Abstract
While immigration has long been a contentious issue in the West, recent years have seen a marked change in the caliber of the debate. On both sides of the Atlantic, furor over the “new wave” of immigration has led to often controversial legislative policies intended not only to curtail the migratory tide but also to assimilate the diasporas existing within state borders. Citizens and policy-makers alike have decried policies of multiculturalism advocated since the 1960s, arguing that these practices have contributed to the demise of cohesive national identities necessary for the functioning of the modern state.1 The rise of global communication technologies, as well as the ease and speed with which humans are now able to travel, are said to further inhibit assimilation due to diaspora members maintaining connections to the homeland as if they had never left. Without at least a minimal degree of assimilation, critics claim that diasporas have the potential to act as harmful “truncated nations” or “fifth columns”2—a charge that appears legitimate in the wake of recent events such as the protests of Danish Muslims over the cartoons portraying the prophet Muhammad, the London subway bombings in 2005 undertaken by North African immigrants, and the riots primarily within immigrant neighborhoods that swept through Paris in October and November of 2006.
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Notes
Steven Van Evera, “Hypotheses on Nationalism and the Causes of War,” in Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe, ed. Charles, A. Kupchan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).
Khachig Tolöyan, “Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational Moment,” Diaspora 5, 1 (1996): 3.
Khachig Tolöyan, “The American Model of Diasporic Discourse,” in Diasporas and Ethnic Migrants, eds. Rainer Münz and Rainer Ohliger (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2003), p. 59.
Walker Conner, “The Impact of Homelands Upon Diasporas,” in Modern Diasporas in International Politics, ed. Gabriel Sheffer (London: Groom Helm Ltd, 1986), p. 16.
Martin Baumann, “Shangri-La in Exile: Portraying Tibetan Diaspora Studies and Reconsidering Diaspora(s),” Diaspora 6, 3 (1997): 377–404. An egg cream diaspora, as mentioned by the New York Times, 2/9/1994, is the re-emergence after several years of “ egg-creams,” drinks made from soda water, syrup, and milk. They were once a New York drug store specialty and now are appearing across the United States in select locales.
Dominique Schnapper, “From the Nation-State to the Transnational World: On the Meaning and Usefulness of Diaspora as a Concept,” Diaspora 8, 3 (1999): 249–250.
James Clifford, Routes: Travel & Translation in the Late 20th Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 270.
John, A. Armstrong, “Mobilized and Proletarian Diasporas,” American Political Science Review, 70, 2 (1976): 393–394.
See, for example, Fiona, B. Adamson, “Mobilizing for the transformation of home: politicized identities and transnational practices,” in New Approaches to Migration, ed. Nadje Al-Ali and Khalid Koser (New York: Routledge, 2002).
Richard Alba, and Victor Nee, “Rethinking Assimilation Theory for a New Era of Immigration,” International Migration Review 31, 4 (1997): 832.
Gabriel Sheffer, Diaspora Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 163;
Yossi Shain, Marketing the American Creed Abroad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
Martin Van Bruinessen, “Shifting national and ethnic identities: The Kurds in Turkey and the European Diaspora,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 18, 1 (1998): 39–52.
Edgar Wickberg, “Overseas Chinese Adaptive Organizations, Past and Present,” in Reluctant Exiles? ed. Ronald Sheldon (New York: Armonk, 1994), p. 73.
Wing Chung Ng, The Chinese in Vancouver, 1945–80: The Pursuit of Identity and Power (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999), p. 17.
Stephen Beecroft, “Canadian Policy Towards China, 1949–1957,” in Reluctant Adversaries, eds. Paul, M. Evans, and B. Michael Frolic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), pp. 53–55.
Paul, M. Evans, “Solving Our Cold War China Problem,” in Reluctant Adversaries, eds. Paul, M. Evans, and B. Michael Frolic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), p. 5.
Katharyne Mitchell, “Reworking Democracy: Contemporary Immigration and Community Politics in Vancouver’s Chinatown,” Political Geography 17, 6 (1998): 738.
Janet Lum, “Recognition and the Toronto Chinese Community,” in Reluctant Adversaries, eds. Paul, M. Evans and B. Michael Frolic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), p. 226.
Harry Con, Ronald, J. Con, Graham Johnson, Edgar Wickberg, and William, E. Willmott, From China to Canada: A History of the Chinese Communities in Canada (Toronto: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1982), p. 228.
Katharyne Mitchell, “Conflicting Geographies of Democracy and the Public Sphere in Vancouver BC,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 22, 2 (1997): p. 164, fn. 1&2. Taiwanese immigrants also made up a significant proportion of the newly arrived immigrants.
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© 2012 Brent J. Steele and Jonathan M. Acuff
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Williams, M.L. (2012). Generations at Home and Abroad: The Chinese Diaspora. In: Steele, B.J., Acuff, J.M. (eds) Theory and Application of the “Generation” in International Relations and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137011565_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137011565_6
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