'Diaspora' Diasporas' Representations of their Homelands: Exploring the Polymorphs

Abstract

International audience ; This essay attempts to make more pliable three overly rigid claims persistent in the diaspora literature: that diaspora members' imaginations of the homeland are either beautifying/idealizing or unequivocally inimical; that their relations with the host country are inherently distant--they are in it but not of it; and that diasporism and (im)migrant transnationalism constitute two dictinct phenomena. It also aims at genderizing the stubbornly genderless study of diasporas. The empirical analysis compares representations of the homeland among turn-of-the-twentieth-century and present-day lower-class Polish émigrés in the United States and the United Kingdom, first-wave (1959-61) Cuban refugees in Miami and 1956 Hungarian political refugees dispersed into different West European countries, and contemporary Mexican men and women migrants in the American Southwest. On the basis of these comparative assessments the author identifies the major circumstances that shape diaspora members' portrayals of the homeland.