ABSTRACT

The word ‘diaspora’ originates from the Greek speiro, meaning ‘to sow’ or ‘to disperse’. A diaspora is a group of people who are dispersed across multiple sites from an ‘originary’ homeplace. This is a better term than ‘original’ because it suggests the constructed nature of the origins of a people rather than an essentialised narrative with a prehistoric starting point. Diasporas are more than just a group of migrants because members consciously maintain their shared commitment to each other and to a homeplace. For example, the Armenian diaspora has major communities in Argentina, Azerbaijan, France, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine and the USA, and many people in the diaspora maintain a collective identity on the basis of their shared relationship to Armenia despite their global distribution. There has been much debate about the definition and meaning of diaspora (Cohen 2008) in relation to: the nature of dispersal (was it forced or voluntary?), the length of time since leaving the homeland (are they f irst generation migrants or had their family left the homeplace long ago?), the nature of the commitment to home (is it emotional or material?), and the nature of the home itself (is it an existing territory or an imagined homeland?). Diaspora is not a simple concept and various definitions emerge from different disciplinary traditions.