Diaspora studies: Roots and critical dimensions

When my son wonders who he is, he is also asking question about the future. For my part, I hope that his future and that of his generation will have many roots and many pasts. I hope, especially, that it will be a future where his identity will be a matter of rich and complex negotiation and not the result of some blind and official decree.-- R. Radhakrishnan Diaspora discourse involves at least two critical dimensions: the first concerns the issue of naming, guided by such questions as whom to call diaspora and under what criteria; the second extends this process of naming to the establishment of diaspora as a comprehensive theory for studying multiple forms of migrations. This article outlines the insights of some of the most repetitively consulted scholars in diaspora studies. My attempt is to synthesize their conceptualisations into a representative research framework. Critical roots The concept of diaspora is associated with migration and dispersal. The term, in common parlance, signifies any people living outside their homeland (Anand, 2003, p. 212; Conner, 2001, p. 16). In contemporary media, diaspora is used “as a substitute for any notion of expansion and scattering away from the centre ” (Tölölyan, 1996, p. 10). In a broader sense, diaspora encompass a multitude of ethnic religious and national communities-- such as political refugees, alien residents, guest workers, immigrants, expellees, ethnic and racial minorities, overseas communities-- who find themselves living outside of the territory to which they are historically ‘rooted ’ (Carter, 2005, p. 55; Shuval, 2000, p. 42). Taken in the light of its conceptual eclecticism, diaspora is “a term of self-identification among many varied groups who themselves or whos