TPCS 21: Feeling Diasporic

By Lauren Wagner

"If words could change the world, then 'diaspora' is one of those terms that promised much but delivered little." (Kalra et al 2005: 8) 

From literary to religious to migration studies, intersecting with geography and beyond, ‘diaspora’ has come to be viewed in distinctive ways: as bounded and unbounded, as a place without territory or an extension of a territory, or as a cultural state of being. In many, many forums (Chow 1993, Clifford 1994, Cohen 1997, Gilroy 1991, Hall 1990, Mavroudi 2007, Safran 1999, Shuval 2000, Tölölyan 1996, Werbner 2000) the applications and purview of the term ‘diaspora’ have been defined, contested, reaffirmed and repositioned, so much so that at this point we seem to be cycling some of the same arguments. The redefinition continues unabated (notwithstanding nor excusing this article), and no clear, specific application has come to the fore, within geography or without; this short reflection hopes to contribute to this work-in-progress.

In some sense, diaspora is all these things – cultural orientation, place, imagined boundary or unboundedness. It becomes so popular because the concept is richly expressive, and all of these definitions and examples contribute to our understanding of how it works. However, I am still left with a sense of non-specificity in how ‘diaspora’ is used – it is all of these things, and so therefore none of them very well. These definition frustrations emerge particularly when trying to talk about my own research in the field of migration, thinking carefully about the implications of calling post-migrant generation Moroccans in Europe a ‘diaspora’. What would make them so? is it politics? community? cultural production? desire to return?... Like a number of other terms, it comes to be justifiably applied to so much – or contested by so many – that it connotes less and less. Instead of redefining diaspora here, I would rather separate its effects, focusing on the empirical ways ‘diaspora’ is realised – sometimes as diaspora, sometimes as ‘The Diaspora’, and sometimes as diasporic – as impetus for how it can usefully be applied in different forms for specific meanings.

How to quote: Wagner, L. (2012). Feeling Diasporic. (Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies; No. 21).

Read the full working paper here: Feeling Diasporic.