Migration and Diaspora Studies

The dislocated, deterritorialized discourse produced by repatriates from formerly European colonies has remained overlooked in academic scholarship. One such group is the Eurasian “Indo” community that has its roots in the former Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia. This article focuses on Tjalie Robinson, the intellectual leader of this community from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. The son of a Dutch father and a British-Javanese mother, Robinson became the leading voice of the diasporic Indo community in the Netherlands and later also in the United States. His engagement resulted in the foundation of the Indo magazine Tong Tong and the annual Pasar Malam Besar, what was to become the world’s biggest Eurasian festival. Robinson played an essential role in the cultural awareness and self-pride of the eventually global Indo community through his elaboration of a hybrid and transnational identity concept. By placing his focus “tussen twee werelden” (in-between two worlds) and identifying “mixties-schap” (mestizaje) as the essential characteristic of Indo identity, Robinson anticipated debates on hybridity, transnationalism, and creolism that only much later would draw attention from scholars in the field of postcolonial studies. This article highlights Robinson’s pioneering role in framing a deterritorialized hybrid alternative to nationalist essentialism in the postcolonial era.

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

Short-term mission trips (STMs) are service trips, typically lasting from one week to a few months, which entails an individual travelling to a distant place to engage in a type of voluntary social service, often in tandem with proselytization. Given the rapid increase of STMs since the 1980s, they have arguably become a rite of passage for devout evangelicals. In an age where conservative congregations are looking to stave off the threat of secularism for its next generation, STMs have been regarded one of the most compelling religious experiences available to its laity.

While many have studied second-generation Chinese Christians in North America, few have examined this population from a transnational frame. My multi- sited ethnography follows four STM teams deployed to China by Chinese evangelical churches from across Canada in 2015. One STM sending congregation in the Greater Toronto Area was also observed for almost two years. The research participants are highly religious Chinese Canadians, most being second-generation children of Cantonese Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong. Many have limited mastery of the Chinese language and little knowledge of their ethnic homeland. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted before the STM, immediately after the STM, and a year after the STM.

This paper examines the STM’s impact upon the short-term missionaries’ (STMers) sense of social solidarity, broadly defined. I specifically interrogate the intersections of their religious (i.e. evangelicalism), ethnic (i.e. “Chinese”), and national (i.e. “Canadian”) identities by examining how they give meaning to their STM experiences. I accomplish this by applying the theoretical tools from the sociology of emotion’s interaction ritual chains theory by Randall Collins that follows the microsociological lineage of Durkheim and Goffman.

My findings reveal that the second generation negotiate complex meanings to their transnational STM experiences. Several interconnected contradictions emerge. First, being in China, the participants are forced to negotiate their Chinese and Canadian identities; that is, to come to decide the extent they are Chinese or not- Chinese. This is relevant given previous scholarship has identified ethnic identification to be an important variable to one’s religiosity. Second, while claiming solidarity with local Chinese Christians under the global umbrella of Christendom, they struggle to come to terms with their Canadian socioeconomic privilege when juxtaposed with the people they seek to serve abroad. Third, despite the STMers’ desire to ‘experience God’ to strengthen their faith, this motivation is inherently based on modern Enlightenment values of empirical verification.

In recent years diasporas and their political impact have become an important research issue in political science and international relations science. At the turn of the 21st century, diasporas gained the status of important actors with impact both on the global politics, interstate relations and directions of domestic policies. One of the diasporas which in the 1990s actively participated in the American political life were Polish-Americans, with the reason being the intense efforts undertaken by Poland in 1992 to join NATO. The purpose of this article is to present the activities of the Polish Diaspora in the US undertaken in favour of the accession of Poland to the North Atlantic Alliance, analysed however not in the factual (historical) approach, but against the background of the theory developed so far regarding the functioning of diasporas and ethnic groups in the US political system. The article has
been prepared with the use of the historical method, the comparative method and the behavioural method, the basis for its preparation was primarily literature on the subject, press materials, and source materials (letters, articles and publications) contained in the collection of documents after Jan Nowak- Jeziorański entitled Poland's road to NATO
(Wrocław 2006). The conducted analysis indicates that the merits of Polish Americans for Poland's membership in NATO are invaluable and should be considered one of the most important achievements of the Polish Diaspora for the country of origin. The activities undertaken in 1993-1999 by Polish Americans are the most important but at the same time unfortunately also the isolated manifestation of the involvement and organized influence of the Polish ethnic group on shaping the American politics.

This article examines the representation of home among members of the Lebanese diaspora in New York, Montreal and Paris. Lebanese immigrants view home as both a concrete reality that is achieved physically or in relation with others and a symbolic reference point that ...

This paper on soft-power connected with culturalism vis-à-vis Henrik Ibsen, draws its essence from the term ‘soft power’ coined and defined by Joseph S Nye Jr. and read in contiguity with ‘culturalism’ that Arjun Appadurai connotes as “identity politics mobilised at the level of the nation-state”. On these terms, the present author perceives ‘soft power’ as a force that affects or is expected to affect not just few specially endowed individuals in any given society; rather as one that works upon the mindscapes of the commoner, or in the collective unconscious. The quintessential social critic that inheres Ibsen the playwright, is here looked upon as such a reservoir of soft-power, whose dramatic oeuvre and its subsequent global reception have ignited ideas of social reform and thus have become part of Norwegian culturalism and soft power. While the Norwegian Government has funded projects and encouraged institutional collaborations in this connection, individuals too have taken up vital roles in establishing intercultural links using Ibsen as their ambassador. At present Ibsen is part of cultural exchange between Norway and many developing countries of Asia and Africa. What happens to the targeted receivers of such soft power is a valid question and this paper explores soft power from the perspective of the third world marginalised subject position. Dwelling upon specific channels of Norwegian soft-power that have proven world-wide currency, and the indefatigable ways in which Ibsen has been a major tool in such soft diplomacy, this paper attempts to analyse how Ibsen the dramatist has eventually become a significant part of Norwegian culturalism as soft power whose outreach is aimed at the egalitarian ideal, hence imbued with enormous potential to function as a strong influence in intercultural affairs.

This paper discusses the reactions of Polish political emigration to the Russian amnesty proposals after 1831. Initially, they were strongly rejected, and the emigrants who received amnesty were considered traitors. Over time, this position relaxed, although majority of refugees preferred to stay in exile.

ЭМИГРАЦИОННОЕ ДВИЖЕНИЕ УРАЛЬСКИХ НЕМЦЕВ В 1929-1930 гг. (ОПЫТ ЛОКАЛЬНОГО ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ) На основе архивных источников, впервые вводимых в научный оборот, рассматривается сопротивле-ние коллективизации в немецких колониях Уральской области. Описано положение в немецких поселениях Троицкого округа и охарактеризованы эмиграционные настроения колонистов. Ключевые слова: социалистическое строительство, коллективизация, национальные меньшинства в СССР, немцы на Урале, немецкие колонии, миграционное поведение, эмиграцион-ное движение российских немцев, Троицкий округ, историческая локалистика. Постановка проблемы В XX-начале XXI в. через южно-уральский край проходили маршруты трансграничных миграций, носивших как добровольный, так и вынужденный характер. Заметную роль в этниче-ской истории региона на протяжении последних трех столетий играли немцы, которые являются наглядным примером «народа в пути» («Volk auf dem Weg»). Его история-это история мигра-ций и выработки адаптивных моделей поведения к изменяющимся условиям в российском обще-стве. Политика государства в отношении подданных немецкой национальности или внешнеполи-тические факторы оказывали существенное влияние на положение немцев в России. Модерниза-ционные процессы часто сопровождались привлечением иностранцев, в первую очередь немцев. На определенных отрезках отечественной истории в отношениях принимающего общества и не-мецкой этнической группы нарастала напряженность. Это приводило к оттоку немецкого населе-ния. Такой страницей в истории российских немцев является коллективизация. Эмиграционное движение в этот период изучено уже достаточно подробно [Белковец, 1995; Mick, 1995; Branders, Savin, 2001]. На уральском материале раскрыты основные вопросы истории немцев в годы социалистического строительства [Тюлюлюкин, 2006; Немцы на Урале…, 2009; Емельянова, 2013; Толмачева, 2013]. Несмотря на это в исследовании темы остались некоторые пробелы. Не все документы архивохранилищ по этой проблеме введены в научный оборот. Статья посвящена сюжету об эмиграционных настроениях немецких колонистов в Троиц-ком округе Уральской области (с 1934 г.-территория Челябинской области) зимой 1929-1930 гг. В основе материала лежит метод исторической локалистики. Тем самым данный кейс встраи-вается в общий контекст истории российских немцев в период коллективизации и дополняет историю немцев края. Источниковую базу составили документы Oбъединенного государственного архива Челя-бинской области (ОГАЧО). Это фонды Троицкого окружного комитета ВКП(б) (П-170) и Троицко-го окружного исполнительного комитета Совета рабочих, крестьянских, казачьих и красноар-мейских депутатов (Р-421). Эмиграционное движение советских немцев в 1929-1930 гг. Существенная роль в формировании политики в отношении немецкого населения в рас-сматриваемый период принадлежит постановлению Секретариата ЦК ВКП(б) от 12 апреля 1929 г. «Об итогах хозяйственного и культурного строительства в немецких колониях». Эмиграционное движение немецких колонистов приобретало все более организованный и широкий характер. На это влияла политика советской власти и деятельность различных пропагандистов, действо-вавших среди немцев. Отмечен рост влияния кулачества и духовенства на настроения немец-ких крестьян, подчеркивалось отсутствие кадров для организации просветительской работы. В этой связи окружные и районные комитеты партии обязывали выдвигать на руководящую со

The terms 'return migration' or 're-emigration' deal with the return of the diaspora to the country of origin and are therefore full of nationalistic perspective. These terms can be useful in the case of a diasporic return to the country of origin, however, the use of the term 'ethnic return migra-tion' should be clarified as well becaus migration of diasporic descendants (to the country of origin of their ancestors) by strategic, rational and pragmatic use of their ethnic disposition (i.e. passports of their ancestors with written nationality) should also be looked into. Indeed, term ethnic return migration expresses that in the case of some diasporic descendants their ethnic origin might be lost and the diasporic identification questioned hence their migration to the country of origin of their ancestors could be analysed as mobility for material or economic benefit. In this article I will analyse the migration of diasporic descendants from West Ukraine and South Moldova to find out whether they incline more to return migration/ re-emigration or to ethnic return migration. Acknowledgment Rád bych na tomto místě poděkoval třem anonymním recenzentům i šéf-redaktorce Českého lidu Janě Noskové, jejichž věcná kritika přispěla ke zkvalitnění článku.

The temporary employment of Yugoslav citizens in Western countries was one of the most important migration phenomena in socialist Yugoslavia. In the early 1970s, one in every four Yugoslavs employed outside of agriculture and craft work was a Gastarbeiter. Yet, while the study of the Yugoslav Gastarbeiter emigration has received much scholarly attention, the overall numbers and dynamics of Gastarbeiter return migration have remained under-researched.
This book offers a major contribution to fill this gap. It draws on fresh political documents from the archives, the press, statistical data, contemporary sociological research, audio-visual materials, novels, and oral history interviews. It shows that the impact of the Gastarbeiter return migration on development policies, social change, and narratives of identity was much more extensive than what has been recognised so far. In particular, analysing changes in migration patterns and policies in the period 1965-1991, this book argues that the return and reintegration of Gastarbeiter generated political divisions and social tensions on a much larger scale than had their employment abroad. It maintains that, during the crisis period of the 1980s, the increase of return migration put strains on the domestic labour market, contributing to the crisis of the federal system, and the ‘ethnicisation’ of migration policies

There is a rich body of literature on the experience of Japanese immigrants in the United States, and there are also numerous accounts of the cultural dislocation felt by American expats in Japan. But what happens when Japanese Americans, born and raised in the United States, are the ones living abroad in Japan?

Redefining Japaneseness chronicles how Japanese American migrants to Japan navigate and complicate the categories of Japanese and “foreigner.” Drawing from extensive interviews and fieldwork in the Tokyo area, Jane H. Yamashiro tracks the multiple ways these migrants strategically negotiate and interpret their daily interactions. Following a diverse group of subjects—some of only Japanese ancestry and others of mixed heritage, some fluent in Japanese and others struggling with the language, some from Hawaii and others from the US continent—her study reveals wide variations in how Japanese Americans perceive both Japaneseness and Americanness.

Making an important contribution to both Asian American studies and scholarship on transnational migration, Redefining Japaneseness critically interrogates the common assumption that people of Japanese ancestry identify as members of a global diaspora. Furthermore, through its close examination of subjects who migrate from one highly-industrialized nation to another, it dramatically expands our picture of the migrant experience.

Check out the website https://redefiningjapaneseness.com
Like the book on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/redefiningjapaneseness/
Watch a short interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0u43MQWZAg
See a book talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGC3D9M6GUk&feature=youtu.be

Whereas it is necessary for every state to have an immigrant policy that serves its economic and political interests, the current strongly anti-immigrant sentiments in Europe appear to be going against the long history of human migration. Diasporas exhibit two seemingly contradictory behaviours: they move away from and, at the same time, seek to remain in touch their homelands. Internet-based media seem especially suited to fulfill the diasporic desire to communicate as their structures are able to support communication within groups that are widely scattered across countries and continents. Integration is necessary for migrants to succeed socially and economically in their respective countries of settlement. However, this is difficult to achieve without simultaneously nurturing their attachment to the new country and recognising the significant resources they bring by virtue of their cosmopolitanism. Governments seem to be faced with the choice of succumbing to the emotionalism of isolationist groups or developing more intelligent policies to address both the cosmopolitanism of migrants and their integration into receiving societies.

This thesis deals with the experiences, the everyday life and the attitudes towards life of Turkish women in Linz and neighbouring cities, a group considered by the autochthonous population with prejudices. For decades, historically grown cultural identities, narratives and clichés have been instrumentalized and cultivated on both sides in a problematic way by politics, media and society. This tends to drive ideological wedges between Turkish women, descendants of guest workers and Turkish women still arriving in Austria and the Austrian population.
The present study explores the heterogeneity of Turkish women in Linz in a synchronous comparison and thus also establishes a confrontation between the first generation and the subsequent generations. The theory and its existing stereotypes were examined in the empirical-qualitative part by means of oral history in the still neglected subjective perspective with ten different interviews to make comparisons of images of life and with existing statistics. Due to the enormous complexity of the topic, however, the study does not include a survey of representatives of the Austrian population and does not claim to represent the Turkish community.
As a result, there is a very diverse and individual stratum of society, which also corresponds to the heterogeneity in Turkey, even though the religion practiced in Europe, such as Islam or Alevism, can develop their own momentum. Also, political commitment can depend heavily on the level of education. Experiences and perceptions of discrimination vary according to their individual careers, and the atmosphere in politics and the media, which sometimes amplifies Austrian hostility to the Turks, is also perceived to be different. Friendships are mostly confined to women from the own cultural or international background, and closer contact with Austrians happens mainly in the educational or professional context. The memory of Turkish women born in Austria focus less on the behaviour of their parents or on institutional hurdles and more on the role of teachers or Austrian neighbours when it comes to find causes for possibly missed or successful steps and activities of integration.
These two concerned sides of the Austrian society have a difficult relationship due to problematic identity politics. Even the quite common marriage practice in Turkish culture combined with the “standstill agreement” of the Association Agreement of 1963 still has a significant impact on successor generations and their integration. Up-to-date political arrangements on the one hand and a reflected approach with historical narratives and topics such as identity formation in education on the other hand are required more than ever.

Chapter 8 from The City of Reason vol 5 The Economic Concept of the City
by Dr Peter Critchley

This paper analyses the emergence of the Informational City as the Dual City entrenched in social polarisation. This development has a socio-historical context. The breakdown of fordism has had a powerful disciplinary impact on the three partners in the social contract – capital, labour and the state. ‘Big’ business, ‘big’ labour and ‘big’ government have been radically ‘downsized’ so as to become ‘lean and mean’ (Harrison 1994). Yet these three components have not downsized in equal measure. Post-fordism is characterised by the even greater dominance of corporations, now taking transnational form, by the weakening of the power of labour and by the disengagement of the state from the social and political concern to regulate capital in the public interest. The distribution of the costs and benefits of transformation have been unequal. The new economic geography is intensifying rather than eradicating social and spatial inequalities, distancing the city further from the project of justice through a vicious cycle of metropolarities that are entrenching and exacerbating existing inequalities of class, race and gender.

Em um contexto de crescente interesse pela emigração e as contribuições das diásporas nas economias e sociedades dos países de origem, este capítulo analisa as relações Estado-diáspora e as políticas de construção e engajamento das diásporas nos casos brasileiro e equatoriano. A pesquisa parte do pressuposto de que as políticas para a diáspora no Brasil e no Equador são resultado das lutas e reivindicações dos emigrantes, mas também respondem a uma conjuntura interna e externa favorável às suas demandas, assim como a cálculos estratégicos e interesses heterogêneos por parte dos governos desses países.

Este não é um livro sobre a experiência do fim do mundo durante a pandemia de COVID-19. O ensaio que a Zazie Edições publica agora em português, foi escrito entre setembro de 2017 e maio de 2018, em meio à proliferação global de crises migratórias insuportavelmente dolorosas, e da decisão do governo dos Estados Unidos de prender em campos de concentração com jaulas metálicas as crianças que a triagem separava de suas famílias na fronteira com o México, além do bombardeiro cotidiano de outras notícias atrozes. Eu o escrevi para tentar entender o sentido das crises migratórias no contexto do colapso dos imaginários cosmopolitas dos quais acostumamos a nos servir para elaborar uma série de discursos sobre a hospitalidade como horizonte discursivo, para procurar construir projetos políticos e culturais baseados na luta pelos direitos de imigrantes e refugiados. Mais além do abatimento e da experiência de derrota que nos invade diariamente, a ideia do fim do mundo tenta elaborar a perda do mundo entendido como a estrutura simbólica que sustentava discursos e práticas humanistas orientadas por um desejo de emancipação, igualdade e justiça universais. E preciso dizer ainda que não se trata tampouco de um ensaio sobre o sofrimento infinito de sujeitos migrantes e refugiados de carne e osso - não posso dizer nada sobre suas feridas e suas perdas, que pertencem ao âmbito do impensável para alguém como eu. Este ensaio se pergunta o que podem fazer a literatura e as artes diante do fim do mundo, o que podemos fazer com essa experiência de perda que oprime todos nós que nos dedicamos a pensar com elas.

"The Criminalization of Immigration: Contexts and Consequences explores these competing narratives and the consequences of criminalizing immigration in the United States and abroad. It examines the impact of national, state, and local legislation on the psychosocial well being of immigrants. The book explores key ways in which immigration is criminalized, and examines how the problematization of immigration becomes a political tool. The first chapters of the book explore the criminalization of immigration through the lens of pacification and the theater of cruelty. In both chapters, the authors seek to understand the process of “othering” members of the immigrant population to exact social control and to mollify the public. These front chapters set the tone for remainder of the book. They provide the impetus for why states have enacted, or have attempted to enact state level immigration laws that make it nearly impossible for the undocumented to live within the boundaries of these states. In section two, three U.S. states are highlighted: Arizona, Alabama, and Indiana. While the chapters on Arizona and Alabama summarize key aspects of state laws, author Sujey Vega highlights the life of one undocumented immigrant as she navigates life in the Heartland.

The book then turns its focus to the criminalization of immigration in a socio-political context. Here, four chapters provide explorations of the criminalization of immigration on labor standards enforcement, immigrant detention, the right wing perspective in the United States and in Europe, and white supremacy. Labor standards impact the rate by which undocumented immigrants are paid, which in turn impacts their health and safety within and outside the workplace, protections from workplace discrimination, and collective activity protections. The criminalization of immigration erodes many of the workplace and labor protections that we have come to view as essential. Similarly, the privatization of corrections has influenced the incarceration and detention of many undocumented immigrants and has even influenced the very laws described in section two of this book. If not for the possibility of profiting off of the detention of the undocumented, many of immigration related laws would not have come to fruition.

The next section of the book provides a transnational and international context to the criminalization of immigration. With chapters focusing on human rights violations, the transnational dimensions of Mexican migration, the making of the Maras, and the criminalization of immigration in the United Kingdom, these chapters ask the reader to examine the criminalization of immigration from a broader perspective. The reader learns how national issues become international and, likewise how international immigration issues influence national policy.

The final chapters of the book put the human face on the criminalization of immigration. Each chapter represents a case study of a specific aspect of the criminalization of immigration. They approach the issue from the viewpoint of a day laborer, an undocumented woman who has become a victim of domestic violence, a child whose parents are undocumented, and a detention officer who wrestles with his decisions to continue his job. Regardless of which chapters one reads, the raw emotion felt by placing oneself in each context is overwhelming.

Overall, The Criminalization of Immigration: Contexts and Consequences provides a complete examination of an issue that cuts through emotional value conflicts. It provides the facts and knowledge essential for a fair and balanced debate"

This paper was written in 2014 for the topic HIST3001: Destination Australia: Migration since 1900 at Flinders University.
The paper explores the history of the Greek Ikarian islander community of South Australia, and the formation of the Pan-Ikarian Brotherhood of SA as a result of Ikarian migration. The essay won the 2014 Wakefield Companion to SA History Undergraduate Essay Prize.

The refugee issue which has been termed a crisis in Europe has almost become a household discussion; not only has the ‘crisis’(UNHCR, ) lingered for years, but it in turn created more problems to which the international community seeks solutions for.(D.W.COM); Postelnicescu, 2016; Schilling et al., 2017). The need for durable solutions to the Refugee crisis, stems from the protracted and equally continuous nature of the situation, leading many states to shut their doors to reception of new asylum seekers.(Patrick Wintour, 2017; Woolsey, 2018). While the UNHCR and other stakeholders desire longer lasting solutions beyond life in an asylum camp, the former has however promoted Local integration as one of such solutions to the crisis.(United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, ) 
For Europe however, the local integration of refugees has become the new challenge.(For europe, integrating refugees is the next big challenge.2016) A number of reasons underscore this challenge. The forerunner of them being the difficulty in defining such a concept that has both legal and social dimensions, and therefore understanding how encompassing it should be.(Ager & Strang, 2008). Besides the definition challenge, “lack of early community preparation and involvement”, as well the structure of integration policies which focuses mainly on refugees’ economic integration, and which places the burden to integrate mainly, (if not only) on refugees (what I refer to as a one-sided approach) all contribute to obstacles in local integration in Europe. The consequential shortcomings of this approach to local integration, have made it increasingly crucial to re-evaluate related practices and policies for the sake of the sustainability of an inevitably more diverse host society, and to prevent the perpetuation of division among communities. A two-sided approach of a well-rounded integration program, multifaceted, involving different layers of the society, as well as the entire community is an ideal durable solution for the refugee situation facing Europe.
It is based on this premise that this paper will describe and analyze two main types of obstacles that slow down, or in many cases hinder the integration of refugees in Europe.

There could be a migration without diaspora, but there cannot be diaspora without migration; therefore, diaspora is a post-migration phenomenon. It starts formulating once the migration takes place from one sociocultural setting to an/other sociocultural setting/s. Sociocultural setting is attachment with feeling, memories, and familiarities with the things which an individual loved and experiences at the primary stage of life. This similarity can span to a settlement category such as a locality, city, region, state, country, or continent. It varies from place to place depending upon sociocultural similarities and dissimilarities. It can also be a setting which is marked by social category and a dominance of that particular category be it race, culture, religion, ethnicity, and language group which also constitutes the identity of a settlement category. If a person migrates from one sociocultural setting to another sociocultural setting, she/he experiences a difference in the host society, and this experience of being different in another sociocultural setting is called the post-migration feelings and diasporic sense. The pre-migration feelings are always positive colored with new hopes, dreams, and better life with full of passion and eager. These feelings vary in the forced migratory patterns. Sociocultural setting is also a result of "familiarities," "lived experiences," and "practices/atmosphere" of an individual in a setting of a particular language, culture, religion, food, custom, dress, rituals, social practices, race, ethnicity, etc. Migration causes the distancing of an individual or a group of people from one sociocultural setting to an/other sociocultural setting which affects the psyches of the migrants in the form of memory about the things left behind, life lived with familiarities, and emergence of the feeling of disrootedness. As a result, the immigrants develop a strong community feeling (identity, solidarity, retaining food and dress codes, etc.) within their group and also develop diasporic sense such as the sense of disrootedness; sense of be/longing, collectiveness, nostalgia, and going back/homeland; and sense of alienation. In some cases migrant community assimilates in host society fully or partially. In a nutshell, they are longing for rerooting/rebuilding the sociocultural setting which they left behind or thinking of revisiting "homeland" which also leads to dilemma of to go back or not to go...

In this paper, I suggest to compare recent critical approaches and debates in the cultural field of transnational migration studies, with a focus on ‘cross-cultural’ and ‘post-migrant’ theatres. This focus will be narrowed down by looking particularly at the discourses of Turkish migration and diaspora surrounding the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse in Berlin (Germany), the Arcola Ala-Turka company in Dalston-Hackney (UK), Theater RAST in Amsterdam (the Netherlands), the Turkish American Repertory Theater in Baldwin New York (U.S.), the ReOrient Festival in San Francisco (U.S.) and the Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles (U.S.).
My main concern is not the idiosyncrasies in artistic vision or contents regarding the representation of cross-cultural communities by individual theatre artists in their respective local and national settings. Rather, I would like to question the differences in the companies’ self-definitions in relation to their cultural climates and the retellings of the different pathways artists make within the scope of their works and careers. I would like to question how these founding ‘narratives of self’ in view of an increased social mobility could be explained through the wider discourses of transnational migration studies, as they are currently being developed in Europe and the U.S. Alternatively, I will problematize how these theatre developments challenge migration and cultural studies to think together transnationally. The multi- and cross-disciplinary making of transnational migration studies has inevitably engendered diverse and sometimes opposing definitions of transnationalism. As such, I would like to explore several aspects of transnational dynamics in the art – and business – of contemporary theatre making while searching for a common ground where European and American concepts, despite their very different geographical and historical parameters, could meet.
Hence, inspired by (post)migration practices on the theatre stage, I suggest boundary crossing within our own disciplines, particularly within American Studies, to start thinking of societies and communities as translocal, transnational and de-territorialized (Appadurai, 1996) beyond the old, restraining discourses of cultural imperialism.

Urban History 48/3 (2021), 533-551.

Studying the Ottoman subjects in eighteenth-century Vienna helps to understand better the process of integration of the different districts of the city in a fast-changing context, especially around its Danube port area. Despite the withdrawal of the Ottoman empire from central Europe after 1683, Ottomans were fully a part of the history of Vienna and their presence has to be explored within the specific urban dynamics of a city: the reconfiguration of its economic sectors and social places, the tensions at play between the socioeconomic groups by which a city was made and the evolution of its urban planning. Focusing on the Ottoman merchants operating in Vienna allows us to identify and to analyse the workings of the port area of the fourth largest city in Europe and to explore the social spaces of Viennese markets, streets, courtyards and coffeehouses.

Wanderers in the spaces of their memories and the streets of their would-be homes, generations of suffering immigrants are traced back to the past, propelled by the crescendo of melancholic stillness that moves displaced bodies through states of in betweenness that both dispels and teeters on the far side of either assimilation or exclusion. Many transnational narratives situate the immigrant at a crossroads in terms
of a loss of the ‘original’ culture in exchange for the new ‘American’ culture, where national diversities are confined to a singular framework and rhetoric of displacement, overruled by the myth of successful assimilation, whereby the hardships of adjusting  to foreign spaces are ‘normalized’ and reduced to a series of trials. This portrayal, in turn, does not leave any room for the rhetoric of pain, or what I label as the ‘migrant’s mourning’, where the immigrant’s suffering is suppressed and eclipsed by a collective history of racial abjection. Insights into the psyche of the immigrant serve to map the hedge between the past and the present and absolute versus relative spaces. Applying  psychoanalytical and postcolonial frameworks to literary analysis, this dissertation explores some of the prominent transnational narratives to establish that the melancholic dynamics of space, memory, and language can subvert misrepresentations and grant the immigrant mobility within the confines of homogenized spaces. It seeks
to explore the ways in which the transnational American narrative employs melancholic tenor as aesthetics to empower displaced figures. Situating its protagonists at the locus of nations, these narratives underscore melancholia, mourning, and memory as tools and protocols of agency that challenge the myth of assimilation and re-think the rhetoric of displacement.

prologue, intro and afterword of book
Publication date: October 20, 2016
Abstract:
Restrictive border protection policies directed toward managing the flow of refugees coming into neoliberal democracies (and out of failing nation-states) are a defining feature of contemporary politics. In this book, Verónica Tello analyses how contemporary artists--such as Tania Bruguera, Isaac Julien, Rosemary Laing, Dierk Schmidt, Hito Steyerl, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green--negotiate their diverse subject positions while addressing and taking part in the production of images associated with refugee experiences and histories. Tello argues that their practices, which manifest across a range of contexts including Cuba, the United States, Australia and Europe, represent an emergent, global paradigm of contemporary art, 'counter-memorial aesthetics'.

Counter-memorial aesthetics, Tello argues, is characterized by its conjunction of heterogeneous signifiers and voices of many times and places, generating an experimental, non-teleological approach to the construction of contemporary history, which also takes into account the complex, disorienting spatial affects of globalization. Spanning performance art, experimental 'history painting', aftermath photography and video installation, counter-memorial aesthetics bring to the fore, Tello argues, how contemporary refugee flows and related traumatic events critically challenge and conflict with many existing, tired if not also stubborn notions of national identity, borders, history and memory.

Building on the writings of such thinkers as Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière, this book offers a useful concept of 'counter-memory' for the twenty-first century. It shows how counter-memorial aesthetics is not only central to the nexus of contemporary art and refugee histories but also how it can offer a way of being critically present with many other, often interrelated, global crises in the contemporary era.

http://bloomsbury.com/us/counter-memorial-aesthetics-9781474252737/

Merchant diasporas have long attracted the attention of scholars through the narrow prisms of 'nations' and states. The history of Amsterdam's Greek Orthodox merchants, together with the other cases—who left the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century and established a seemingly controversial range of networks involving the Dutch, Russian, Ottoman and Greek states there—is an oft-quoted example. This article draws attention to some of the problematic aspects of these perceptions of the relations between states and diaspora merchants. The main tenet of the article is that nation-and state-centred perspectives are limited in explaining the full scope of flexibility and pragmatism displayed by the diaspora merchants.