Diaspora

Evolution of the Concept of the Diaspora

The concept of diaspora did not figure prominently in the social sciences until the late 1960s, and the use of the plural is recent. It used to refer primarily to the Jewish experience, in Greek versions, particularly through the expulsion of the people and destruction of the Jerusalem temple under the Babylonian empire. The Jewish population's experience of a dispersal made necessary by its loss of territory shapes a tragic vision of the diaspora, long shared by many analysts. Nonetheless, since ancient times, the concept has been used in a positive though much less influential way to refer to the Greek colonization between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE in all the Mediterranean lands, from the shores of present Turkey and Crimea to the Strait of Gibraltar, spreading civilization in these territories through many Hellenic cities.

Both experiences—rooted in the Western tradition—have constituted stereotypes of diasporas, though other noticeable cases from the East have developed for the medieval and modern times. For instance, the expansion of China has been perceived as an acceptable phenomenon, described in an ancient Chinese poem: “Wherever the ocean waves touch, there is an overseas Chinese”—thus naturalizing diasporic initiatives along trade routes. India's expansion, especially throughout the Indian Ocean, has also provided an example of the settlement of a population beyond its own boundaries. Since the 19th century, the increase in the populations of coolies to work in agricultural or industrial plants worldwide has drawn particular attention.

In fact, when scholars attempted to classify different experiences, from the late 1980s onward, in order to be able to identify diasporic processes beyond the unique and restrictive Jewish case, the Greek, Chinese Indian, and African ones served to establish a typology, along with the former. As Robin Cohen (1997) describes, diasporas were classified as victim, imperial/colonial, trade, or labor diasporas, according to the main motives that generated original migration—namely, expulsion, expansion, commerce, or work. Other examples, fitting into such types, demonstrated the transhistorical relevance of such a classification. For instance, the Armenian exile in Europe, British thalassocratic empire, Lebanese trading posts in Africa and Latin America, and Moroccan cheap labor settlements in Western Europe.

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