Current Sociology 2013 Ben Rafael 842 61

http://csi.sagepub.com/Current Sociology

http://csi.sagepub.com/content/61/5-6/842The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0011392113480371 2013 61: 842 originally published online 5 April 2013Current Sociology

Eliezer Ben-RafaelDiaspora

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

International Sociological Association

can be found at:Current SociologyAdditional services and information for

http://csi.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://csi.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

What is This?

- Apr 5, 2013OnlineFirst Version of Record

- Aug 19, 2013Version of Record >>

by guest on September 12, 2013csi.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://csi.sagepub.com/

http://csi.sagepub.com/content/61/5-6/842

http://www.sagepublications.com

http://www.isa-sociology.org/

http://csi.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

http://csi.sagepub.com/subscriptions

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://csi.sagepub.com/content/61/5-6/842.full.pdf

http://csi.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/04/05/0011392113480371.full.pdf

http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml


Current Sociology Review61(5-6) 842 –861

© The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/0011392113480371

csi.sagepub.com

CS

Diaspora

Eliezer Ben-RafaelTel-Aviv University, Israel

AbstractContemporary diasporas are studied from many different perspectives. One widely acknowledged aspect is their capacity to illustrate dual homeness, and their challenging national cultures’ aspiration to sociocultural unity. Insertion into new societies tends today to erode the singularity of diasporic communities, but the symbols they retain or create may still warrant cultural reproduction as transnational entities. The conceptual distinction between collective identity, identification, and identifying is helpful when considering how diasporas have become a factor in the multiculturalization of present-day societies, while themselves becoming multicultural entities through the influence of the cultures prevailing in the diverse environments of their dispersed communities. The incoherent – even chaotic – realities these contradictory tendencies generate for analysts are not necessarily perceived in these terms by the actors. Their presence in societies, their impact on non-diasporic populations, the new relations they create between original and new homelands, and above all their endeavor as interconnected cross-national spaces, represent developments that contribute to moving society towards a new era.

KeywordsChaos, diaspora, dual homeness, globalization, identity, interconnected space, multiculturalism, transnationalism

Delineating the field

‘Diaspora’ (Cohen, 2001; Dufoix, 2008), a word of Greek origin, designates the dispersal throughout the world of a people with the same origin. A descriptive notion, dispersion often receives religious or ideological connotations such as in the Hebrew token of galut (exile) that is imbued with messianic aspirations of ‘Return.’ Understandings attached to the diasporic condition may vary both within and between diasporas. Diasporics as a

Corresponding author:Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, Tel-Aviv, 69978, Israel. Email: [email protected]

480371 CSI615-610.1177/0011392113480371Current Sociology ReviewBen-Rafael2013

Current Sociology Review Article



Ben-Rafael 843

whole, however, always wish to insert themselves into their new environment, even though they are also often motivated to retain a degree of loyalty to their singular legacy and original milieu. Eventually they build institutions and expand networks that become foci of cultural, social, and political activity. In all this, they represent a kind of ethnic group that, like any other ethnic group, numbers individuals self-aware of a primordial bond (religion, origin, or a language).

At this point, arguments divide scholars concerning the nature and plight of ethnicity and transnational diasporas. The notion of ethnicity derives from ethnikos and means ‘heathen’ in Greek (Spencer, 2006: 45). It refers to entities that are smaller than society (Eriksen, 1993) and whose members have a real or putative common ancestry. Eriksen (1993) adds that an ethnic group never completely overlaps the nation, but constitutes a collective of its own that may divide further into ramifications. These attributes are linked to Giddens’s (1991) contention that ethnics are engaged in a reflexive project of identity-building.

The traits that circumscribe an ethnic entity denote, as a rule, a common origin or cultural-linguistic legacy that assumedly commands commitment, retention, and trans-mission (Jenkins, 2007). Some scholars see here the indelible prints of primordialism attributed to blood ties (Shils, 1957: 142), or a sense of natural affinity that does not stem from social interaction (Geertz, 1973: 259–260). Whatever the assumed source of pri-mordialism, Bayar (2009) maintains that it offers a convincing hypothesis in light of the persistence, among some groups, of ethnic allegiances over long periods of time and within highly varied circumstances. This orientation finds support in a diversity of empirical works cross-cutting, in many cases, the borders of the social sciences. Hence, Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994) present findings that tend to conclude that ethnic groups demonstrate statistically significant distinctive genetic features. Opposing that kind of interpretation, the ‘circumstantialists’ or ‘constructivists’ – like Fredrik Barth (1969) – tend to see in ethnicity mainly a model of social organization rather than of cultural dif-ferentiation. Allegiances are constructed and reconstructed over time in different contexts, and fluctuate according to individual interests and social claims (Ratcliffe, 2010; Stone and Dennis, 2003). Andreas Wimmer (2008) maintains, in this vein, that different strategies may be adopted which redraw collective boundaries by including new members, excluding others, or challenging hierarchical orderings of social catego-ries. Scholars of this stream explain that for some groups ethnicity is a reaction to dis-crimination (see Smith, 1992, 1996). ‘Primordialists’ reply that socially successful groups often retain ethnic allegiances, demonstrating that ethnicity is a kind of ground-rule of the human experience. However, this approach is refuted by the ‘circumstantial-ists’ who identify here developments accounted for by the social benefits of ‘invented’ traditions.

Different explanations may apply to different groups, according to the diversity of both contingencies and historical paths and legacies. The category of ethnic groups that is becoming more and more salient nowadays consists of transnational diasporas, in the context of contemporary globalization, the communication revolution, and unprecedented migration movements. These processes have positioned those debates in new, unprece-dented contexts. What distinguishes diasporas from other kinds of ethnic collectives is the retention of allegiances and connectedness that cut across national boundaries, and link



844 Current Sociology Review 61(5-6)

people into a transglobal entity (Bauböck, 1994, 1998). The establishment of a diasporic community, however, is not a uniform process and it may vary from one place to another – in the same society, and in different countries. Robin Cohen (2007) distinguishes between the ‘solid’ diaspora marked by powerful myths of a common origin – mostly a territory labeled as the ‘old country’ – and the ‘liquid’ diaspora that is constructed through new cultural links (see also Bauman, 2000; Vertovec, 1997). Adding the intermediate model of ‘ductile diaspora,’ Cohen discusses these three models as ranging from histori-cal-empirical reality to postmodern ‘virtuality.’ Yet, one general novelty of our era, according to analysts like Cohen and Vertovec, resides in the frequency among ethnic groups of a sense of attachment to a ‘territorialized origin’ that links collectives sharing references to the same socio-geographical past.

This relation of ‘transnationality’ constructs the unity of dispersed groups designated by the specific diaspora (see Cohen, 1997; Laguerre, 2006). In some cases, a given term is used to name the set of communities that originate, or see themselves as originating, from the same place, while another term includes this set in addition to the original homeland: the ‘Jewish diaspora’ refers to Jews’ dispersed communities outside the Land of Israel; the ‘Jewish world’ consists of the same communities, plus Israel.

While this notion of transnational diaspora (or TD) indeed designates groups of migrants scattered over the globe retaining bonds with their original homeland and among themselves, this notion may also be extended to include dispersed and inter-linked communities that deviate substantially from the usual case. It still holds, for instance, for diasporas referring to more than one original homeland. One example consists of the Chinese diasporics who refer to Mainland China, Taiwan, or Singapore (Cheung, 2004; Fung, 1999; Ma and Cartier, 2004). In the same vein, one can note the Sub-Saharan Africans whose ancestors were deported as slaves to the New World from different places in Africa and who refer their origin to the Dark Continent as a whole – unlike Africans who emigrated after their nations won independence, and relate their origins to specific countries (Franklin and Moss, 2001; Matsuoka and Sorenson, 2001). Moreover, the notion of transnational diaspora also includes groups – socially and cul-turally close to each other – that experience amalgamation in the face of the prevailing culture in their new environment, from which they feel equally remote. We recall here the ‘pan-diasporic’ tendencies exemplified by Latin American immigrants in the US who have become ‘Hispanics’ (Sommers, 1991), or immigrants from Arab countries in Europe who tend to merge themselves into a Muslim or Arab population (Hossein-Zadeh, 2005). In either case, individuals may still conserve features marking their spe-cific origins – Mexican or Guatemalan in the first instance; Moroccan or Algerian in the second. But at the same time, they are perceived, and widely perceive themselves, as also forming a more general category in terms of the rest of society. Not too different is the case of the Kurds who originate from several places that do not belong to the same national setting, but who share elements of culture and a linguistic legacy facilitating their coalescence, when they find themselves in a common diasporic condition.

Still another kind of diasporic group consists of ‘returnees.’ Germany (Bade and Oltmer, 1999), the Philippines (Constable, 1999), Japan (Tsuda, 2003), and Israel (Ben-Rafael, 2003), among others, witness the resettling of people who in the past left it for the diaspora but decided – perhaps after some years, decades, or even generations



Ben-Rafael 845

– whether for ideological or instrumental reasons, to ‘return’ to the place they always considered their ‘real home.’ Throughout their period in ‘exile,’ these returnees absorbed the culture of their diasporic environments, and new markers now distinguish them from their fellow-homelanders. This particularism may be the basis of a tendency to reconsti-tute communities to the extent that they valorize the retention, for them and their chil-dren, of these cultural resources and markers. In these rebuilt communities, previously national tokens become diasporic markers, while previously ethnic-diasporic markers signal attachment to a new national identity. This illustrates the continuation of the ‘diasporic code’ in inverse mode.

Also qualifying for the notion of transnational diaspora are groups that exhibit a trans-national commitment to each other despite the absence of a shared ‘old country,’ but that concretize their sense of belonging to a global entity through supra-national organizations, networks cross-cutting borders, and common cultural or religious markers. Jews saw themselves as ‘one people’ for centuries before the creation of Israel (Ben-Rafael, 2001) and, in a similar vein, Gypsies (Fraser, 1995) perceive themselves primarily as a world-people without territorial attachment, and grant secondary significance to their present-day nationalities. This type of diaspora is quite exceptional, as is another category of cases that gained substantial importance with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, and which Rogers Brubaker (2009) names ‘accidental diasporas.’ These cases refer to Russian nationals who now find themselves in post-Soviet Europe, stranded within the borders of newly independent states – i.e. the Baltic states. Changes in national borders have made them national minorities. This kind of group still qualifies for the notion of diaspora, since their people maintain ongoing relations with their original homelands and display resist-ance to the disappearance of their home languages and cultural references.

The common denominator of all cases pertaining to these categories is that they are transnational entities cross-cutting national borders. In each such case, narratives account for the background of the dispersal and assess its challenges. They account for the exist-ence of communities sharing allegiances to themselves and to the whole entity that they form, and which includes – where relevant – one or more original homelands that may consist of sovereign entities or territorialized minorities in one or more countries.

We focus below on TDs that do share one or more original homelands, assuming that most of our analyses also apply to people who, for whatever reason, do not comply with this condition. Even when taking this restriction into account, the field of relevant phenom-ena remains quite large, chiefly excluding cases of populations united only by religious affiliation, ideological-political commitments, or cultural affinities but that lack a saga of dispersal that started from a common real or virtual origin. For instance, in the extreme case of world social mobilization like the Communists in the mid-twentieth century (Young, 2011), they shared a strong identification with the USSR as the ‘home of socialism’ but these feelings could not compare with the affinity that worldwide communities reserve for a ‘homeland’ (‘fatherland’ or ‘motherland’) which they feel they ‘stem from.’

Identity, identifying, and identification

The growing body of research focusing on TDs underlines a number of features. More than a few scholars emphasize the role of central policies in the social, cultural, and




political insertion of new groups. Heckmann and Schnapper (2003) have discussed the different possible strategies that authorities apply. In particular, they stress the French so-called ‘republican’ aspiration to sociocultural homogeneity requiring that non-autochthonous elements should relegate their cultural singularity to the private sphere. Newcomers, accordingly, should endorse in public the prevalent social and cultural modes of behavior. This approach contrasts with the moderate form of multiculturalism applied in the UK and the Netherlands. Schnapper (2005) also analyzes the German approach that has long tended to exclude all people who were not German-born from adhesion to the German folk (see also Brubaker, 1992). In a more political perspective, Waldinger (2011) focuses on the state and its interests – in terms of domination – which assumedly account for the ways imposed on groups to insert themselves in society. A similar emphasis on political aspects is found in Sökefeld’s (2006) work, which, how-ever, focuses mainly on the transnational diaspora in a social-mobilization perspective.

Other scholars insist more on diasporics’ aspirations, and point out that immigrants and their offspring are today showing a tendency to resist abandoning their identities for the sake of the national tokens that they acquire in their new homelands (Glick Schiller et al., 1992, 1995; Levitt, 2001; Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2008; Morawska, 2003).

More radically, some scholars associated with the postmodernist trend have attacked on ideological grounds the very assumption that diasporas, ethnicity, or race are legiti-mate topics for study in their own right. For Anderson (1991), ethnicity and related categories belong to what he calls ‘imagined communities.’ For Paul Gilroy (2004), these notions distort democracy and reduce people to symbols; he champions a cosmo-politan humanist outlook on society. Homi Bhabha (2004), echoing Fanon (1965), sets as an ideal ‘to be a man among other men.’ Identity is but a means of exploitation and oppression, and he criticizes Taylor’s (1994) praise of multiculturalism grounded in recognition of the diversity of identities found in society. From a different perspective, but still with a critical tone vis-a-vis the West, James Clifford (2003) asserts that pre-sent-day diasporic discourses by diasporics are to be understood as a search for non-western models. Rather similarly, Arjun Appadurai (1996) analyzes the diasporic phenomenon in the context of what he sees as a present-day neo-imperialist relationship between ‘the West and the Rest.’

These critics attract the reactions of more positivist scholars who may be divided into those emphasizing the roles of contingencies, and those focusing on cultural and identity aspects. In the first group, Covers and Vermeulen and their colleagues (Covers and Vermeulen, 1997) describe cases where diasporic identities can be interpreted as molded by economic, class, and power interests. Tsing (2000) and Anthias (1998) deny, from this perspective, that our world has entered a new era. The striking recent develop-ments, they contend, have failed to produce a single new logic of transformation. Diaspora communities, like many other groups, are instances of social mobilization. Hollinger (1995), who focuses on the USA, sees ethnicity as transient and aspires to a post-multicultural society.

Stuart Hall’s (1996) approach is close to this outlook. While he acknowledges the sin-gular dynamism of ethnic and diasporic phenomena, his understanding of identity is not essentialist but strategic and positional. Identity, in his view, does not signal the core of the self but only a fragmented, fractured, and politicized token referring to a given collective.



Ben-Rafael 847

Other conceptualizations go further and underline the concept of shared identity as a significant element of its own (Cohen, 1994; Safran, 1991; Tölölyan, 1996). Whatever the importance of circumstances, they believe, there can be no diasporic community without a consciousness of diaspora. This outlook, though, does not presuppose consen-sual formulations among individual members and it rejects neither the mobilization dimension, nor the assumption of fluidity of collective boundaries. What it does reject is the necessarily a priori primacy of the contingency-first hypothesis. It accords with Weber’s (1977) classic assessment that a sense of belonging forged by religion, history, or a language may be a major component of community formation.

William Safran (2004) adopts this perspective up to reversing the contingency–identity relation. He acknowledges that a diaspora often illustrates deracination, oppression, and painful adjustment, but also emphasizes that diasporics develop institutions and symbols via incentives rooted in their own cultural values. Tölölyan (1996) adds on this point that global processes of deterritorialization and migration are bound to a decline of locality as a reference for collective identities as core aspects of the diaspora experience. To these con-siderations Sheffer (2003) adds the impact of that experience’s institutionalization, and its organizational and political structures which give expression to its enduringness.

Whatever the terms and concepts utilized, the issue of identity remains a crucial aspect of the diasporic endeavor. Defining a collective identity, however, is by no means easy – either for researchers, or for the individuals concerned (Alexander et al., 2004). Its formulation may greatly vary among members of the same community, as well as in dif-ferent places or times. And in parallel, the basic elements that compose identities also vary, from one case of diaspora to another. Our own suggestion (Ben-Rafael, 2002) is to bypass these difficulties by drawing on the structuralist approach (Levi-Strauss, 1961, 1977) and allowing major theoretical difficulties to be overcome as well – above all, the longstanding argument between circumstantialists and essentialists.

This approach endorses the principle that diverse formulations of the same identity may be generated within the same collective as the outcome of different circumstances interacting with the same original legacy. More specifically, it is our premise that wher-ever one can speak of collective-identity building, it means that: (1) in one way or another, individuals feel committed to people whom they see as fellow-members of their group; (2) they perceive that group as conveying some cultural or social singularity; and (3) they tend, to some extent and in certain respects, to distance themselves from others whom they consider as non-members (Ben-Rafael, 2001). This notion focuses on the awareness of individuals and describes an essentially subjective phenomenon – as such, it can never be seen as acquired permanently. It may involve dilemmas alongside unam-biguous assertions; it may be phrased in different (possibly even contradictory) terms, diachronically or synchronically (among different circles). What keeps such formula-tions connected to each other as elements of the same identity space, and prevents splits into different groups, is conditioned on people’s commitment to, and particularistic soli-darity with, more or less the same group of individuals (a ‘we’ somehow distinct from ‘they’), and their drawing symbols – however divergent their interpretations – from the same reservoir singularizing the collective as a whole.

This latter aspect elicits the additional issue of how others see ethnics/diasporics and identify them. This act of identifying may be appreciative, disparaging, or neutral.




It is frequently negative and loaded with prejudices and stereotypes. These others are other ethnics or diasporics and non-ethnic ‘natives’/‘authentic’ nationals and acts of identifying may repeat themselves with each particular group along the lines of soci-ety’s multicultural segmentation (see also Glazer, 1997). In this light, it is clear that identifying is a distinct aspect of the discourse about ethnicity (including about dias-pora), not to be confused with the notion of identity. Identity, we saw, refers to the tenets of a group’s perceptions of collective identity; while identifying designates through what prisms people or institutions refer to individuals as members of a given group. Identifying may be based on errors of discernment or a priori beliefs, eventually influencing individuals in one way or another. However, identifying per se does not assess identity, which is a subjective attribute of the individuals concerned themselves: that someone perceives another person as a ‘Turk’ or a ‘Jew’ does not in itself make him or her a Turk or a Jew. This does not belie that being repeatedly identified with a given label may have subjective consequences – especially when the identifier pos-sesses power over the identified.

The third dimension of the discourse about ethnicity, which is also often confused with the notion of identity, asks how much importance individuals ascribe to their collec-tive identity at all. This question concerns the issue of identification. Like identity, iden-tification is likely to vary greatly among fellow-ethnics. Ethnic or diasporic identification is at its highest when individuals see their ethnic identity as their principal, if not only, collective identity; it is at its lowest when they see it as a strictly personal attribute – like hair color, height, or weight. Identity and identification are never completely independ-ent from each other, since variations in identification may also command alterations in how individuals formulate their identity, while the nature of the contents of identity – especially if it concerns religious allegiance – should influence the strength of identifica-tion. Identification is also influenced by other circumstances, however. As Gold (2007) has shown, collective identification is stronger where populations are clearly differenti-ated by unequal participation in resources. The configuration of power in society and the availability of opportunities for building a constituency are also likely to influence col-lective identification. Moreover, the influence of the sense of power is not without ambi-guity: a constituency that enjoys great bargaining power may feel encouraged to see itself an integral part of society; though at the same time, where power brings benefits it may well be an incentive to remain politically mobilized and to continue raising conflict-ual particularistic claims (Bernstein, 2005; Covers and Vermeulen, 1997). Which is what identity politics is about.

Twofold multiculturalization

The background to the formation of TDs is the experience of migration (Banton, 2008; Van den Berghe, 1970), and as a rule, once settled in the new environment, they demon-strate an irresistible tendency to grow similar to mainstream society (Brubaker, 2001). This, however, does not signify that collective boundaries become completely blurred (Alba and Nee, 2003, 2007). Researchers suggest the concept of ‘segmented’ assimila-tion to label a bicultural syndrome when extensive acculturation and partial social assim-ilation are combined, for a large part of the group, with persistent retention of parochial



Ben-Rafael 849

markers and ongoing contact with former homelanders and fellow diasporics settled elsewhere (Vermeulen, 2010).

The narratives circulating and admired in the diasporas require locals to retain their distinctiveness, based on legacies originating ‘elsewhere.’ That ‘elsewhere’ demarcates what a transnational orientation stands for. It places actors evolving within different bor-ders in direct and solidaristic relations, without the need for buffering by national institutions – unlike ‘international’ bodies. In other words, a transnational orientation concretizes ‘here and now’ a principle of ‘dual homeness’: diasporics insert themselves in their present setting while simultaneously retaining some degree of loyalty to a culture and origin from ‘elsewhere.’

This particular TD endeavor is clearly shown by its linguistic dimension. One of the aspects of the divide between diasporics and homelanders – as well as among diasporics in different countries – is the loss of linguistic competence in the original language, that continues to be the homeland’s vernacular. At best, this vernacular is retained with a restricted register and a handful of tokens; these elements still assert the multicultural character of TDs’ settings but hardly serve the purpose of efficient communication between TD members, and with homelanders. Hence, it is often the case that English, the world’s primary lingua franca, becomes the only language that members of diasporas from different countries and homelanders can use to understand each other. An under-standing, however, that must still overcome the fact that members of each community eventually speak the kind of English practiced in their present-day setting.

However, even then – and this is effectively the general rule – those elements of diasporics’ languages that are still retained as formulae of greeting, names of typical food, or designations of rituals, find new usages as markers of identities warranting some symbolic cohesion. This by no means counterbalances the loss of the languages themselves – deplored by many a sociolinguist who studies the decline and disappear-ance of minorities’ languages over one or two generations after migration (see Edwards, 2010). In the second and ensuing generations, hardly any salient trait remains besides the persistence of some markers of the original code inserted in the official language (Dustman et al., 2010). Such elements may still impel some diasporics to acquire a better knowledge of their language of origin, in the present context of the vitality of diasporic ethnicity, multiculturalism, and the search for roots. Eventually, with the encouragement of leaders and educators, community educational institutions may offer appropriate pro-grams of language acquisition for youngsters.

This atmosphere is favorable for the multiplicity of cultural influences throughout society and the propagation of phenomena of ‘hybridization’ (Thelen, 2009). ‘Cultural hybridization,’ as elaborated by Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2009), means the borrowing by a given culture of patterns of behavior and values upheld by another. It may arise in the transformation of traditional patterns or religious practices (see, as regards the African diaspora, Clarke, 1998; Clark Hine and McLeod, 1999). This notion finds its utility in its accounting for new cultural developments discernible in this multicul-tural era. Hybridization brings about innovations and mixings of sources, and invites actors of all kinds to question, redefine, and argue about their identities. And, indeed, endless debates in this vein have become typical of contemporary intellectual endeavors.




In brief, TD communities contribute to the multiculturalization of both society and the transnational diasporas. While the singularity that they still represent vis-a-vis their envi-ronment enhances the latter’s sociocultural diversity, by becoming somehow different from those who remained in the original homeland or settled elsewhere, they also make their TD itself a multicultural entity. This twofold process leads to an ever greater fluidity of collective boundaries that come to resemble dotted lines rather than clearly traced traits. Individuals who then wish to ‘slip out’ have it easier now than in the past and may, eventually, get closer to other diasporic groups, or locate themselves in non-ethnic milieus.

Transnational diasporas and ‘old countries’

The increase of TDs across the world also involves the issue of their relations to the ‘old countries’ and their significance for further developments in relations between the original and new homelands. While for emigrants, leaving their country is first a matter of individual choice, for the latter, movements of people to the outside raise both prac-tical and principled considerations. In some countries, like Japan or Israel, dominant attitudes until recently depicted out-migration as ‘treason’ or ‘desertion.’ In other cases, homelands have been quicker to compromise with, and react with moderation to, the fact that a given percentage of their nationals leave them for other places. Still other countries see out-migration as offering additional sources of financial income, thanks to the support migrants grant their relatives who stay behind (Oh, 2007). Some states are thus eager to grant migrants the right to retain full-fledged citizenship, to vote in general elections, and even to enjoy special privileges if and when they return for reinsertion.

At the institutional level, and once the very existence of a diaspora is recognized by the establishment of the original homeland, one finds four different models of diaspora–homeland relations (see Bauböck [2010] for a general discussion, Cheran [2004] for the case of Sri Lanka, and Ghosh-Schellhorn [2006] for Anglophone Indians):

1. The nationalist perspective assesses the ultimate importance of the original homeland as the only center of the diaspora. This, it is argued, is the only country where the culture and daily experience of collective membership is expressed to the full. It is only here that the TD identity is the individual’s primary identity.

2. The bifocal model requests the original homeland to cooperate with its TD set-tings despite the eventual difficulties caused by rivalry over prominence, or divergent understanding of collective challenges.

3. The diasporic model considers TDs’ culture as primarily attached to the more ‘advanced’ diaspora condition from where it can project its legacy as a pole of cultural influence on world civilizations. The homeland is then looked down on, as ‘provincial’ or narrow-minded.

4. The opposed outlook is the nativistic attitude – that radicalizes the differentiation of diaspora–homeland perspectives from the latter’s point of view. It sees diaspo-rics as growing foreign to their original culture and identity, and encourages breaking links with them.



Ben-Rafael 851

These different models clearly appear in the common world frameworks where repre-sentatives of original homelands and diasporic organizations sit together (see Goldring [2002] for the Mexican example). They show that dilemmas and tensions are endemic to diaspora–homeland relations. In the Jewish–Israel case, for instance, the quest for lead-ership over world Jewry regularly creates conflict between the Israeli leadership – that emphasizes Israel’s embodying Jewish sovereignty – and American Jewry, that insists on its own valuable experience as a numerically significant community. People of French-speaking Quebec, on the one hand, and the authorities in France, on the other, perceive themselves – beyond their reciprocal allegiance – as centers of world francophonies. A website called ‘Centre des francophonies des Amériques’ is based in Quebec, while in Paris, a special ministry deals with francophone affairs outside France.

Beyond these aspects, moreover, by expanding a protective role over their émigrés overseas, governments are also willing to turn them into political pressure groups that could support their interests with their present-day authorities (see Ostergaard-Nielsen [2001] for the cases of Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands). This consid-eration shifts attention to the new homelands where diasporics create new demographic and political realities.

Empowerment in new homelands

Most countries that are currently attracting migrants are veteran democracies where the maturation of democratic processes enables a profusion of political actors. Democracy is grounded in the competition of parties and leaders for social and political support. Its basic rule is the courting of constituencies, including diasporic communities, by rival factions. Because they are wooed, these groups are able to bargain their backing in return for responsiveness to their own claims, and thus become political actors (Soysal, 1994, 2000). Hence, a democratic regime is a fertile ground for militants to build up a constitu-ency, and especially for ethnic leaders to articulate identity politics and achieve political significance – whether through coalitions with other pressure groups or as independent forces (Calhoun, 1994). This game grants public acknowledgment and legitimacy to community interests, institutionalizes – de facto first and de jure later – the presence of TDs, and thereby fuels societal multiculturalization. In this context, when diasporic transnational interests are brought to the fore they enjoy full legitimacy and may become items on the national agenda. Among such interests, claims can emerge concerning the state’s relations with original homelands, and those claims have the potential to widen the space and nature of inter-state relations (Laguerre, 2006).

Such developments should, quite obviously, enhance the insertion into the political process of diasporic communities and their identification with the society that they are now able to influence and in which they fully participate. In other words, this very process – partly on behalf of external interests – is expected to reduce diasporics’ alienation – if such existed a priori. At the same time, as mentioned, it is plausible if not probable that whenever politics provides a source of profit for a constituency that very fact should also encourage leaders to maintain and even intensify political mobilization. Hence, as a group increases its share in society, it may be willing to see its tactics as profitable and drive it to more politicization as a distinct component of this society.




Later on, empowered diasporic actors may also be tempted to achieve response not only to their specific demands but also their aspirations regarding what they consider as a ‘desirable’ society (Huntington, 2005). These aspirations may clash with some of the mainstream culture’s prevalent premises and incite a new focus of tension that could, in turn, eventually lead to questioning cultural, or even religious, longstanding principles and symbols of the social order. A social conflict along these lines would illustrate a simplified version of what Huntington (1996) calls a ‘clash of civilizations,’ or according to Eisenstadt (2001), a kind of encounter and confrontation between ‘multiple modernities.’ What is commonly referred to as ‘the right to difference’ might thus be the starting-point of bitter conflicts over the validity of longstanding societal codes that would eventually find defenders in ‘authentic’ local and nativistic factions (Schrag, 2010).

In this, multiculturalism comes to exemplify what Beck (1992) calls a risk society: a multicultural society is basically faced with the dilemma of the limits of multicultural-ism. More specifically, what should be left to the domain of communities’ singularities? And what belongs to the public domain, and should be regulated by symbols and values that are endorsed by all?

Here we are tackling another relevant issue discussed by researchers, titled ‘de-civilization’ (see Camus, 2011). This notion signals an alteration in attitudes propagated throughout society, in the sense of disengagement from normative obligations. Authors who elaborate on this concept have in mind the growth of urban violence and the insecu-rity that tends to prevail in more than a few big cities. Without entering the vast set of issues implied by this topic, we should underline here that multiculturalization and the increase of TDs are actually contributing – to some degree – to the slackening of the rigor of duties associated with civility. The diffusion of a dual-homeness state of mind charac-teristic of diasporics implies that neither transnational allegiances nor national identifica-tion encompass the total commitment of individuals to their settings’ respective agendas and general concerns. In either respect, commitment is somehow narrowed by actors’ interest in the other. This degree of freedom vis-a-vis each such commitment, and espe-cially vis-a-vis society, on the part of some diasporics may in turn leave imprints on how non-diasporic citizens feel about their societal obligations – whether by taking an exam-ple from the non-compliant diasporics, or by reacting negatively towards their lack of conformity. Either way, one can speak of new problématiques permeating multicultural societies that account, among other forms, for the ways transnationalism drives general societal change.

The ‘drive belt’ notion: Directions for future research

In conclusion, transnationalism and multiculturalism are now definitely part of the daily life and social order of many contemporary societies. Their phenomena are clearly visi-ble in the linguistic landscape of every metropolis – London, New York, Paris, or Berlin – where from one block of houses to another, different temples, cultural centers, ethnic restaurants, charities, or businesses mark the area’s special character through the use of different linguistic signs and markers used together with – in some cases, in place of – national languages (Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael, 2009; see also Laguerre, 2003). These



Ben-Rafael 853

signs indicate ‘Little Italy,’ ‘Chinatown,’ or ‘Jerusalem’ and illustrate the nature of dual-homeness – i.e. at first, the extent which the longstanding aspiration to sociocultural unity challenges the boundaries of western cultures. Not that long ago, western powers were still diffusing their languages and social models throughout the world via coloniza-tion, colonialism, and commercial expansion. Today, numberless languages and cultures originating from the ‘Rest’ have emerged in the actual territory of the ‘West,’ carried by diasporic migrants. These new communities impose their public presence through the social and political facilities of their new societies. Democracies cannot but compromise with the anchorage of those ‘foreign’ cultures in their domains by the settling of groups whose ancestors can by no means be included among what the French long liked to repeat: ‘nos ancêtres les Gaulois étaient grands et blonds.’

TDs, though, differ from each other with respect to when they arrived in their new societies, and where they came from. Muslims settled in Europe mostly after the with-drawal of France from North Africa (Roy, 2006); the majority of Latin Americans (Hispanics or Latinos) migrated to the nearby USA (Odem and Lacy, 2009); the Chinese spread throughout Asia before reaching Europe and the Americas (Gomez and Hsin-Huang, 2004; Lo and Wang, 1997; Tan, 2003); Sub-Saharan Africans are mostly the remote offspring of ancestors who arrived in the New World as slaves (Matsuoka and Sorenson, 2001). Many features particular to each population are accounted for by such circumstances. Moreover, discrimination and weak human capital assets widely explain the concentration of many Muslims (Bowen, 2004), Africans (Green, 1997; Skinner, 1993), and Hispanics/Latinos in lower strata (Yeoman, 2000) in their new societies. Stronger human assets explain why Chinese migrants (Louie, 2000; Nagata, 2005) climb the social ladder more easily, although some milieus are frequently reluctant to integrate them. Moreover, not every diaspora aspires to lose its singularity (Münz, 2002): cultural and religious influences widely explain the differences exhibited by Muslims and Hispanics, Africans and Chinese. Each group also sets up different kinds of community structures and engages in identity politics in its own way. In the same vein, one also finds differences in how these diasporas develop cross-national networks, found their own media, and produce symbols indicative of both their legacies, their current reality, and, above all, their allegiance to external ‘fatherlands’ (Laguerre, 2009).

At this point we may introduce another notion that throws light on the significance of TD as a factor of societal, and even global change. TDs, one can contend, actually serve as drive belts between original and new homelands. This implies that TDs not only serve as bridges between those homelands but do so through the practice of daily life, as aspects of humdrum social endeavors, and above all as an endemic constituent of nor-malcy. In this, TDs assert the reality of a kind of family affinity across national borders, encompassing the scattered diasporics of the same origin, as well as the citizens of the ‘old country.’ If not as one nation – everyone has his or her own national identity – at least as one ‘people,’ or even one ‘world,’ and in other words – as one privileged space of interconnectedness. To be sure, dispersion over the globe erodes the shared cultural idiosyncrasies of diasporas but the singularities they retain, each in its own way, guaran-tee connectedness despite the versatility of their inescapable hybridization.

These developments, that require us to examine our societal and global realities through new prisms, seem to accord with the perspectives offered by the notion of chaos




that has recently gained popularity in the social sciences. Chaos typically refers to situa-tions dominated by unpredictability (Gleick, 1987). The antithesis of law and order, it designates unrestrictiveness – both creative and destructive. Chaotic realities, to be sure, can hardly be objects of systematic analysis since the principle of chaos implies perma-nent, overall, and uncontrolled lack of cohesion (Urry, 2002, 2005). However, where chaos designates inconsistent situations that still exhibit some stability, that notion does not necessarily mean orderlessness at the level of perceptions. Once a chaotic picture becomes recurrent and is regularly seen, it becomes familiar to actors. The perception of disorder leaves room for a notion of configuration structured by the respective position-ing of each object vis-a-vis the others. Their diverse and intrinsically incoherent ‘contri-butions’ to the totality may then be viewed by actors as ‘one whole,’ that is, a gestalt (‘configuration’ in German) – notwithstanding the possibility that the individual ele-ments of that gestalt find themselves there, independent from each other (Ben-Rafael and Sternberg, 2009). What is more, as gestalt theory contends (Scholl, 2001), that sort of configuration may even be viewed as illustrating, as such, structural properties that per-tain to none of its individual constituents, but to the set as a whole.

In this vein, and with respect to both actual homelands and transnational allegiances, the present-day multiplicity of diasporic communities may be viewed as generating social incoherence and cultural discontinuity. Yet in both respects they can also be ana-lyzed as gestalt for the very fact that they are reproduced recurrently, and belong to the overall images that actors crystallize of the societal reality, on the one hand, and of their respective transnational entity, on the other.

In this context, there is also room here to pinpoint that the coexistence of communities in the frame of the same diasporic world, and of various diaspora communities evolving in the same societal space, eventually create different lines of what Wittgenstein (Schatzki, 1996) called ‘family resemblance,’ i.e. the principle of unequal participation of actors with a number of common features. Coexistence in the same society, exposure to the mainstream culture, and to the influence of groups rubbing shoulders with them, cannot leave diasporic communities and individuals indifferent, and should receive expression in the ways they express their adherence to their original legacies. Above all, diasporics of any origin who share the same society inevitably come to share a common national identity and general commitments, most probably downgrading their transna-tional allegiances to secondary importance.

On the other hand, societal identification and commitment cannot be ‘total’ at a time when it is not exclusive, and communities also belong to another world – through their close contact with their original homeland and fellow-diasporics living elsewhere. In this aspect, they evaluate how different they have become over time, though the very encoun-ter also contributes to an awareness of what they have in common in terms of their diasporic identity and identification.

These lines of family affinity influence each other and tend to attenuate the chaotic character of contemporary societies as well as of diasporas, increasing the permeability of social and national boundaries. In so doing, they multiply both the opportunities for inter-group contact, adjustments, and coexistence, as well as, most probably, some ‘good reasons’ for conflict. Primarily, they demonstrate how far their study and investigation relates to the transformations of today’s global social reality.



Ben-Rafael 855

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Annotated further reading

Ben-Rafael E and Sternberg Y (eds) (2009) Transnationalism: Diasporas and the Advent of a New (Dis)order. Leyden and Boston: Brill. This book presents in Part I a set of major perspectives on contemporary diasporas. Parts II and III discuss empirical case studies – Part II discusses the paradigmatic case of the Jews, Part III a range of cases in different countries and stemming from different backgrounds. Part IV compares major global diasporic entities and draws out a few theoretical conclusions and assessments.

Cohen R (1997) Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: UCL Press. Robin Cohen points out the changing meanings of diaspora and elaborates on the typical features of contemporary cases. He outlines the diversity of notions of diaspora and, more particularly, what he calls vic-tim diasporas, trading, labor, and business diasporas. He also focuses on the eventual relations that bind identity and belonging to diasporic politics. Most interestingly, Cohen elaborates on diasporas as characteristic of a late modern condition.

Dufoix S (2008) Diasporas. Berkeley: University of California Press. This book discusses suc-cessively the nature of diasporas, the condition of dispersion which is endemic to it, the ways communities are able to maintain connections with lands of origin and fellow-diasporans set-tled elsewhere, and how the distance might be managed. Of particular interest is the first chap-ter, which starts with the discussion of the history of the concept and proposes a synthetic analytical framework that is proposed for given aspects of cases such as Jews, Armenians, Africans, or Chinese.

Glick Schiller N (ed.) (1998) Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered. New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. This book elaborates on present-day immigrants’ relation to original homelands, and their experience of social life across borders through continuous contact with theirs left far away. These contacts – in the areas of family, business, or social – result in the retention of genuine involvement in those societies. This, however, does not preclude diasporics also fully involving themselves in their new environments. The contributors to this volume delve into the diverse implications of this phenomenon and discuss the construction of migrants’ transnational identity and their relation to the nation-state and nationalism.

Huntington SP (2005) Who Are We? New York: Free Press. Huntington analyses America’s multi-culturalization stemming from the massive immigration of Mexicans. He considers that demo-graphic explosion as causing a Clash of Civilizations within the US borders that alters the identity of the society. It jeopardizes the US identity, which, in his view, is given shape by the Anglo-Protestant culture, the English language, the rule of law, work ethic, education, and upward mobility. Up to recently, immigrants adopted this culture as a means to thrive within American society. However, says Huntington, Mexicans are different – due to the proximity of the original homeland, regional concentration, historical presence, a religious faith that is not Protestantism, and a language that is itself a world language.

Laguerre MS (2006) Diaspora, Politics and Globalization. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Laguerre takes an innovative approach to the analysis of migration studies by focusing on the understanding of the relationships among migrants, their specific localities in their home countries, and their everyday practices in the receiving societies. This approach transcends current views in migration studies. He speaks of a radial relationship with the home country where migrants communicate among themselves and with the home country simultaneously.




In viewing the diaspora from a global perspective, the author reveals a new theory of intercon-nectedness in migration, which questions the relevance of the notion of transnationalism.

Taylor C (1994) Multiculturalism (expanded paperback edition), ed. Gutmann, A with commentary by KA Appiah, J Habermas, SC Rockefeller, M Walzer and S Wolf. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. This new edition of Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’ brings together a range of prominent philosophers and social scientists to debate the essentials of contemporary multiculturalism. Charles Taylor’s original question – to which he answered positively – asked about the capacity of liberal democratic regimes to endorse the recognition of different legacies. This debate is joined, in this volume, by Habermas, Appiah, and others who question the tensions implied by multiculturalism for institutions and collective identities as well as for religious, gender, ethnic, and other social categories.

References

Alba R and Nee V (2003) Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Alba R and Nee V (2007) Assimilation. In: Ritzer J (ed.) Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Alexander JC, Eyerman R, Giesen B et al. (2004) Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Anderson B (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism rev. edn. London: Verso.

Anthias F (1998) Evaluating ‘diaspora’ beyond ethnicity. Sociology 32(3): 557–580.Appadurai A (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press.Bade KJ and Oltmer J (eds) (1999) Aussiedler: deutsche Einwanderer aus Osteuropa. IMIS-

Schriften, Bd. 8. Osnabrück: V& R Unipress.Banton M (2008) The sociology of ethnic relations. Ethnic and Racial Studies 31(7): 1267–1285.Barth F (ed.) (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture

Difference. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.Baubock R (1994) Transnational Citizenship. Aldershot: Edward Elgar.Baubock R (1998) The crossing and blurring of boundaries in international migration: Challenges

for social and political theory. In: Baubock R and Rundell JF (eds) Blurred Boundaries: Migration, Ethnicity, Citzenship. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 17–52.

Bauböck R (2010) Cold constellations and hot identities: Political theory questions about trans-nationalism and diaspora. In: Bauböck R and Faist T (eds) Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 295–321.

Bauman Z (2000) Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.Bayar M (2009) Reconsidering primordialism: An alternative approach to the study of ethnicity.

Ethnic and Racial Studies 32(9): 1639–1657.Beck U (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.Ben-Rafael E (2001) Ethnicity, sociology of. International Encyclopedia of the Social and

Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 7. London: Elsevier, pp. 4838–4842.Ben-Rafael E (2002) Jewish Identities: Fifty Intellectuals Answer Ben-Gurion. Leiden and Boston: Brill.Ben-Rafael E (2003) Multiculturalism and multilingualism in Israel. In: Hary BH (ed.) Corpus

Linguistic and Modern Hebrew. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, The Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies, pp. 39–60.

Ben-Rafael M and Ben-Rafael E (2009) The linguistic landscape of transnationalism: The divided heart of Europe. In: Ben-Rafael E and Sternberg Y (eds) Transnationalism: Diasporas and the Advent of a New (Dis)order. Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 399–416.



Ben-Rafael 857

Ben-Rafael E and Sternberg Y (2009) Epilogue: Chaos and gestalt. In: Ben-Rafael E and Sternberg Y (eds) Transnationalism: Diasporas and the Advent of a New (Dis)order. Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 687–692.

Bernstein M (2005) Identity politics. Annual Review of Sociology 31: 47–74.Bhabha HK (2004) The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.Bowen JR (2004) Beyond migration: Islam as a transnational public space. Journal of Ethnic and

Migration Studies 30(5): 879–894.Brubaker R (1992) Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.Brubaker R (2001) The return of assimilation? Changing perspectives on immigration and its

sequels in France, Germany, and the United States. Ethnic and Racial Studies 24(4): 531–548.Brubaker R (2009) Accidental diasporas and external ‘homelands’ in Central and Eastern Europe:

Past and present. In: Ben-Rafael E and Sternberg Y (eds) Transnationalism: Diasporas and the Advent of a New (Dis)order. Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 461–482.

Calhoun C (ed.) (1994) Social Theory and the Politics of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.Camus R (2011) Décivilisation. Paris: Fayard.Cavalli-Sforza LL, Menozzi P and Piazza A (1994) The History and Geography of Human Genes.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Cheran R (2004) Diaspora circulation and transnationalism as agents for change in the post con-

flict zones of Sri Lanka. Berlin Berghof Foundation for Conflict ManagementCheung GCK (2004) Chinese diaspora as a virtual nation: Interactive roles between economic and

social capital. Political Studies 52: 664–684.Clark Hine D and McLeod J (eds) (1999) Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black

People in Diaspora. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Clarke PB (ed.) (1998) New Trends and Developments in African Religions. Westport, CT:

Greenwood Press.Clifford J (2003) On the Edges of Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.Cohen R (1994) Frontiers of Identity: The British and the Others. London: Longman.Cohen R (1997) Global Diasporas. An Introduction. London: UCL Press.Cohen R (2001) Diaspora. In: Smelser NJ and Baltes PB (eds) International Encyclopedia of the

Social and Behavioral Sciences. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 3642–3645.Cohen R (2007) Solid, ductile and liquid: Changing notions of homeland and home in diaspora

studies. QEH Working Paper Series No. 156Constable N (1999) At home but not at home: Filipina narratives of ambivalent returns. Cultural

Anthropology 14(2): 203–228.Covers C and Vermeulen H (eds) (1997) The Politics of Ethnic Consciousness. New York: St

Martin’s Press.Dufoix S (2008) Diasporas. Berkeley: University of California Press.Dustmann C, Frattini T and Theodoropoulos N (2010) Ethnicity and second generation immi-

grants in Britain. CReAM Discussion Paper Series 1004, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London.

Edwards JR (2010) Minority Languages and Group Identity: Cases and Categories. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

Eisenstadt SN (2001) The vision of modern and contemporary society. In: Ben-Rafael E with Sternberg Y (eds) Identity, Culture and Globalization. Leiden: Brill, pp. 25–47.

Eriksen TH (1993) Ethnicity and Nationalism. London: Pluto Press.Fanon F (1965) The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.Franklin HJ and Moss A (2001) From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. New

York: McGraw-Hill.




Fraser A (1995) The Gypsies (The Peoples of Europe), 2nd edn. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.Fung C (1999) Some thoughts on the state of Chinese diaspora studies. In: Pan L (ed.) The

Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Geertz C (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.Ghosh-Schellhorn M (2006) Anglophone India and its Diasporas. Berlin: LIT Verlag.Giddens A (1991) Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age.

Cambridge: Polity Press.Gilroy P (2004) Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race. London: Routledge.Glazer N (1997) We Are All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Gleick J (1987) Chaos: Making a New Science. London: Cardinal.Glick Schiller N, Basch L and Blanc-Szanton C (1992) Towards a Transnational Perspective

on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.

Glick Schiller N, Basch L and Blanc-Szanton C (1995) From immigrant to transmigrant: Theorizing transnational migration. Anthropological Quarterly 68(1): 43–68.

Gold SJ (2007) Race and ethnic consciousness. In: Ritzer J (ed.) Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Goldring L (2002) The Mexican state and transmigrant organizations: Negotiating the boundaries of membership and participation. Latin American Research Review 37: 55–99.

Gomez ET and Hsin-Huang MH (eds) (2004) Chinese Enterprise, Transnationalism, and Identity. London: Routledge Curzon.

Green C (ed.) (1997) Globalization and Survival in the Black Diaspora: The New Urban Challenge. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Hall S (1990) Cultural identity and diaspora. In: Rutherford J (ed.) Identity, Community, Culture, Difference. London. Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 222–237.

Heckmann F and Schnapper D (2003) Introduction. In: Heckmann F and Schnapper D (eds) The Integration of Immigrants in European Societies: National Differences and Trends of Convergence. Stuttgart: Lucius and Lucius/The European Forum for Migration Studies, pp. 9–14.

Hollinger DA (1995) Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New York: Basic Books.Hossein-Zadeh I (2005) The Muslim world and the West: The roots of conflict. Arab Studies

Quarterly (ASQ) 27(3): 1–12.Huntington SP (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York:

Simon and Schuster.Huntington SP (2005) Who Are We? New York: Free Press.Jenkins R (2007) Ethnicity. In: Ritzer J (ed.) Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Malden, MA:

Blackwell.Laguerre MS (2003) Urban Multiculturalism and Globalization in New York City: An Analysis of

Diasporic Temporalities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Laguerre MS (2006) Diaspora, Politics and Globalization. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Laguerre MS (2009) The transnational network nation: Diaspora, homeland, and hostland. In:

Ben-Rafael E and Sternberg Y (eds) Transnationalism: Diasporas and the Advent of a New (Dis)order. Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 195–210.

Levi-Strauss C (1961) Race et histoire. Paris: Gonthier.Levi-Strauss C (1977) Anthropologie structurale. Paris: Plon.Levitt P (2001) The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley: University of California Press.Levitt P and Glick Schiller N (2008) Concpetualizing simultaneity: A transnational social field

perspective on society. In: Kahgram S and Levitt P (eds) The Transnational Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 284–298.



Ben-Rafael 859

Lo L and Wang S (1997) Settlement patterns of Toronto’s Chinese immigrants: Convergence or divergence? Canadian Journal of Regional Science 20(1–2): 49–72.

Louie A (2000) Re-territorializing transnationalism: Chinese Americans and the Chinese mother-land. American Ethnologist 27(3): 645–669.

Ma L and Cartier C (eds) (2004) The Chinese Diaspora: Space, Place, Mobility and Identity. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Matsuoka A and Sorenson J (2001) Ghosts and Shadows: Construction of Identity and Community in an African Diaspora, 2nd edn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Morawska E (2003) Immigrant transnationalism and assimilation: A variety of combinations and the analytic strategy it suggests. In: Joppke C and Morawska E (eds) Toward Assimilation and Citizenship: Immigrants in Liberal Nation-states. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 133–176.

Münz R (2002) Ethnos or demos? Migration and citizenship in Germany. In: Levy D and Weiss Y (eds) Challenging Ethnic Citizenship: German and Israeli Perspectives on Immigration. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 15–35

Nagata J (2005) Christianity among transnational Chinese: Religious versus (sub)ethnic affilia-tion. International Migration 43(3): 99–128.

Odem ME and Lacy E (eds) (2009) Latino Immigrants and the Transformation of the U.S. South. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Oh CJ (2007) Role of homeland in preserving diaspora identity: The case of Korea and Turkey’s engagements with the Korean and Ahiska Turkish diasporas in Central Asia. Journal of Central Asian and Caucasian Studies (JCACS) 2(4): 156–172.

Ostergaard-Nielsen EK (2001) Transnational political practices and the receiving state: Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands. Global Networks 1(3): 261–281.

Nederveen Pieterse J (2009) Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Ratcliffe P (2010) Ethnic group. Available at: Sociopedia.isaRoy O (2006) Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. CERI Series in Comparative

Politics and International Studies. New York: Columbia University Press.Safran W (1991) Diasporas in modern societies: Myths of homeland and return. Diaspora 1(1): 83–99.Safran W (2004) Deconstructing and comparing diasporas. In: Kokot W, Tölölyan K and Alfonso C

(eds) Diaspora, Identity and Religion. London: Routledge, pp. 9–29.Schatzki TR (1996) Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the

Social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Schnapper D (2005) Ethnic revival and religious revival in ‘providential democracies’. In:

Ben-Rafael E and Sternberg Y (eds) Comparing Modernities. Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 205–221.

Scholl BJ (2001) Objects and attention: The state of the art. Cognition 80(1–2): 1–46.Schrag P (2010) Not Fit for Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America. Berkeley:

University of California Press.Sheffer G (2003) Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Shils E (1957) Primordial, personal, sacred and civil ties: Some particular observations on the

relationships of sociological research and theory. British Journal of Sociology 8(2): 130–145.Skinner EP (1993) The dialectic between diasporas and homelands. In: Harris JE (ed.) Global

Dimensions of the African Diaspora. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, pp. 11–40.Smith AD (1992) Chosen peoples: Why ethnic groups survive. Ethnic and Racial Studies

15(3): 440–449.Smith AD (1996) Memory and modernity: Reflections on Ernest Gellner’s theory of nationalism.

Nations and Nationalism 2(3): 371–383.




Sökefeld M (2006) Mobilizing in transnational space: A social movement approach to the forma-tion of diaspora. Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs 6(3): 265–284.

Sommers UK (1991) Inventing Latinismo the creation of ‘Hispanic’ panethnicity in the United States. Journal of American Folklore 104(411): 32–53.

Soysal YN (1994) Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Soysal YN (2000) Citizenship and identity: Living in diasporas in post-war Europe? Ethnic and Racial Studies 23(1): 1–15.

Spencer S (2006) Race and Ethnicity: Culture, Identity and Representation. London and New York: Routledge.

Stone J and Dennis R (eds) (2003) Race and Ethnicity: Comparative and Theoretical Approaches. Oxford: Blackwell.

Tan C (2003) Living with ‘difference’: Growing up ‘Chinese’ in white Australia. Journal of Australian Studies 27(77): 101–112.

Taylor C (1994) Multiculturalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Thelen D (2009) Rethinking history from transnational perspectives. In: Ben-Rafael E and

Sternberg Y (eds) Transnationalism: Diasporas and the Advent of a New (Dis)order. Leyden and Boston: Brill, pp. 169–180.

Tölölyan K (1996) The Armenian diaspora. Unpublished paper.Tsing A (2000) The global situation. Cultural Anthropology 15(3): 327–360.Tsuda T (2003) Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in

Transnational Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press.Urry J (2002) The global complexities of September 11th. Theory, Culture and Society 19(4):

57–69.Urry J (2005) The complexity turn. Theory, Culture and Society 22(5): 1–14.Van der Berghe P (1970) Race and Ethnicity. New York: Basic Books.Vermeulen H (2010) Segmented assimilation and cross-national comparative research on the

integration of immigrants and their children. Ethnic and Racial Studies 33(7): 1214–1230.Vertovec S (1997) Three meanings of diasporas. Diaspora 6(3): 277–297.Waldinger R (2011) Immigrant transnationalism. Sociopedia.isa.Weber M (1977) Economy and Society, ed. Roth G and Wittish C. Berkeley: University of

California Press.Wimmer A (2008) Elementary strategies of ethnic boundary making. Ethnic and Racial Studies

31(6): 1025–1055.Yeoman B (2000) Hispanic diaspora. Mother Jones July/August.Young G (2011) The Communist Experience in the Twentieth Century: A Global History through

Sources. New York: Oxford University Press.

Author biography

Eliezer Ben-Rafael is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Tel-Aviv University and past president of the International Institute of Sociology. His recent works include Jewish Identities (2001) and Is Israel One? (2005). His edited works include The Communal Idea in the 21st Century (2012), Transnationalism: The Advent of a New (Dis)order (2009), Comparing Modernities (2005), Sociology and Ideology (2003), and Identity, Culture and Globalization (2001).

Résumé Les études des diasporas contemporaines adoptent un grand nombre de perspectives différentes. L’une de leurs caractéristiques la plus largement reconnue est leur capacité



Ben-Rafael 861

à adopter la double résidence et à concurrencer l’aspiration des cultures nationales à l’unité socioculturelle. L’insertion des communautés diasporiques dans les sociétés modernes a tendance aujourd’hui à éroder leur singularité mais les symboles qu’elles maintiennent ou continuent de créer peuvent encore justifier la reproduction culturelle des entités transnationales. La distinction conceptuelle entre identité collective, identification et procès d’identification est utile lorsque l’on considère que les diasporas sont devenues un facteur de multiculturalisation des sociétés actuelles, tout en devenant elles-mêmes des entités multiculturelles, sous l’influence de cultures dominantes des différents milieux où se sont installées ces communautés dispersées. Les incohérentes, voire chaotiques, réalités produites par ces contradictions aux yeux des observateurs ne sont pas nécessairement perçues en ces termes par leurs acteurs. Leur présence au sein des sociétés d’accueil, leur impact sur les populations non diasporiques, les nouvelles relations qu’elle créent entre les territoires ancestraux et les pays d’accueil et leur efforts pour promouvoir des espaces transnationales interconnectés représentent de nouveaux développements qui contribuent à faire avancer la société vers une nouvelle ère.

Mots-clés

diaspora, double résidence, mondialisation, identité, multiculturalisme, transnationalisme, espace interconnecté, chaos

Resumen

Las diásporas contemporáneas han sido estudiadas desde muy diferentes perspectivas. Un aspecto ampliamente reconocido es su capacidad de ilustrar cómo la doble residencia desafía la aspiración de unidad sociocultural de las culturas nacionales. La integración en nuevas sociedades hoy tiende a erosionar la singularidad de las comunidades de diáspora, aunque los símbolos que conservan o crean garantizarían su reproducción cultural como entidades transnacionales. La distinción conceptual entre identidad colectiva, identificación y proceso de identificación es útil cuando consideramos cómo las diásporas se han convertido en un factor de la pluralidad cultural de las sociedades contemporáneas, mientras que ellas mismas se vuelven entidades multiculturales a través de la influencia de las culturas prevalecientes en los diversos ambientes de sus comunidades dispersas. Las realidades incoherentes – hasta caóticas – que estas tendencias contradictorias generan para el analista no son necesariamente percibidas en estos términos por los actores. Su presencia en las sociedades, su impacto en las poblaciones no-diaspóricas, las nuevas relaciones que se crean entre la patria originaria y la nueva y, sobre todo, su esfuerzo como espacios transnacionales interconectados, representan desarrollos que contribuyen para el camino de la sociedad hacia una nueva era.

Palabras clave

diáspora, doble residencia, globalización, identidad, multiculturalismo, transnacionalismo, espacio interconectado, caos



Current Sociology 2013 Ben Rafael 842 61

Documents

Transcript of Current Sociology 2013 Ben Rafael 842 61