The argument offered in this book is that new technology, as opposed to traditional media such as television, radio, and newspaper, is working against the national grain to weaken its imagined community. Online activities and communications between people and across borders suggest that digital media has strong implications for different articulations of identity and belongingness, which open new ways of thinking about the imagined community. The findings are based on transnational activities by Kurdish diaspora members across borders that have pushed them to rethink notions of belonging and identity. Through a multidisciplinary and comparative approach, and multifaceted (online-offline) methodologies, the book unveils tensions between new and old media, and how the former is not only changing social relations but also exposing existing ones. Living in two or more cultures, speaking multiple languages, and engaging in transnational practices, diaspora individuals may have created a momentum that discloses how the imagined nation is diminishing in this digital era.

This research examines diasporic transformations and the construction of belongings through new technologies of communication by looking at young Kurdish diasporas in Sweden and the UK. It argues that the diaspora concept needs to be reconceptualised in light of digital information and communication technologies and in relation to the imagined community. Empirical evidence from Kurdish diasporas has drawn attention to some missing gaps in the literature. The research asks what it means to be a Kurd in diaspora and what role new media and online communities have in the renegotiation and construction of belongings. By engaging with post-colonial and feminist studies, I unpick fixed categories of identity, belongings and home, and I argue for performativities of those belongings. Based on a year-long ethnographic online study supplemented by offline face-to-face interviews with young Kurds in these locations, and with additional reference to homeland- based Kurds, the research presents three main empirical chapters based on themes derived from the online community's concerns, and focuses on Swedish, British, and Kurdish forums. The chapters discuss gender and religious tensions; cultural elements and historical suffering; and political engagements in homeland and settlement countries. A fourth chapter takes a step back from online and offline material and examines the comparative approach between the two diasporas, diasporic and homeland Kurds, in both offline and online environments. Against the background of such a close-up comparative study, this research argues for a reconsideration of diasporic formations that are currently fixed between homeland and settlement country, and it presents new perspectives on these that relates to new definitional positions in diasporic formations that have significant implications for the concept of the imagined community.

For migrant communities residing outside of their home countries, various transnational media have played a key role in maintaining, reviving and transforming ethnic and religious identities. A vital element is how media outlets report and represent ethno-national conflict in the home country. Janroj Yilmaz Keles here examines how this plays out among Kurdish and Turkish communities in Europe. He offers an analysis of how Turkish and Kurdish migrants in Europe react to the myriad mediated narratives. A vital element is how media outlets report and represent the ethno-national conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdish PKK.Janroj Yilmaz Keles here offers an examination of how Turkish and Kurdish migrants in Europe react to the myriad narratives that arise. Taking as his starting point an analysis of the nature of nationalisms in the modern age, Keles shows how language is often a central element in the struggle for hegemony within a state. The media has become a site for the clash of representations in both Turkish and Kurdish languages, especially for those based in the diaspora in Europe. These 'virtual communities', connected by television and the internet, in turn influence and are influenced by the way the conflict between the Turkish state and subaltern Kurds is played out, both in the media and on the ground.By looking at first, second and third generations of Turkish and Kurdish populations in Europe, Keles highlights the dynamics of migration, settlement and integration that often depend on the policies of each settlement country. Since these settlement states often see the proliferation of such media as an impediment to integration, Media, Diaspora and Conflict offers timely analysis concerning the nature of diasporas and the construction of identity.

Informed by the interdisciplinary approach of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and theories of identity, nation, and media, the study investigates the ways Kurds, the world's largest stateless nation, use satellite television and Internet to construct their identities. This book examines the complex interrelationships between ethno-national identities, discourses, and new media. Not only offers the first study of discursive constructions of Kurdish identity in the new media, this book also the first CDA informed comparative study of the contents of the two media. The study pushes the boundaries of the growing area of studies of identity, nationalism and transnationalism, discourse studies, minority language, and digital media.

Anne Marie Schott explores how the Kurdish diaspora in Denmark supported the Kurdish struggle in Syria from the battle of Kobane (2014) to the defeat in Afrin (2018). She examines the political lobbyism, the courtroom activism and the humanitarian action of the various Kurdish diaspora groups.

The Cambridge History of the Kurds is an authoritative and comprehensive volume exploring the social, political and economic features, forces and evolution amongst the Kurds, and in the region known as Kurdistan, from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. Written in a clear and accessible style by leading scholars in the field, the chapters survey key issues and themes vital to any understanding of the Kurds and Kurdistan including Kurdish language; Kurdish art, culture and literature; Kurdistan in the age of empires; political, social and religious movements in Kurdistan; and domestic political developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Other chapters on gender, diaspora, political economy, tribes, cinema and folklore offer fresh perspectives on the Kurds and Kurdistan as well as neatly meeting an exigent need in Middle Eastern studies. Situating contemporary developments taking place in Kurdish-majority regions within broader histories of the region, it forms a definitive survey of the history of the Kurds and Kurdistan.