How do the concepts ?border,” ?exile,” and ?diaspora” shape individual and group identities across cultures? Taking this question as a point of departure, this wide-ranging volume explores the ways that people create and represent a home away from home. Throughout, the authors emphasize the multiple subjectivities, cultural displacements, and identity politics that have characterized the postcolonial and post-World War II eras. They simultaneously affirm and challenge previous understandings of these three terms, and they investigate their malleability?the extent to which they apply to diverse communities. Once the idea of diaspora is dissociated from the historical experiences of a particular group of people, it becomes a universal designation, applicable to all displaced groups. This understanding of diaspora also allows for the creation of a ?nonnormative” intellectual community, one experienced by many contemporary critics and with which they identify. In the postcolonial context, a global ?middle voice” emerges that incorporates the critic and his or her identity as the participant-observer of the discourses on identity. As personal narratives transcend the autobiographical, they become indispensable guarantors of a free theoretical field, without a priori boundaries. The diaspora's voice is thus national and cultural, but it lacks the nation or the geographical definition that would constrain its subject. The essays in this volume approach the ideas of border, exile, and diaspora primarily as subjects of literary representations while recognizing the political stakes of diasporic identity. They synthesize the poetic with the political, but they also probe the existential consequences of displacement and cultural dislocation. The essays compel us to examine, within a dialogical complex, antagonistic but concurrent phenomena endowed with a new internal logic. This volume serves as a canvas representing the open-ended, discontinuous, and syncretic nature of the postmodern world. Rather than give definitive answers, the essays provide contingent responses to the myriad questions about culture, identity, and language embedded in modern history.

Migration is the most volatile sociopolitical issue of our time, as the current escalation of discourse and action in the United States and Europe concerning walls, border security, refugee camps, and deportations indicates. The essays by the international and interdisciplinary group of scholars assembled in this volume offer critical filters suggesting that this escalation and its historical precedents do not preclude redemptive counterstrategies. Encoded in narratives of affiliation and escape, these counterstrategies are variously launched as literary, cinematic, and civic interventions in past and present constructions of diasporic, migratory, or exilic identities. The essays trace these narratives through the figure of the “exile” as it moves across times, borders, and genres, transmogrifying into the fugitive, the escapee, the refugee, the nomad, the Other. Arguing that narratives and figures of migration to and in Europe and the Americas share tropes that link migration to kinship, community, refuge, and hegemony, the volume identifies a transhistorical, transcultural, and transnational common ground for experiences of mediated diaspora, migration, and exile at a time when public discourse and policy-making emphasize borders, divisions, and violent confrontations.

Border Terrains examines 21st century diasporas through the lenses of identity negotiation, religious faith, language, media and representations in fiction.

This volume explores the ways that people create and represent a home away from home. The authors emphasize politics of identity that have characterized the postcolonial and post-World War II eras, and examine the ways in which different communities have

Central to the aim of both this book is to rethink the concept of diaspora as it is used both academically and popularly at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It seeks to interrogate the notion of “diaspora” in an interdisciplinary way, and to explore the contradictions inherent in contemporary notions of place and identity. It presents explorations of both “traditional” diasporas, such as the Irish community in the United States and in Great Britain, as well as recently established diasporas being formed through new patterns of migration and resettlement. Traditional conceptions of diaspora focused on forced exile from the homeland and the adoption of conscious strategies of integration upon arrival in the new land. In the past, it was assumed that migrants would rapidly assimilate into their receiving societies. Alternatively, migrant workers were regarded by themselves and their host societies as “sojourners”: they were not expected to integrate precisely because their alien presence was perceived to be temporary. Two poles then framed the traditional interpretation of migration and settlement. On the one hand, migrants assimilated rapidly; on the other, migrants were temporarily in the host-land. Yet, the realisation both that the melting pot is a myth and that migrant workers do not, in the main, go home, has forced an increasing acceptance of ethnic diversity. This, combined with ongoing improvements in travel and communications technologies, facilitates today’s migrants in maintaining links with their home countries. The increased visibility of transnational ethnic communities and a resurgence in labour migration in the twenty-first century, have stimulated academic interest in both contemporary diasporas and in recovering the hidden narratives of earlier global migrations. The renewed interest in the formation and narrative of diasporas is evident across a range of disciplines. Moreover, the meaningful exploration of any aspect of the humanities and social sciences requires an inter-disciplinary approach. Thus is the aim of this volume. Contributors approach the issue of diaspora from a variety of academic backgrounds: sociology, politics, history, literature and the visual arts. Concomitantly, data sources are diverse, with contributors drawing on official government publications, literary sources and personal memoirs, paintings and photographs, popular culture and personal interviews. This diversity of data sources indicates the multifarious approaches to the exploration diaspora. More importantly, it highlights the critical role played by unofficial, and often hidden, narratives in representing the experiences of those who find themselves, through a variety of political, social and economic factors, displaced. "This edited collection is a timely and precocious answer to a gap in the literature of identities and nationhood. It is a response to the new challenges and opportunities facing diasporic communities and, what is more, sets out key pointers for rethinking diaspora in the twenty-first century. At a time when western states are facing the need to re-evaluate traditional responses to ethnic difference arising from migration in the mid-twentieth century, this book posits an important perspective on the multiculturalism debate. Contrary to previous political and scholarly assumptions, this book shows that the children and grandchildren of immigrants can continue to have an ambiguous relationship to the state in which they were born in part because of the very nature of diaspora. The enduringly complex and sometimes volatile insider/outsider relationship is explored in these chapters through analysis of various narratives, in textual, spoken and visual forms. Analysis of such ‘hidden narratives’ reveals that the meaning and pertinence of membership of a diasporic community is defined as much by the context of the host country as by the discourses of the homeland. Across their various sources and case studies, the authors demonstrate the power of the juncture between dominant national discourses of the host state and the identity of its immigrants. Each author notes how different the diasporic community in question would be – not to mention the impact on its relationship to the host state and the homeland – if some of narratives hidden over time were to be reclaimed. As one author puts it, flux in elements of identity-formation in postmodern society represents a chance to ‘engage in dialogue with our own diversity’. In constructing a coherent volume from such a diverse range of cases and disciplines, the editors successfully demonstrate the wide validity of their case for ‘rethinking diasporas’. Nonetheless, the specific origins of this book – a conference held in a border town in Ireland – are, it may be argued, uniquely significant. For the current process of change in Irish national identity is inseparable from central features of diaspora-formation that the authors highlight, including economic pressures. Moreover, just as the town of Dundalk has historically felt the effects of its proximity to Northern Ireland, so the ‘imagined borders’ of diaspora explored in this book are shown to be all the more powerful for the fact that their delineation is contested." —Katy Hayward (Institute for British-Irish Studies, UCD

During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, dictatorships in Latin America hastened the outward movement of intellectuals, academics, artists, and political and social activists to other countries. Following the coups that toppled democratically elected governments or curtailed parliamentary oversight, the incoming military or civilian-military administrations assumed that, by forcing those aligned with opposition movements out of the country, they would assure their control of politics and domestic public spheres. Yet, by enlarging a diaspora of co-nationals, the authoritarian rulers merely extrapolated internal dissent and conflicts, emboldening opposition forces beyond their national borders. Displaced individuals soon had a presence in many host countries, gaining the support of solidarity circles and advocacy networks that condemned authoritarianism and worked with exiles and internal resistance towards the restoration of electoral democracy. Exiles soon became vehicles for spreading cultural ideas from abroad, celebrating cosmopolitanism over nationalism, and emphasizing human rights and democracy in Latin American countries. Exile, Diaspora, and Return explores how Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay have been affected by post-exilic relocations, transnational migrant displacements, and diasporas. Specifically, this book provides the first comprehensive analysis of diasporic experiences and the impact of returnees on the public life, culture, institutions, and development of post-authoritarian politics in the Southern Cone of the Americas. Bringing together sociopolitical, cultural, and policy analysis with the testimonies of dozens of intellectuals, academics, political activists, and policy makers, the authors address the impact of exile on people's lives and on their fractured experiences; the debates and prospects of return; the challenges of dis-exile and post-exilic trends; and the ways in which those who experienced exile impacted democratized institutions, public culture, and discourse. Furthermore, the authors present new readings of the recent history of South America and the diasporas that emphasize the importance of regional, transnational or global dimensions over the national.

Machine generated contents note: -- Preface -- Chapter 1 - Exile and Post-Exile in Analytical Perspective -- Chapter 2 - Escape, Deportation and Exile: The Contours of Institutionalized Exclusion -- Chapter 3 - Exile and Diaspora Politics: Mobilizing to Undo Exclusion -- Chapter 4 - Diaspora and Home Country Initiatives, Transnational Networks and State Policies -- Chapter 5 - Surviving Authoritarianism, Contributing to the Agenda of Democratization -- Chapter 6 - Undoing Exile? Remembering, Imagining, Envisioning -- Chapter 7 - The Transformational Role of Culture and Education: Impacting the Future -- Chapter 8 - Shifting Frontiers of Citizenship -- Conclusions -- About the Authors -- Index