New spheres of transnational formations: Mobilizations of humanitarian diasporas

The subject of this article is the reinscription of a new diaspora in the public sphere by which governments and multilateral institutions are mobilizing. The following argues that these kinds of mobilizations have had the effect of subverting traditional approaches to diasporic linkage that in African and African American studies have privileged trans-Atlantic slavery and its consequent social dislocations and led to the marginalization of other forced and voluntary diasporic linkages. As this article argues, one such movement often excluded from popular diasporic theories in the Black Atlantic region represents new types of economic linkages being deployed alongside various UN stakeholders and members of business communities of the Global South. These formations carry the mission of developing concrete goals to end global poverty through eradicating war and developing new diasporic projects that will accelerate economic growth in the South. The author calls for a rethinking of the contemporary processes that are at play in diasporic invocations of a post-9/11 period and shows how the call for nationals abroad to invest in their "home" countries is being used to create new diasporic linkages. In this regard, the article introduces the notion of humanitarian diasporas in an effort to rethink transatlantic slavery as the central basis for conceptualizing the starting place of African diasporic theorizing in the North American Academy