German Diaspora Politics

The ‘diaspora’ diaspora

As the use of ‘diaspora’ has proliferated in the last decade, its meaning has been stretched in various directions. This article traces the dispersion of the term in semantic, conceptual and disciplinary space; analyses three core elements that continue to be understood as constitutive of diaspora; assesses claims made by theorists of diaspora about a radical shift in perspective and a fundamen...

Bangladeshi diaspora in the UK: some observations on socio-cultural dynamics, religious trends and transnational politics

Embedded cosmopolitanism and the politics of obligation: the Ghanaian diaspora and development

The paper analyses how identities and obligations operate within the spaces of transnational communities and how this affects development. Within spatially diffuse communities identities are fluid and overlapping, as are the obligations to multiple others be that kin, ethnic group or nation – in different localities. The paper is concerned with the institutions through which these identities ar...

Exile meets homeland: politics, performance, and authenticity in the Tibetan diaspora

Tibetans are often imagined as authentic, pure, and geographically undifferentiated, but Tibetan identity formation is, in fact, varied and deeply inflected by national location and transnational trajectories. In this paper I examine the frictions of encounter between three groups of Tibetans who arrived in the USA around the same time, but who differ in their relationships to the homeland. The...

The diaspora of borders: Hindu-Sikh transnationals in the diaspora

This paper offers a set of nuanced narratives and a theoretically-informed report on what is the driving force and motivation behind the movement of Hindus and Sikhs from one continent to another (apart from their earlier movement out of the subcontinent to distant shores). What leads them to leave one diasporic location for another location? In this sense they are also ‘twice-migrants’. Here I...