The Caribbean Diaspora: Some introductory remarks

The Caribbean remains an important point of reference in contemporary debates about diaspora, postcolonialism, and much else. In this introductory essay to this Special Issue we argue that the Caribbean is more than any other part of the contemporary world – both at its core and in its outward dimensions – a precursor of several themes in the energetic pursuit of modernity: capitalism/industrialism, de-tribalization/individualization, plural identities, transnationality, the disruption and transformation of cultural and political domains and boundaries. We situate key aspects of the changing meanings of diaspora in the Caribbean context and we explore the main themes that formed the core concerns of contemporary debates about this phenomenon as well as some issues that need further exploration in future research.     

Hindutva in the West: mapping the antinomies of diaspora nationalism

This introduction provides a historical background to Hindu nationalism and examines several theoretical and empirical themes that are important for its analysis both in India and the diaspora. It is argued that there has been a relative neglect within the research field of diaspora nationalist movements and the impact they can have on constituting antisecular and absolutist orientations to minorities and majorities both within the diaspora and in the “homeland”. The introduction examines the rise of the Hindutva movement in the 1920s and considers the debates about its relation to ethnic, nationalist, religious, racist and fascist ideologies. We consider how an examination of Hindu nationalism can modify many recent debates on “race” and ethnicity, multiculturalism and “diaspora”. Several themes relating to caste, gender and “Aryanism” are examined. The contents of this Special Issue are contextualized within these debates and a summary of the key themes of the contributions is provided.     

‘Diaspora’ diasporas' representations of their homelands: exploring the polymorphs

This essay attempts to make more pliable three overly rigid claims persistent in the diaspora literature: that diaspora members’ imaginations of the homeland are either beautifying/idealizing or unequivocally inimical; that their relations with the host country are inherently distant – they are in it but not of it; and that diasporism and (im)migrant transnationalism constitute two distinct phenomena. It also aims at genderizing the stubbornly genderless study of diasporas. The empirical analysis compares representations of the homeland among turn-of-the-twentieth-century and present-day lower-class Polish émigrés in the United States and the United Kingdom, first-wave (1959–61) Cuban refugees in Miami and 1956 Hungarian political refugees dispersed into different west European countries, and contemporary Mexican men and women migrants in the American Southwest. On the basis of these comparative assessments, the author identifies the major circumstances that shape diaspora members’ portrayals of the homeland.     

Jamaican Creole: In the process of becoming

Questions of attitudes and identity are foregrounded in this discussion of Jamaican Creole [JC] as a language of the diaspora. It is presented as a language that challenges the standardizing impulses of modernity, resisting homogeneity in a variable and multi-layered process of change. The article follows the evolutionary path of the language through Africa and the Caribbean to London and America and shows how its speakers see, use and connect through a vernacular that mirrors and embodies the social forces, experienced. The key sites are Jamaica, largely, and urban London. Through a review of the literature, documentary analysis, interviews and classroom observations this essay examines the ways in which Jamaican Creole could be said to exemplify the diasporic predicament and the ways in which it has managed to gain dominance in a) Caribbean society, b) the wider movement of the Caribbean diaspora.     

Making sense of ‘mixture’: states and the classification of ‘mixed’ people

Caribbean diaspora intellectuals have contributed significantly to African-American political struggles over the years, despite arguments by some African-American intellectuals about what they discern as West Indian negativism, extremism, and divisiveness in American political life. This essay examines the legacy of a representative sample of diasporic Caribbean intellectuals since the time of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and culminating in the 1970s, notably, Garvey, members of the African Blood Brotherhood [ABB], C.L.R. James, and Walter Rodney, to demonstrate the phenomenal ideological vision, organizational capability, and political activism they have brought into fostering solidarity with African Americans in the struggle for fundamental change. The focus here is on their respective contributions to the debate on the relationship between class and race in America and the black diaspora generally, which has helped to shape the form, and orient the direction of African-American and Caribbean diasporic struggles for the better part of the twentieth century.     

The transnational politics of the Ethiopian Muslim diaspora

Long distance nationalism is the dominant perspective in transnational studies. It depicts the diaspora primarily as ‘conflict-makers’ bent on advancing radical view points on homeland socio-political conflicts because of the unique decoupling of action from its consequences. Recent works have shifted the focus away from this negative image and have shown, through in-depth case studies, the constructive dimension of the transnational engagement of the diaspora. Two of these are the crucial role remittance plays in the development process in the country of origin and the peace building role of the diaspora in conflict and post conflict settings. The paper seeks to contribute to the diaspora-peace building literature through a case study of the Ethiopian Muslim diaspora in Europe and North America.     

Gender and ethnic identity among second-generation Indo-Caribbeans

This article discusses second-generation Indo-Caribbean (West Indian of Indian descent) teenagers’ ethnic identities, through a look at their taste preferences and self assertions of identity. Both Indo-Caribbean young men and women draw from multiple influences on their identities. In terms of tastes in clothing and movies, however, girls are more interested in things Indian, and in “Indian culture”. Boys, on the other hand, choose to distance themselves from an Indian identity. Three factors explain these gender differences in choices about ethnic identity: (1) different media images for South Asian men and women; (2) a school context lending different levels of peer symbolic status to perceived Indian boys and girls; and (3) a gendered process of migration by which women maintain stronger cultural roots in the new country. The findings in this article point to the need to pay attention to gender differences when considering ethnic incorporation.     

Mirrored boundaries: how ongoing homeland–hostland contexts shape Bangladeshi immigrant collective identity formation

Largely overlooked in the international migration literature, migration from the Muslim world can reveal how the combination of globalization and ongoing homeland tensions shapes immigrants’ collective identity formation in the hostland. Using the case of Bangladeshi Muslims in Los Angeles, this article ethnographically traces how ongoing and historic homeland, hostland, and global political–religious contexts shape immigrants’ everyday struggles over identity categories through two distinct but overlapping processes: (1) the immigrants’ exposure to a more expanded, diverse range of people in the hostland; (2) their import of homeland cleavages to the receiving society. It argues that through international migration, migrants both produce and experience globalization, consequently both reiterating and reconstructing their identity categories in the hostland. It also shows how the immigrants’ cross-border ties to not only their homeland and hostland but also to nation-states beyond shape their identity-work, thus revealing conceptual ambiguities about transnationalism and diaspora.     

Contested memories: the Shahid Minar and the struggle for diasporic space

Drawing on new empirical research on ‘the Bengal diaspora’, this paper explores the struggle over Bangladeshi identity in East London, as exemplified in the monument of the Shahid Minar and the related celebration of Ekushe, which marks the beginning of the Bangladesh national liberation struggle. Bringing together theories of diaspora consciousness and memorialization, the paper explores the ways in which rituals and memory work both as a form of continuity with the homeland and as a method of claims-staking for minority groups in multicultural spaces. Using original interviews with community and religious leaders, the paper explores the ways in which the establishment of the monument and the memorialization of the Liberation War represents the re-imagination of the Bangladeshi community in London and draws the lines for the contestation of this identity.     

The dynamics of culture lost and conserved: demic migration as a force in new diaspora communities

Migration is a major feature of past and especially today's globalized cultures, and understanding how migration shapes cultural groups is key to the empirical applications of cultural transmission theory. Developed here is a migration–assimilation model describing the population-level dynamics of diaspora culture. Using ethnographic data collected from 2009 to 2010 in the Kingdom of Tonga and a Tongan diaspora community, key parameters of the model were estimated and the fitted model simulated to describe diaspora cultural dynamics in the Tongan case. The relative contribution of recent migrants to the population-level expression of several cultural traits is highlighted in the simulation. Results show that the dependence on the Tongan homeland as a source of conservative culture through migration is variable and trait specific. For traits with higher assimilation rates, the contribution of recent Tongan migrants is substantial, while for other traits with lower assimilation rates, the influence of Tongan migrants is muted. Preliminary hypotheses to explain the trait-specific assimilation rates are discussed.     

Diaspora activism in a non-traditional country of destination: the case of Filipinos in the Netherlands

Diasporas have played important roles in democratization in their homelands. But how does diaspora mobilization occur when the country of settlement has a small and isolated ethnic community, the host and homeland governments have weak relations, and the conflict is invisible in the geographies of power? Using case study research, I analyse how solidarity groups in the Netherlands facilitated the emergence and growth of diaspora mobilization for democracy in the Philippines during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. My findings show that in cases where exiles and migrants lack pre-existing economic, political and social ties in the host society, solidarity groups can affect the political opportunity structure in the host country, permitting the promotion of certain claims and demands in the public sphere. Furthermore, diaspora mobilization can develop within the formal organizations or associational networks of solidarity groups.     

Phantom Wars and Cyberwars: Abyssinian Fundamentalism and Catastrophe in Eritrea

The 1998–2000 war between Ethiopia and Eritreapitted former allies against each other, endingnew opportunities for development anddemocracy. We examine discursive constructionof the war, including Western media coverageand propaganda from both governments, but focuson discourse of exiled Ethiopians committed topolitical struggles in their former homeland,using the concept of long-distance nationalism.To investigate one form of long-distancenationalism, resurgent Abyssinianfundamentalism, we turn to sites of itsdiscursive production, including the magazine,Ethiopian Review, and the Internet. Theorists of transnationalism have consideredthe Internet as a site for new forms ofcommunication and community and argue thatInternet discourse among diaspora professionalsand academics embodies a creolizeddiscourse produced by a distinctive type, thecybernaut. In the case of the Abyssiniancybernauts, however, we detect not a newcreolized discourse but a ghostly repetitionof old views.     

Bayesian phylogeography of the Arawak expansion in lowland South America

Phylogenetic inference based on language is a vital tool for tracing the dynamics of human population expansions. The timescale of agriculture-based expansions around the world provides an informative amount of linguistic change ideal for reconstructing phylogeographies. Here we investigate the expansion of Arawak, one of the most widely dispersed language families in the Americas, scattered from the Antilles to Argentina. It has been suggested that Northwest Amazonia is the Arawak homeland based on the large number of diverse languages in the region. We generate language trees by coding cognates of basic vocabulary words for 60 Arawak languages and dialects to estimate the phylogenetic relationships among Arawak societies, while simultaneously implementing a relaxed random walk model to infer phylogeographic history. Estimates of the Arawak homeland exclude Northwest Amazonia and are bi-modal, with one potential homeland on the Atlantic seaboard and another more likely origin in Western Amazonia. Bayesian phylogeography better supports a Western Amazonian origin, and consequent dispersal to the Caribbean and across the lowlands. Importantly, the Arawak expansion carried with it not only language but also a number of cultural traits that contrast Arawak societies with other lowland cultures.     

Diasporas and secessionist conflicts: the mobilization of the Armenian,Albanian and Chechen diasporas

Abstract

This article examines the impact of diasporas on secessionist conflicts, focusing on the Albanian, Armenian and Chechen diasporas and the conflicts in Kosovo, Karabakh and Chechnya during the 1990s. How do diasporas radicalize these conflicts? I argue that despite differences in diaspora communal characteristics and the types of the secessionist conflicts, a common pattern of mobilization develops. Large-scale diasporic support for secessionism emerges only after independence is proclaimed by the local elites. From that point onwards diasporas become engaged in a conflict spiral, and transnational coalitions are formed between local secessionist and diaspora groups. Depending on the organizational strength of the local strategic centre and the diasporic institutions, these coalitions endure or dissipate. Diasporas exert radicalization influences on the conflict spiral on two specific junctures – when grave violations of human rights occur in the homeland and when local moderate elites start losing credibility that they can achieve the secessionist goal.     

Armenia remembered and remade Evolving issues in a Diaspora*

Among “transnational” phenomena, diasporas play an increasingly prominent role. The Armenian diaspora is a classical one—it is of long standing, constitutes a large part of the Armenian nation, and is widely dispersed. This article tries partially to account for its continuing existence in terms of intellectual networks. It focuses on three issues which have been tinder debate throughout the diaspora, since the Armenian genocide in 1915 to present‐day independent Armenia and beyond.     

Beyond co-ethnicity: the politics of differentiating and integrating new immigrants in Singapore

This essay joins the ongoing debates about the role of co-ethnic ties in the making of diaspora identity by examining Singaporean Chinese perceptions of new immigrants from the mainland and the state's strategies in integrating the newcomers. The public discourses on new Chinese immigrants have produced three interlinked narratives: (1) newcomers are socially and culturally different from the mainstream and earlier immigrants; (2) newcomers have intensified the competition for scarce resources; and (3) newcomers are politically attached to China, whose rise as a global power only serves to reinforce such linkages. I argue that co-ethnicity and common cultural heritage play little role in shaping local Singaporeans' view of the new diaspora; instead, political pragmatism and new identity politics that prioritize the nation above ethnicity are the key factors influencing public attitudes and policy options regarding new immigrants. Furthermore, intra-diaspora differences/conflicts have reinforced interracial solidarity and contributed to the nation-building project.     

Racial,ethnic and religious social distance in Surinam: An exploration of the ‘strategic alliance hypothesis’ in a Caribbean community

The poly‐ethnic Caribbean can be seen as a laboratory for the study of the evolution of inter‐ and intra‐ethnic relationships. Using the Caribbean experience as context, the present study begins by focusing on the dynamics of Muslim‐Hindu relations in Surinam and then extends its analysis to South Asian‐Creole relations. Building on the work of van der Burg and van der Veer (1986), the study develops and examines a ‘strategic alliance hypothesis’: that Hindus and Muslims have avoided overt conflict in their Surinamese homeland in order to advance their common interests against the country's other major ethnic groups, and, by extension, South Asians have joined multi‐ethnic coalitions to advance these same interests. To explore these strategic alliance hypotheses, 376 secondary‐school students in western Surinam were administered a modified Bogardus (1925) social distance scale in order to measure the degree of reciprocal tolerance that the sample's respondents expressed towards Surinam's prominent ethno‐religious groups. The survey results offered qualified support for the strategic alliance hypothesis ‐ the degree of preferential closeness Hindus and Muslims in the sample would tolerate for each other fell approximately midway between the social distance they would allow between themselves and the Creoles, their major competitors, and the distance preferred for members of other sects within their own religion. These data are contextualized within Surinam's ongoing struggle to restore the independent and civilian constitutional government that was overthrown in a 1980 military coup.     

Patterns of distribution and processes of speciation in Brazilian reef fishes

Aim To evaluate the state of knowledge about the biogeography of Brazilian reef fishes and propose processes that lead to the observed distribution patterns. Location The tropical western Atlantic. Methods The geological history of the Amazon barrier was obtained from the literature, and its potential influence on speciation of reef fishes was analysed. Species distributions were analysed based on literature records and material deposited at Brazilian and American collections. Results Recent estimates indicate that about 12% of the Brazilian reef fish species are endemic, and most ichthyologists agree that this endemism is generated by the barrier formed by the freshwater and sediment discharge of large rivers in north‐eastern South America, mainly the Amazon, Orinoco and their tributaries. However, little is known about the dynamics of this barrier, and recent studies have demonstrated that it can be crossed through deep sponge bottoms on the outer continental shelf off north‐eastern South America. Moreover, the recent discovery of species regarded as Brazilian endemics in the extreme southern Caribbean is showing that the Amazon barrier is weaker than previously thought. Main conclusions The Amazon freshwater and sediment outflow is a strong barrier to shallow water reef fish and other organisms, and it is probably responsible for most of the endemism found in Brazilian coastal habitats. However, sea‐level fluctuations influence the effectiveness of such barrier and may play a large role in the generation of diversity in the western tropical Atlantic. Alternatively, larval exchange between Brazil and the Caribbean is small but constant, and contrasting selection pressures in divergent environments (continental Brazil vs. insular Caribbean) may be the central force driving speciation.     

Beyond the “The ‘diaspora’ diaspora”: a response to Rogers Brubaker

In this short reflection, I revisit Rogers Brubaker’s influential 2005 article on “The ‘diaspora’ diaspora”. I consider the key arguments of this important intervention, before addressing three key conceptual issues in diaspora studies: (i) the role of place, origin and scale; (ii) diaspora, race and difference; (iii) sociological and historical approaches to diaspora. In the concluding section, I briefly consider some new directions in diaspora studies.