ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which academics and the media continue to use terminology that acts against the interests of minority ethnic communities in the West. On the one hand there is talk of pluralism, integration, acceptance and tolerance; on the other hand there are antiquated labels imposed on individuals from these communities. For instance, terms such as ‘immigrant’ and ‘diaspora’ are still regularly deployed in reference to individuals who have been born and brought up in the West and have made no journey from any supposed ‘homeland’. In order to accept fully these individuals into the multi-ethnic societies in which they live, there is an urgent need for this terminology to be dropped and for its significance to be understood. Current social processes are changing the ways in which fields are defined, and the locus of ethnography appears to have shifted so as to include those communities that have been party to transnational movements.
