Edinburgh Studies on Diasporas and Transnationalism

By examining the everyday geographies of ethnic identity, place-making and cultural landscape transformations, as well as tracing the root of the Chinese community’s origin through cartographic and archival records, this book depicts multi-cultural landscape formation in Kolkata (Calcutta). The authors capture how Kolkata’s vibrant Chinese community has uniquely shaped the 'twin Chinatowns' amidst the city’s diverse urban tapestry and gradually modified the adjacent cultural landscape towards a 'little China'. As these neighbourhoods encounter modern challenges of gentrification and global connectivity, the book explores the ways in which the community, particularly its youth, navigates the complexities of maintaining a transnational identity while being deeply rooted in the local cultural milieu. From the continuous ebb and flow of migration to the fostering of hybrid identities, this analysis examines how these transformations impact community cohesion and cultural heritage. Featuring poignant individual case studies from Indian-Chinese respondents, the book examines issues such as identity, preservation efforts and the effects of socio-economic changes. Research techniques like adopting visual ethnographic 'streetscape' and cognitive 'emotional' cartography depict the everyday geography of the 'twin Chinatowns', illustrating how these communities claim their spaces and build connections on a global scale. Kunaljeet Roy and Sukla Basu reconnect with the essence of Kolkata’s Chinese community and showcase how they navigate the challenges of a globalised world while holding onto the threads of heritage that define them as a 'Chinese Calcuttawallah'.

What happens when the second generation – the children of immigrants – moves to their parents’ homeland? A Place in the Homeland: Turkish-German Return Migration answers this question for the Turkish-German second-generation, sons and daughters of the Turkish guestworkers and political refugees who migrated to Germany in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Based on 71 in-depth narrative interviews, their life-stories of growing up in German industrial cities and then ‘returning’ to Turkey are traced through their experiences of childhood and socialisation, relocation to Turkey, earning a living, managing family and other relationships, adapting to an environment that many found challenging and developing new, hybrid identities in the ancestral homeland. The key finding is that ‘place matters’, and experiences are compared and contrasted between second-generation returnees in the megalopolis of Istanbul, the tourist city of Antalya and a range of provincial urban and rural environments in other regions of Turkey.

Celebrates the contribution of diasporas and immigrants in the rise of the United States

• Brings together a rich anthology of case studies and theoretical frameworks regarding the immigrant population in the US
• Outlines the contributions of immigrants and diasporas to the US scientific and economic hegemony
• Analyses the historical outcome of major ethnic diaspora groups such as Italians, the Irish, Armenians, Jews, Indians, Chinese, Africans, Muslims, Arabs and Mexicans in the US
• Includes novel lines of research, e.g. diaspora diplomacy, diasporas and soft/ hard power, political organisation of migrants, civic engagement, post-liberalism and immigration, assimilation, integration, and liminality
• Discusses public responsibility and the paradoxes of immigrants rejecting the new immigrants in an adverse populist context of border closure and increased anti-elite discourse

By bringing together eminent scholars, this book highlights the current scholarship in the field of migration, which tries to present a counter-narrative to popular anti-immigrant rhetoric and populist domestic politics. There has been a growing global trend of alternative histories and anthropologies that brings forth the voices from the margins and the developing world. This volume, in that sense, without undermining the US's eminence, tries to deprovincialise (Burke, 2020) or deparochialise it from within or through the histories of the immigrants. In other words, it attempts to re-read the US's emergence as an important power with immigration as the site of analysis. It provides a comprehensive and in-depth theoretical and empirical discussion that will appeal to scholars and practitioners alike.

Presents groundbreaking research on transnational repression and its effects on diasporas and dissidents in the 21st century

• Presents cutting-edge research by leading experts across political science, sociology, law, digital and area studies on transnational repression
• Offers detailed case studies analysis from 10 countries around the world, including Russia, China, Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, Eritrea and Italy
• Demonstrates how authoritarian states engage in transnational repression and how such practices affect exiled citizens’ rights and their freedoms across the world
• Provides recommendations and best practices for scholars, institutions and human rights advocates to better defend diaspora communities and democracies from authoritarian transnational repression

Bringing together leading scholars, this volume is the first of its kind to address the growing global phenomenon of transnational repression in a comparative perspective. Authoritarian regimes in places like China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are infamous for cracking down on domestic opposition movements and democracy activists at home. And, in our age of globalisation, migration and technological development, dictators are increasingly able to extend their authoritarian power over their critics abroad. Using tactics that include surveillance, coercion, harassment and physical violence, transnational repression threatens the lives of democracy defenders, the basic rights of diaspora members and the rule of law in host states.

Examines the ways diasporic Iranian Armenian authors and artists negotiate their identities in Iran and in the US

• Highlights a defining characteristic of Iranian Armenian diaspora which concerns Armenians’ ability to negotiate their identity within a codified legal hierarchy – in Iran within a codified legal ethno-religious hierarchy and in the US via a legally codified racial hierarchy
• Theorizes a concept specific to Iranian Armenian diaspora named verants’ughi (վերանցուղի) – a transformational passageway
• Studies a variety of literary works written in Persian, Armenian and English, as well as other cultural pieces in music, art and film
• As an Iranian Armenian living in the US, the author includes first-hand life experiences as a minoritized member of Iranian Armenian population
• Problematizes our understanding of concepts such as multiculturalism and transnationalism in Iran and in the U.S., comparatively.
• Contributes to the broader topic of Iranian nationalism and the historical marginalization of Iranian minoritized populations, resulting in their global migration, but also examines multiculturalism and transnationalism within Iran.

Transnational Culture studies the ways that diasporic Iranian Armenian authors and artists negotiate their identities as minoritized population within a liminal space that includes religious, ethnic, national, racial, cultural, gender, and sexual factors. Yaghoobi argues that this liminal state of fluidity helps them to develop a resilience towards ambiguity and handling ambivalence in dealing with various cultures as well as resisting dualistic thinking. This in turn allows them to move beyond national boundaries to transnationalism, yet simultaneously display the collective Armenian identity characterized by flexibility, adaptability, and continuity as a result of both multiple uprooting and a Genocide that continues to this day. They serve as a bridge between the homeland and the host nation, occupying what the author theorizes as verants’ughi – the transformational passageway, which requires them to not only risk being in a transitory space and give up the safe space of home and the power that comes with it, but also through doing so, they create transformative works of literature and art.

Examines how the Kurdish diaspora in Denmark supported the Kurdish struggle in Syria from the battle of Kobane (2014) to the defeat in Afrin (2018)

• Investigates how the Kurdish diaspora mobilised in support of Syrian Kurds, stressing the role of transnational actors in war
• Introduces strategic interactionism into the study of diaspora mobilisation, showing new paths for research
• Coins the term ‘alter-territorial’ identification to clarify how some Kurds identify with the political entity in a part of Kurdistan other than their place of origin

Anne Sofie Schøtt contributes to our understanding of mobilisation and identity formation in the periphery of the Kurdish diaspora by examining the small but well-established community in Denmark. Arguing that the Danish authorities treat the diaspora differently in comparison to neighbouring Sweden and Germany, Schøtt examines the political lobbyism, the courtroom activism and the humanitarian action of the various Kurdish diaspora groups. She examines the position of the Syrian Kurds within the diaspora who, like the Kurds in Syria, have been largely ignored until recently.

Schøtt also provides new knowledge on diaspora engagement in war in the homeland by analysing the strategic interaction between the Danish authorities and the Kurdish diaspora community – both engaged in the war against Islamic State, but on different terms.