The de-mobilization of diaspora: History, memory and 'latent identity'

The ‘semantic domain’ (Tololyan, 1996) that the term diaspora inhabits has received much attention in recent years, not all of which has been kind to the concept. The most frequently cited conceptualizations have been framed by a search for definitional accuracy (Butler, 2001; Cohen, 1997; Safran, 1991; Shuval, 2000) and criticism has focussed on the concomitant tendency to consider the concept as a form of social categorization or descriptive tool. This, it has been argued, has resulted not only in the suggestion that ‘real’ diaspora exist alongside ‘fakes’ but also in the creation of ‘entities’ that emphasize coherence and objectivist measurement (Alexander, 2010). As Brubaker (2005: 2) noted, this strand of the diaspora literature has been “firmly rooted in a conceptual ‘homeland’”. Whether this was real or imagined the homeland has been depicted as an authoritative source of value, identity and loyalty, and diaspora have been defined descriptively with reference to that origin. This version of diaspora, defined by a teleology of return, has been described as “the old, the imperialising, the hegemonizing, form of ‘ethnicity’” (Hall, 1990: 8)