AphroChic Magazine: Issue No. 1

Reference
two millennia, diaspora was used
almost exclusively to refer to dispersed
Jewish populations throughout history.
But by the 20th century other groups
had begun using the word as a designator.
Armenian writers begin focusing
on displacement in their work as early
as 1915, while the African Diaspora
sees its first mention by the late 1960s.
It wasn’t until the early ‘90s that the
explosion of communities regarded
as diaspora began an expansion of the
term. The trend has continued into the
21st century, expanding the application
of the term beyond national dispersions
to include the many groups that inhabit
the concept today.
In 2000, listing the number of
studied diasporas, Khachig Tololyan,
editor of the academic journal Diaspora,
counted “three dozen trans-national
communities…ethnics, exiles, expatriates,
refugees, asylum seekers, labor migrants,
queer communities, domestic service
workers, executives of trans-national corporations,
and trans-national sex workers,”
and the list has grown since then.
The Question of Movement
At the core of every construction
of diaspora is the idea of movement.
All diaspora communities have their
origins in one place and have moved to
several others. The question raised by
identifying so many disparate groups as
diaspora though, is whether all forms of
movement should be thought of as the
same. The key distinction in this debate
is between migration and dispersion.
The primary difference between them is
simple, but significant: volition. Simply
put, the former is something you do, the
latter is something that someone else
does to you.
Dispersion happens in instances
where communities are forced to
move by forces such as war, mass deportation
or, in the case of the African
Diaspora, a massive international slave
trade. Migration, conversely, is largely
a choice. Even in those situations
where lack of employment or resources
cause movement, they don’t force it in
the same way. And while there is unquestionable
trauma in being forced
into migration because of famine or
a weakened economy, it’s a different
trauma than that of surviving a war or
experiencing the Middle Passage.
Translating that distinction to
currently considered diaspora groups,
we see that differences do become
apparent.
The earliest groups to be considered
diaspora, the Jewish, the Greeks,
the Armenians, and the Africans, were
all victims of dispersion of one type or
another. Later groups, such as that of
international sales representatives, or
even Detroit lieutenant governor Garlin
Gilchrist’s laudable Detroit Diaspora
concept, refer to groups that moved of
their own volition. Other characteristics
common to diaspora constructions,
such as a dream of return to the place
of dispersion or the recognition of a
shared culture between members of the
group, may possibly be said to apply, but
certainly not in the same ways.
If there are dispersed communities
that function as diaspora and cannot be
suitably defined by any other term, we
risk losing sight of the unique features
found in those communities by conflating
diaspora with other forms of
movement and migration. This in turn
can lead to misconstrual of the changing
dynamics of diaspora communities and
a misunderstanding of their needs and
goals.
aphrochic