the Americas, reassess the claim for a Swedish diaspora, interrogate the notion of an "invisible" English diaspora in the Atlantic world, calibrate the meaning of the Irish diaspora in North America, and consider the case for a global Indian indentured-labour diaspora. Through these studies the contributors demonstrate that an inherent appeal to globality is central to modern formulations of diaspora. They are not global in the sense that diasporas span the entire globe, rather they are global precisely because they are not bound by arbitrary geopolitical units. In examining the ways in which academic and larger society discuss diaspora, Between Dispersion and Belonging presents a critique of modern historiography and positions that critique in the shape of global history. Contributors include William Safran (University of Colorado Boulder), James T. Carson (Queen's University), Eivind H. Seland (University of Bergen), Don MacRaild (University of Ulster), and Rankin Sherling (Marion Military Institute: the Military College of Alabama).

What remains and becomes Armenian in a historically informed moment of increased mobility? Taking an anthropological approach with ethnographic data collected from Turkey and Armenia over the course of almost 10 years, this book focuses on themes of migration, human movement, community-making and the conditions that facilitate mobility and place-making. Looking at case studies ranging from bus and taxi drivers travelling between Armenia and Turkey to undocumented migrants deported from Turkey and now living in Armenian cities and Armenian residents of Istanbul, the author provides a vivid description of contemporary non-Muslim life in Turkey through the lives of Armenian Turkish citizens and undocumented migrants from Armenia, as well as Greek, Jewish and Kurdish communities. The author provides both a critical account of how historical and more contemporary forms of violence and structural discrimination have targeted Armenians in the country, and also focuses on the re-articulations and the appropriation of a sense of belonging by these and other minority communities.

World Jewry today is concentrated in the US and Israel, and while distinctive Judaic approaches and practices have evolved in each society, parallels also exist. This volume offers studies of substantive and creative aspects of Jewish belonging. While research in Israel on Judaism has stressed orthodox or “extreme” versions of religiosity, linked to institutional life and politics, moderate and less systematized expressions of Jewish belonging are overlooked. This volume explores the fluid and dynamic nature of identity building among Jews and the many issues that cut across different Jewish groupings. An important contribution to scholarship on contemporary Jewry, it reveals the often unrecognized dynamism in new forms of Jewish identification and affiliation in Israel and in the Diaspora.

This study reviews developments in the ethnic and national identity of the descendants of migrants, taking ethnic Chinese as a case study. Our core question is why, in spite of debates worldwide about identity, exclusion and rights, do minority communities continue to suffer discrimination and attacks? This question is asked in view of the growing incidence in recent years of ‘racial’ conflicts between majority and minority communities and among minorities, in both developed and developing countries. The study examines national identity from the perspective of migrants’ descendants, whose national identity may be more rooted than is often thought. Concepts such as ‘new ethnicities’, ‘cultural fluidity’, and ‘new’ and ‘multiple’ identities feature in this examination. These concepts highlight identity changes across generations and the need to challenge and reinterpret the meaning of ‘nation’ and to review problems with policy initiatives designed to promote nation-building in multi-ethnic societies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

This book brings together recent Spanish fictions and films that point to individualism as the root problem driving diverse circumstances of social, economic, and psychological suffering in the present and recent past. The works privilege sensation, movement, and emotion—rather than identity—as the core elements of existential experience. However, the works also problematize notions of intersubjectivity, confronting ideals of affective immersion and cultural nomadism with the concrete contexts that shape particular lives and social formations. This confrontation underlies a series of ‘crossroads’, or productive engagements, that guide the book’s five main chapters: locally rooted identity and global cultural circuits; historical contexts and universal modes of being; personal authenticity and consumer culture; migration and cultural identity; Spain's historical underdevelopment and impending future crises. All of these issues make affective connection and attachment the greatest existential challenge facing individuals and collectives in the contemporary world, both in Spain and elsewhere.

The mobilization of people, populations, and places—and the social interrelations of space and time, memory and longing, and the global and local—are uniquely analyzed in this fascinating study. Instead of viewing social and cultural relations through the lenses of rigid institutions, fixed territories, or rooted communities, Ilcan focuses on mobile sites to explore the cultural politics of settlement. This book examines the social relations of longing and belonging to be found in nation building, ethnographic practices, dwelling, and diasporas. Ilcan propels us into various dimensions of movement, as well as social relations in the fields of dispersion, transition, and displacement. Drawing on insights from cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology, she inquires into contemporary and critical issues on the movement of peoples. Transitional communities represent the tensions and risks confronting those compelled to leave home, or those for whom a sense of longing superseded any feeling of belonging. This book provides fresh insight into the placement, and displacement, of particular social groups, including guest workers, migrants, and immigrants. Ilcan covers the varieties of diasporic relations and the settlements they form, as well as the manifold ways in which they affect traditional practices of settlement. She considers the cultural, economic, and political implications of globalization, evoking the struggle in our places of habitation, and the strategies deployed to subvert our habits of settlement.

This book explores how questions about home and belonging have been framed in the discourses on race, migration, and social relationships. It does this with the aim of envisioning alternative modes of living and reimagining our political communities in ways that question the legacy of colonization and constructed identities which detract from our sense of obligation to each other and the planet. The book questions problematic categories of difference to transform human relations beyond the materialism of our global political economy. Questions addressed in the volume include: In what ways are combative colonial identities of difference manufactured within our national and global spaces of encounter? How can we expel the racialized and tribalized political identities that seek to purify and deny the complexities and sacredness of being human? How do we embrace the notion that everyone we encounter is a mirror reflecting our fears of suffering and our desires for happiness? The book is set in the context of re-emerging ultra-nationalists and anti-migrant politicians on the national and international stage, advancing various strands of extreme-right and protectionist ideology couched as redemptive-welfarist strategies. The adverse impacts of these strategies seem to be reifying a possessive idea of citizenship and identity, engendering a national fantasy that portrays communities as homogenous entities inhabiting enclosed borders. This is essentially a compendium of conversations across the intersection of the racial, national, ethnic, spiritual, and sexual boundaries in which we live.

Questions of space, place and identity have become increasingly prominent throughout the arts and humanities in recent times. This study begins by investigating the reasons for this growth in interest and analyses the underlying assumptions on which interdisciplinary discussions about space are often based. After tracing back the history of contact between Geography and Literary Studies from both disciplinary perspectives, it goes on to discuss recent academic work in the field and seeks to forge a new conceptual framework through which contemporary discussions of space and literature can operate. The book then moves on to a thorough application of the interdisciplinary model that it has established. Having argued that the experience of contemporary space has rendered questions of home and belonging particularly pressing, it undertakes detailed analysis of how these phenomena are articulated in a selection of recent French life writing texts. The close, text-led readings reveal that whilst not often highlighted for their relevance to the analysis of space, these works do in fact narrate the impact of some of the most significant cultural experiences of the twentieth century, including the Holocaust and the AIDS crisis, upon geo-cultural senses of identity. Home is shown to be a deeply problematic, yet strongly desired, element of the contemporary world. The book concludes by addressing the underlying thesis that contemporary life writing might provide just the ‘postmodern maps’ that could help not only literary scholars, but also geographers, better understand the world today. Key names and concepts: Serge Doubrovsky - Hervé Guibert - Fredric Jameson - Philippe Lejeune - Régine Robin; Autofiction - Cultural Geography - Interdisciplinarity - Place and Identity - Postmodernism - Space - Postmodern Space - Literary Studies - Twentieth-Century Life Writing.

This second edition of Israel, Diaspora, and the Routes of National Belonging builds upon Habib's groundbreaking research and reflects on the changes to scholarship since the book's publication in 2004.

A passionate history of Judaism; a world unfolding across many continents and five centuries by one of our greatest and internationally bestselling historians. Belonging is a magnificent cultural history abundantly alive with energy, character and colour. From the Jews’ expulsion from Spain in 1492 it tells the stories not just of rabbis and philosophers but of a poetess in the ghetto of Venice; a boxer in Georgian England; a general in Ming China; an opera composer in nineteenth-century Germany. The story unfolds in Kerala and Mantua, the starlit hills of Galilee, the rivers of Colombia, the kitchens of Istanbul, the taverns of Ukraine and the mining camps of California. It sails in caravels, rides the stage coaches and the railways; trudges the dawn streets of London, hobbles along with the remnant of Napoleon’s ruined army. The Jewish story is a history that is about, and for, all of us. And in our own time of anxious arrivals and enforced departures, the Jews’ search for a home is more startlingly resonant than ever. ‘A magnificent achievement...’ Jonathan Freedland, Guardian ‘An extraordinary cultural journey, filled with astonishingly colourful and outrageous characters ... Schama delivers a superb and thrilling ride, both inspirational and tragic’ Simon Sebag Montefiore, Mail on Sunday