The place which is diaspora: Citizenship, religion and gender in the making of chaordic transnationalism

TLDR

Diasporas are chaordic, lacking a central command, yet operate autonomously across space while reproducing predictably. The study argues that analysing diasporas’ organisational, moral, and aesthetic dimensions is essential to grasp their political and mobilising power. The authors illustrate diasporic complexity via the expansion of international Sufi cults and women’s activism. Diasporic communities in democratic states share a commitment to securing citizenship rights and lobby Western governments, a defining feature of postcolonial diasporas.

Abstract

The paper argues for a need to analyse the organisational and moral, as well as the aesthetic dimensions of diasporas in order to understand their political and mobilising power. Organisationally, diasporas are characterised by a chaordic structure and by a shared sense of moral co-responsibility, embodied in material gestures and extended through and across space. Ultimately, there is no guiding hand, no command structure, organising the politics, the protests, the philanthropic drives, the commemoration ceremonies or the aesthetics of diasporas. Indeed, the locations of diaspora are relatively autonomous of any centre, while paradoxically, new diaspora communities reproduce themselves predictably, and in tandem. The internal complexity of diasporas is shown here through the example of the expansion and spread of international Sufi cults and women's activism. Yet despite the fact that contemporary diasporas are marked by their heterogeneity, diasporic communities located in democratic nation-states do share a commitment to struggle for enhanced citizenship rights for themselves, and for co-diasporics elsewhere, often lobbying Western governments to defend their human rights. This may well be a defining feature of postcolonial diasporas in the West.