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Latha Varadarajan, Back to the Future: Historical Materialism, Diaspora Politics, and the Limits of Novelty, International Political Sociology, Volume 6, Issue 1, March 2012, Pages 95–99, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-5687.2011.00152_2.x
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Extract
It has become almost obligatory for any published analyses of diasporas in global politics to begin with a section that offers conceptual clarification. Building on what is by now several decades of scholarship on the subject, authors generally commence with a nod toward the fact that diaspora is a “contested” concept. They then move on to a more or less systematic accounting of their understanding of this concept, using it as a springboard to explain specific aspects of diaspora politics, be it the emergence of diaspora networks working almost seamlessly across borders to effect changes in their “homeland” or, more recently, the involvement of states in institutionalizing their relationship with their diasporas. Notwithstanding the copious attention devoted to parsing out the subtleties and nuances of this concept, it is however striking that much of the scholarship on the role of diasporas in global politics has converged around a curious and curiously flattening account of what it means.
