Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
156
granted idea in many studies on diasporas,
that they display a compact entity from
homogeneous countries of origin.
That theme appears in a few more
chapters. Thus, Freek Colombijn claims
that even during the colonial era in
Indonesia there is ample empirical
evidence that class differences were
already predominant in the socio-spatial
divide. In some situations people felt part
of an ethnic community and at other times
part of a socially defined [ethnically
heterogeneous] neighborhood. Christine
Avenarius reports that starting in the early
1970s,
economically
well-to-do
immigrants from Taiwan in Southern
California (and in other countries) left the
ethnic enclaves and moved out to the
suburbs.
However,
although
the
community is not visible in terms of
residential cluster and has only a weak
level of cohesion, nevertheless, its
members consider themselves to have a
joint social identity.
Maja Korac describes the emergence of
a new Chinese diaspora in Serbia. The
paper examines how global restructuring
and transnational practices are intertwined
with the agency of the people who decide
to move and engender new patterns of
migration and incorporation.
The case of Lithuanian-Americans
introduced by Vytis Ciubrinskas reveals
the unusual development of ‘nationalist
Lithuanianness’ at a faster pace in the US
than in Lithuania itself. Consequently, the
researcher reports about the asymmetrical
social and cultural expectations on both
continents, those who return to Lithuania
versus the new immigrants to the US.
Gabriel Sheffer inquires the diasporans
relations, activities, and impacts on
homelands, the host-countries and the
international system at large. He
distinguishes between the ‘positive’ and
the ‘negative’ interests and activities of the
diasporic entities on the international level.
For example, some organized diasporic
cores initiate and endorse intrastate
conflicts and violence in their homelands
as means of attaining their own self
interests.
The small Russian diaspora in Bulgaria
presented by Milena Benovska-Sabkova,
although composed of three different
waves of arrivals during the 20
th
Century,
has developed dense networks of
institutions and organizations. Post Soviet
Greeks/Pontic Greeks studied by Eftihia
Voutira present another interesting case
also compared with post Soviet Jews in
Israel. Greece, Germany and Israel define
access to citizenship in terms of
membership in the 'ethnic nation.'
However, most migrants do not abandon
their former identities. Moreover, in the
Pontic case, they use them as an advantage
for investing in the country of origin
(FSU), ‘repatriates as
migrants
co-exist in
two spaces, trying to draw their
comparative advantage from each’ (p.135).
A very different presentation by Hauke
Dorsch introduces the image of the griot as
symbol of the connection of Africans in the
diaspora to their homeland. No doubt, the
Africans’ diasporic history is traumatic
being denied of specific homeland's roots.
However, the interests of the groups
meeting in this situation, the Western
tourists of African decent and the local
people, are rather different. For example,
versus the tourist's romantic search for an
ancestral home, the local ‘hosts’ are
focused more on the economic benefits
