Diasporas: Project Home Page

Welcome to the Diasporas - Exploring Critical Issues project home page. This inter- and multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the contemporary experience of Diasporas – communities who conceive of themselves as a national, ethnic, linguistic or other form of cultural and political construction of collective membership living outside of their ‘home lands.’ In particular, key issues to be addressed include: what are the defining characteristics of Diasporas and what distinguishes one from the other? What role does ‘home’ and ‘host’ cultures play in developing relationships between communities in a global environment? How new is the concept of Diasporas; does it capture new global realities or designate old phenomena in a new way?

The project will also assess the larger context of major world transformations, for example, new forms of migration and the massive movements of people across the globe, as well as the impact and contribution of globalisation on tensions, conflicts and the sense of acceptance, rootedness and membership. Looking to encourage innovative trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand what it means for people today to have diasporic experiences and a multiplicity of social, political and cultural memberships.

The project will critically engage with a number of core themes:

Defining and Grasping the Concept of Diasporas
Identifying the role of - culture and politics; home and host; space and time; centre and periphery; numbers and collective imagination; class, opportunities, money and new communication technologies
Migration, Settlement and Identity
What does it mean, today, to belong to a nation, to an ethnic, religious or linguistic group, to a culture and to settle in a place that one does not call home?
Culture, Belonging and Collective Imaginations
Globalisation and the claims of Diasporas. What are the implications for traditions, language, literature, arts, cinema, television and other forms of representation and cultural production? New forms of global exclusion. Who can claim belonging to a Diaspora?
Institutions and Diasporas. Institutions that allow, maintain and reproduce Diasporas. Structures and forces which work against their formation?
The cultural and political context of host countries: acceptance vs xenophobia, fear and ignorance vs openness and knowledge
Diasporas in the making of social and public policy in host and home countries: remittances and economic dependencies, professions and commodity exchanges, social and cultural interlacing, policies of mutual recognition

Related themes will also be identified for development and exploration. Out of our deliberations it is anticipated that a series of related cross-context research projects will develop.



Project Leader: S. Ram Vemuri Faculty of Law, Business and Arts, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia
Welcome to the Diasporas - Exploring Critical Issues project home page. This inter- and multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the contemporary experience of Diasporas – communities who conceive of themselves as a national, ethnic, linguistic or other form of cultural and political construction of collective membership living outside of their ‘home lands.’ In particular, key issues to be addressed include: what are the defining characteristics of Diasporas and what distinguishes one from the other? What role does ‘home’ and ‘host’ cultures play in developing relationships between communities in a global environment? How new is the concept of Diasporas; does it capture new global realities or designate old phenomena in a new way? The project will also assess the larger context of major world transformations, for example, new forms of migration and the massive movements of people across the globe, as well as the impact and contribution of globalisation on tensions, conflicts and the sense of acceptance, rootedness and membership. Looking to encourage innovative trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand what it means for people today to have diasporic experiences and a multiplicity of social, political and cultural memberships. The project will critically engage with a number of core themes: Defining and Grasping the Concept of Diasporas Identifying the role of - culture and politics; home and host; space and time; centre and periphery; numbers and collective imagination; class, opportunities, money and new communication technologies Migration, Settlement and Identity What does it mean, today, to belong to a nation, to an ethnic, religious or linguistic group, to a culture and to settle in a place that one does not call home? Culture, Belonging and Collective Imaginations Globalisation and the claims of Diasporas. What are the implications for traditions, language, literature, arts, cinema, television and other forms of representation and cultural production? New forms of global exclusion. Who can claim belonging to a Diaspora? Institutions and Diasporas. Institutions that allow, maintain and reproduce Diasporas. Structures and forces which work against their formation? The cultural and political context of host countries: acceptance vs xenophobia, fear and ignorance vs openness and knowledge Diasporas in the making of social and public policy in host and home countries: remittances and economic dependencies, professions and commodity exchanges, social and cultural interlacing, policies of mutual recognition Related themes will also be identified for development and exploration. Out of our deliberations it is anticipated that a series of related cross-context research projects will develop.
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