Diasporas are nodes of cultural exchange, connecting different systems of values, beliefs, and social organization. Throughout history and the present, diasporas have provided important contributions to economies, politics, and culture, both for the home countries and for societies of residence. This book contains case studies from different disciplines, exploring diaspora as a resource, both on collective and on individual levels. Common themes are the structure and use of diaspora networks, as well as relations between different diasporas, ranging from co-existence to competition or strategic co-operation, and the complex interdependence between diaspora and urbanity. (Series: Freiburg Studies in Social Anthropology / Freiburger Sozialanthropologische Studien / Etudes d'Anthropologie Sociale de l'Universite de Fribourg - Vol. 36)

This contributed volume focuses on diasporans, their characteristics, networks, resources and activities in relation to international business and entrepreneurship. It presents an overview of diaspora concepts from an economic perspective, and analyzes the global-economic and societal effects and mechanisms, revealing both positive and negative aspects of diaspora activities. Providing insights into the socio-cultural influences, it discusses diaspora entrepreneurship and international business, the respective organisational models, investments and business types. Lastly it offers an assessment of managing diaspora resources and policymaking. This book was created by an interdisciplinary team of editors, co-authors and reviewers including historians, sociologists, psychologists, linguists and ethnologists, as well as experts in public policy, international business, marketing and entrepreneurship. This unique team (many of the authors are themselves diasporans with an extensive understanding of their topic) provides the first global academic platform on the subject, combining the latest empirical evidence from developing, emerging, transitional and developed countries with various combinations of diaspora flows that to date have received little attention.

Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction examines the origins of diaspora as a concept, its changing meanings over time, its current popularity, and its utility in explaining human migration. The book proposes a flexible approach to diaspora based on examples drawn mainly from Jewish, African, Irish, and Asian history.

Diasporas play an increasingly prominent role in discussions on foreign assistance and development policy. Governments of migrant-sending countries are working to attract both the talents and resources of emigrants and their descendants while governments of aid-sending countries hope to improve the outcomes of development assistance by engaging the talents and expertise of diasporas. Independently of governments, many diaspora groups or individuals recognize profitable opportunities in their homelands or contribute their time, talents, and resources to improving the quality of life there. This volume examines the development impact of diasporas in six critical areas: entrepreneurship, capital markets, "nostalgia" trade and "heritage" tourism, philanthropy, volunteerism, and advocacy. It is the result of research commissioned by the U.S. Agency for International Development's Office of Poverty Reduction, Diaspora Networks Alliance. Contributors include Roberto Munster, Hiroyuki Tanaka, Carlyanna Taylor, and Aaron Terrazas.

Diaspora Space-Time explores the transformations of Pine Mansion—a Shenzhen former emigrant community—and its members' changing relationship with their diaspora around the world. For more than a century, inhabitants of Shenzhen's villages have migrated to Southeast Asia, the Pacific, North and South America, and Europe. With China's economic global ascendancy, these villages no longer consist of peasants dependent on their rich overseas relatives. As the villages have become part of the special economic zone of Shenzhen, the megacity that embodies China's rise, emigration has waned. Lineage ties have long been central in choosing migration destinations and channeling donations to village projects. After China's reopening, Shenzhen's villagers used diaspora as a resource to participate in the city's booming economy and to reestablish and protect their ritual sites against government plans. As overseas financial contributions diminish and diasporic relations change, Anne-Christine Trémon highlights the way emigration is being reconceptualized in regards to China's changing position in the world, offering a new perspective on Chinese globalization and the politics of scale-making.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, millions of Romanians emigrated in search of work and new experiences; they became engaged in an interrogation of what it meant to be Romanian in a united Europe and the globalized world. Their thoughts, feelings and hopes soon began to populate the virtual world of digital and mobile technologies. This book chronicles the online cultural and political expressions of the Romanian diaspora using websites based in Europe and North America. Through online exchanges, Romanians perform new types of citizenship, articulated from the margins of the political field. The politicization of their diasporic condition is manifested through written and public protests against discriminatory work legislation, mobilization, lobbying, cultural promotion and setting up associations and political parties that are proof of the gradual institutionalization of informal communications. Online discourse analysis, supplemented by interviews with migrants, poets and politicians involved in the process of defining new diasporic identities, provide the basis of this book, which defines the new cultural and political practices of the Romanian diaspora.

There has been much recent celebration of the success of African 'civil society' in forging global connections through an ever-growing diaspora. Against the background of such celebrations, this innovative book sheds light on the diasporic networks - 'home associations' - whose economic contributions are being used to develop home. Despite these networks being part of the flow of migrants' resources back to Africa that now outweighs official development assistance, the relationship between the flow of capital and social and political change are still poorly understood. Looking in particular at Cameroon and Tanzania, the authors examine the networks of migrants that have been created by making 'home associations' international. They argue that claims in favour of enlarging 'civil society' in Africa must be placed in the broader context of the political economy of migration and wider debates concerning ethnicity and belonging. They demonstrate both that diasporic development is distinct from mainstream development, and that it is an uneven historical process in which some 'homes' are better placed to take advantage of global connections than others. In doing so, the book engages critically with the current enthusiasm among policy-makers for treating the African diaspora as an untapped resource for combating poverty. Its focus on diasporic networks, rather than private remittances, reveals the particular successes and challenges diasporas face in acting as a group, not least in mobilising members of the diaspora to fulfill obligations to home.