ABSTRACT
As has been demonstrated throughout this work, diasporas are in a continuous state of formation and reformation. Their situation can change, often dramatically, in response to tumultuous events and more subtle changes in religious epicentres, homelands and hostlands. Migrants can be dispersed to one, some or many destinations. They can settle in some places, move on, or regroup. New waves of migration from an original homeland can transform the predominant character of the diaspora concerned. More fundamentally, as Van Hear puts it, ‘diasporas can bemade and unmade’.1 These contingent features of diasporas are given added force in the contemporary period, which can loosely be described as ‘the global age’.2 Within the rich array of possible understandings of the global age, I would like to emphasize four aspects that have particular bearing on the mobilization of diasporas:
1. A globalized economy that permits greater connectivity, the expansion of enterprises and the growth of new professional and managerial cadres, thereby changing but creating new opportunities for diasporas;
2. New forms of international migration that encourage limited contractual relationships, family visits, intermittent stays abroad and sojourning, as opposed to permanent settlement and the exclusive adoption of the citizenship of a destination country;
3. The development of cosmopolitan sensibilities in many ‘global cities’ in response to the multiplication and intensification of transactions and interactions between the different peoples of the world; and
4. The revival of religion as a focus for social cohesion through dispersal, renewed pilgrimage and translocation resulting in the development of multi-faced world religions connected in various and complex ways to the diasporic phenomenon.
