Floating lives : cultural citizenship and the limits of diaspora

Cultural citizenship may, in the simplest terms, be taken to mean a certain 'fit' or compatibility between the cultural attributes of an individual or group and those of the society in which they live. It is a complex concept, taking in rights, responsibilities and competencies as well as the more intangible issues of identity and belonging which have been the subject of intense debates within cultural studies in the last decade. In the case of diasporic or transnational peoples, it is further complicated by the fact of their multiple and unstable cultural and/or civic allegiances (to home and host nations in the first instance, but frequently also to the cultural space of diaspora itself).

This essay examines recent life stories by Chinese Australians: Clara Law's film Floating Life (1996) and two novellas by Liu Guande and Huangfu Jun, published together in English under the title Bitter Peaches and Plums (1995). Focusing on the diversity of experience evoked by notions of cultural belonging, it argues against the prevalent tendency within diaspora studies to engage in a rhetoric of cultural essentialism. The literatures of diaspora deserve to be read as documents of unique and complex cultural experiences rather than mere illustrations of archetypes

Where else have you been? The effects of diaspora consciousness and transcultural mixtures on ethnic identity

In social science research, the demographic categories of ethnicity are linked to what the census bureau considers as a person’s ethnic heritage. However, these categories are based on the societal assumption that members of a given category share the same characteristics and life experiences, even though the heterogeneity between members within a category may be as diverse as between categories. The paper examines the 15 interview subjects of a research study drawn from 10 minority migrant groups, where seven of them indicated significant transcultural experiences before migrating to Australia. It argues that their lived experiences and subjectivity vary from others who migrated directly from their native countries. The formers’ diaspora consciousness and transcultural mixtures may introduce an artifact to a research study’s design, affecting the validity of the data collected. The paper examines other situations where this anomaly can occur and proposes precautions
to minimize its negative effects.

Diaspora, return and migrant architectures

Nearly all discourses on migration (to my knowledge) emphasise that the migrant is not so much a traveller, but a figure oriented towards settlement and a particular destination. Discourses on migration have attended more to the process and site of ‘arrival’, and few studies have focused on the process and site of ‘departure’. However, central to the thesis of this paper would be the testimony of two migrant houses – one in the city of  immigration (Melbourne, Australia), and the other in the village of emigration (Zavoj in Macedonia). The focus will be on the Zavoj house as a significant house, a house that points to a thesis about how architecture makes explicit other processes of migration, namely that of ‘return’. Here there are several intertwined communities and nations, and also different notions of community and nation. It has been noted that ‘diaspora’ is constituted through longer distances, severe separation, and a taboo on return. And yet implicit in many more ‘autobiographical’ accounts is that one only leaves with a promise to return. The conflict and question of ‘return’ is at the centre of the migrant’s imaginary. A study of the two houses of migration implicates a set of networks, forces, relations, circumscribing a much larger global geopolitical and cultural field that questions our understandings of diaspora, the currency of transnationalism, the binary structure of dwelling/travelling, and the fabric and fabrication of community. But the study goes inwards and underneath as well through the figure of the migrant, the figure through which the two migrant houses are deeply associated. The paper will explore the subjective nature of the thesis, the idea of a ‘migrant house’ as an imaginary architecture, a psychic geography, an imaginary community and sense of nationhood.

Islam and political violence : Muslim diaspora and radicalism in the West

How do we engage with the pressing challenges of xenophobia, radicalism and security in the age of the "war on terror"? The widely felt sense of insecurity in the West is shared by Muslims both within and outside Western societies. Growing Islamic militancy and resulting increased security measures by Western powers have contributed to a pervasive sense among Muslims of being under attack (both physically and culturally). Islam and Political Violence brings together the current debate on the uneasy and potentially mutually destructive relationship between the Muslim world and the West and argues we are on a dangerous trajectory, strengthening dichotomous notions of the divide between the West and the Muslim world.