Conclusion: new directions

Seán McLoughlin and Kim Knott

Concluding Diasporas
The aim of this volume has been to add something significantly different
in a scholarly market of publications on diasporas that has relied heavily on
classic books by key authors and on a multitude of ethnographies and edited
collections on particular diasporas in context. The collected essays chart the
history of scholarship on diasporas through its principal concepts, disciplinary
intersections and exemplary global movements. Whether in the popular imagi-
nation or the classroom, ‘diasporas’ are more than empirical distributions of
scattered people, their networks, artefacts and consciousness (Vertovec 1997);
they are what scholars, diasporic interlocutors and other commentators have
made of them: their representations, descriptions and analyses. How they are
studied, conceptualized and theorized, by whom, in relation to what questions
and problems, in which disciplines, and according to which frameworks and
processes, are all important for understanding the subject of diasporas. This
book is an attempt to bring some clarity to these issues, and, by engaging with
the many perspectives of its contributors, to position diaspora studies within
the academy while also recognizing its dynamism.
All fields of study change over time, and this one is no exception. As Part
One showed, scholars writing about population movements and their social and
cultural entailments have at various times favoured differing concepts, link-
ing them in different ways, and devising or importing new ones. Over the last
twenty years, the focus on ‘diaspora’, in association with ‘transnationalism’ and
‘globalization’, provided substantial theoretical and methodological resources
for mounting a critique of those bounded conceptions, such as ‘nation’, ‘com-
munity’ and ‘ethnicity’, once central to the discussion of social groups and
identities. Of the three critical terms, ‘diaspora’, in particular, was the one that
allowed culture back into a scholarly debate that had become dominated by
ideas about structure and society. With attention given to agency, to subjectivity
as well as the identity of groups, to consciousness and imagination of home
and away as well as migration, to representations as well as reality, and to
things as well as people, ‘diaspora’ allowed for multidisciplinary participation,
interdisciplinary engagement and, unsurprisingly, vocal debate about the appli­
cation, definition and elasticity of the term.

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 At various moments in the last twenty years ‘diaspora’ has been used in the
following ways: as a circumscribed reference to a particular people; an inclusive
notion incorporating a multitude of different types of groups, things and ideas;
a term that signals a minority identity politics; a label with political purchase;
an insider term to convey particular sentiments, history and identity; a novel,
transgressive category; a tired and exhausted one; and as a concept that brings
into question its own end. When is a diaspora no longer diasporic? When does
the conviction of ‘staying put’ make the notion of ‘diaspora’ no longer appropri-
ate? As Shneer and Aviv enquire at the end of Part Three, can we conceive of the
end of (a) diaspora? And, shifting the question from diasporas themselves to
their study, when does the concept of ‘diaspora’ stop being useful? Ultimately
it will be for future scholars to adjudicate on this, but the answer will depend
on the continuing capacity of the term to have broad spatial, temporal, social
and cultural application, to satisfy the theoretical instincts of academics in a
range of disciplines, and to be resilient in the face of criticism.
Many disciplines and fields of enquiry within the humanities, arts and social
sciences have treated the subject matter of diasporas, and we have sought to
illustrate such engagements in Part Two. The authors writing in this part have
brought an enormous range of concepts, models, perspectives, problems and
possibilities to the scholarly table. A careful reading of the essays on inter­
sections reveals the way in which certain disciplines and fields have built on the
intervention of particular theorists, such as Bhabha and Hall in cultural studies
or Glick Schiller and Levitt in sociology, with others – particularly Gilroy, Clif-
ford, Cohen and Appadurai – used by scholars irrespective of their disciplinary
niche. Of immense value has been the way in which each essayist has also
brought to light more specialized research from their own field; so we leave
the multidisciplinary feast with references to work on diasporas by economists,
political scientists, development and security specialists, by linguists, cultural
critics, and scholars of religion, film and performance, among others.
As we suggested in the Introduction, the global movements, networks, cir-
culations and exchanges illustrated in Part Three criss-cross the globe, linking
places in the South, East, West and North, sometimes becoming well trodden
and familiar, but also facilitating new connections, identities and possibilities.
In the third part of the book the authors have charted experiences of return as
well as setting out, of circulation and networking as well as travel and settle­
ment. Different historical, political and economic circumstances have been
foregrounded, and questions posed about the relationships between religion
and diaspora, and colonialism and diaspora, and whether the transnational
movements of artists and intellectuals are really diasporic. The significance
of space and movement for understanding diasporas becomes clear when we
consider not only the variety of geographical movements represented by the
essays in Part Three but the different diasporic spatialities reflected in them.
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Some populations have maintained dynamic relations with places of origin, with

Conclusion
repeated movements back and forth; others have experienced exile or permanent
resettlement. Some diasporas have been sustained by religious sentiments rather
than or in addition to a consciousness of national origins. Some have exhibited
complex identities based on multiple historical movements and local position-
ing. Some formally settled, indigenous people have participated in diasporic
contact zones and sought to unsettle their own seemingly stable identities,
while others, labelled diasporic, have desired only to be settled and accepted
as citizens with full rights and opportunities.

Leaving ‘diaspora’ for ‘diaspora space’

At the end of Part One the importance of location for diasporas was stressed,
in terms of multi-locality as well as the conventional pairing of here and there,
but also in the context of being in situ as well as in transit. As James Procter
noted, the term ‘diaspora’ signifies ‘to deposit’ as well as ‘to scatter’ and ‘to
sow’ (2003: 14), thus anticipating the ‘burden of dwelling’ (ibid.: 209). Those
diaspora spaces (Brah 1996), where people – whether they see themselves as
new diasporans, established settlers or indigenous natives – must learn to dwell
and to rub along together, have themselves become key sites for an analysis
of the complex entailments and impacts of diasporas. Arguably, it is in the
practical, political and intellectual challenges that arise when such spaces are
foregrounded that the future of diaspora studies lies.
Leaving ‘diaspora’ for ‘diaspora space’ means occupying an arena in which
locations and their complex populations are taken seriously, one that necessar-
ily constitutes a challenge for policy-makers, makes intellectual and political
demands of scholars and other engaged commentators, and is a public and
civic responsibility. As Avtar Brah suggested,

Diaspora space as a conceptual category is ‘inhabited’ not only by those who

have migrated and their descendants but equally by those who are constructed
and represented as indigenous. In other words, the concept of diaspora space (as
opposed to that of diaspora) includes the entanglement of genealogies of disper-
sion with those of ‘staying put’. (1996: 181)

Indeed, such entanglements led to over a decade of extensive engagement

with the ideas and ideals of both ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’,
as scholars and other commentators sought to make sense of and respond to
ethnic difference, urban plurality and the challenges of people living together
rather than apart. Failed policies, unfulfilled dreams and melancholic malaise
led Paul Gilroy (2006: 2) to write in ‘unorthodox defense of this twentieth-century
utopia of tolerance, peace and mutual regard’ that is multicultural society. As
a cultural theorist, he argued against revisionist accounts and for the need
to locate contemporary multicultures in their imperial and colonial histories,
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suggesting that ‘multicultural ethics and politics could be premised upon an
agonistic, planetary humanism’ (ibid.: 4) in which it is possible to celebrate
difference with conviviality.
From a very different perspective in social anthropology, and with new
direc­tions in migration studies in mind, Steven Vertovec (2007) faced the issue
of the complex entanglements of diaspora space by proposing the notion of
super-diversity. He identified the factors associated with the complex diversity
of contemporary cities as ‘country of origin (comprising a variety of possible
subset traits such as ethnicity, language[s], religious tradition, regional and
local identities, cultural values and practices)’, migration channel, legal status,
migrants’ human capital, access to employment, locality, transnationalism, and
the responses by local government, service providers and other local people
(ibid.: 1049). He noted also the challenges posed for policy-makers by such
an environment and set of conditions, suggesting that scholars have a role to
play with their knowledge and expertise in the various aspects that contribute
to super-diversity (ibid.: 1047). New contact zones and types of engagement,
new expressions of cosmopolitanism and creolization, but also new patterns
of segregation and prejudice, all present possibilities for future research and
analysis (ibid.: 1045–6).
Looking back at the history of diaspora studies, we suggest that the widening
of public as well as scholarly interest in diasporas in the last decade led to a shift
in the theoretical agenda from a focus on the poetics and politics of diasporic
location associated with a fragmented black Atlantic and post-colonial context
(e.g. Gilroy 1993a; Bhabha 1994), to one grounded in the urban multicultures of
the South and North, informed by globalization and super-diversity (e.g. Glick
Schiller and Caglar 2009; Vertovec 2007), and contextualized by public debates
and government and multinational priorities. As Kalra et al. (2005) argued, the
overwhelming emphasis on culture in diaspora studies had previously distracted
scholars from the material realities of political economy and the continuing
power of the security-conscious state to regulate citizenship, ‘de-diasporize’
and ‘undo’ hyphenated identities, especially since 9/11. Notably, some more
recent publications are by political scientists (e.g. Sheffer 2003; Esman 2009)
who are concerned with the problem and implications of diasporas for nation-
states, whether in terms of loyalty and international relations, ethnic conflict
and adaptation, or public policy.
Nation-states, hardly touched by theoretical claims that they would face eras-
ure as a result of repeated transnational circuits by diasporic world citizens,
have reasserted themselves to mark, secure and protect their borders and once
more to classify and control their – increasingly fluid and complex – popula-
tions. Joining the debate about the importance and impact of diasporas, they
have refocused their energies by managing and capitalizing upon both their
diasporas abroad and migrants within through a range of discursive and policy
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mechanisms, focused particularly in areas such as aid and development, secu-

Conclusion
rity and community. The nature of diasporas scholarship is changing to reflect
such shifts and interventions, while continuing to connect with an ideological
legacy critical of the nation-state, immigration policy and political discourse on
multiculturalism and integration. Within diaspora studies, as in other fields in
the social sciences and increasingly the arts and humanities, scholars face a
tension between a critical politics of resistance and an opportunity to make a
difference through engaged research. The two are not incommensurable, but
the path to combine them with integrity may indeed be demanding and thorny.

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