Routledge Dismantling Diasporas: Rethinking the Geographies of Diasporic Identity, Connection and Development

Re-energising debates on the conceptualisation of diasporas in migration scholarship and in geography, this work stresses the important role that geographers can play in interrupting assumptions about the spaces and processes of diaspora. The intricate, material and complex ways in which those in diaspora contest, construct and perform identity, politics, development and place is explored throughout this book. The authors ’dismantle’ diasporas in order to re-theorise the concept through empirically grounded, cutting-edge global research. This innovative volume will appeal to an international and interdisciplinary audience in ethnic, migration and diaspora studies as it tackles comparative, multi-sited and multi-method research through compelling case studies in a variety of contexts spanning the Global North and South. The research in this book is guided by four interconnected themes: the ways in which diasporas are constructed and performed through identity, the body, everyday practice and place; how those in diaspora become politicised and how this leads to unities and disunities in relation to 'here' and 'there'; the ways in which diasporas seek to connect and re-connect with their 'homelands' and the consequences of this in terms of identity formation, employment and theorising who 'counts' as a diaspora; and how those in diaspora engage with homeland development and the challenges this creates. Review ’This timely new book revisits and reinvigorates the study of diaspora by unpicking the seams of political and power divisions as well as the affective and performative dimensions of diaspora belonging and identities. With a particular emphasis on intersections with development studies, the richly ethnographic case studies examine both the ordinary everyday practices as well as the broader processes that merge and juxtapose the experiences of here and there, roots and routes.’ Loretta Baldassar, The University of Western Australia, Australia ’Dismantling the narrative of community, Christou and Mavroudi speak to the constitution, imagination, affectivity, development and discontinuities of diaspora as a multiple, fluid place making process. Not only a contribution to geography, this edited volume speaks to the multiple disciplines within diaspora studies. Contributors map identifications, networks and displacement processes within diverse multi-scalar transnational social fields of unequal power.’ Nina Glick Schiller, University of Manchester, UK and Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany ’As a postmodern study of the instability of diaspora boundaries this volume raises important issues. The best of its wide range of contributions prove the fruitfulness of interdisciplinary conversations between geographers and anthropologists, sociologists and historians.’ Pnina Werbner, Keele University, UK About the Author Anastasia Christou is Associate Professor of Sociology at Middlesex University, UK and Elizabeth Mavroudi is Lecturer in Human Geography at Loughborough University, UK.