Diaspora and Nationalism

Diaspora and Nationalism

Stéphane Dufoix

Relevance

Talking about nationalism implies drawing a line between Us and Th em, the na-

tion being a commonly shared circle of land, people, and history surrounded by a

periphery composed of all the other lands, peoples, and histories. Th e nation is

inscribed within strict boundaries separating it from the rest of the world. Th e in-

side is national; the outside is not. Th e more homogeneous the inside, the more

united and the more true the nation. In this respect, the coincidence between the

land and the people functions as an indicator of the limits of the nation. Th ough

an ideal one, this view was fundamental in the age of nation-building: once the

nation-state was established, it contained the right population on the right por-

tion of land, with the exception of possible irredentist claims. Everything that con-

tradicted this vision was treated as an anomaly, be it the presence of nationals

abroad or the presence of foreigners within. As it could already be read in Plato’s

Laws, going abroad is as dangerous to the purity of the city as letting foreigners

in. In either case, any relationship with the exterior had to be seriously moni-

tored, if not strictly forbidden, for contact with foreign people or foreign lands

was seen as a kind of pollution. But there was one important exception: this con-

tact would be favored if it could benefi t the nation, for instance, by adding new

territories to it.

Th erefore, displacement toward other lands and the presence abroad of “na-

tional” populations historically belonged to two completely diff erent experiences:

colonization on the one hand, in which the link to the metropolis was organized

around the idea of empire and of domination by the state of those distant lands,

as well as of the indigenous populations living there; and individual or collective

emigration, on the other hand, for which the upholding of a link with the metrop-

olis was, most of the time, subordinated to the existence of a “spirit of return” to

the homeland, as though physical and temporal distance from the home territory

was tantamount to aff ective distance from the nation itself and to the probable

weakening of the allegiance to the state. In the fi rst case, the nation expands. In

the second, it loses subjects. In 19th-century German states, if a citizen emigrated

and did not return before 10 years, he was considered as having renounced his

citizenship and was deprived of it.

Th is latter example was not an isolated case at the time, and we can still see

traces of this national reluctance concerning distance. Most democratic countries

established diff erences among their own citizens, depending on whether they re-

sided on national territory or abroad. Even the countries of emigration that strived

NATIONS AND NATIONALISM: VOLUME 4 (1989–PRESENT)

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DIASPORA AND NATIONALISM 1365


to maintain a formal link with their emigrants—generally through the implemen-

tation of a strong right of blood ( jus sanguinis), which almost prevented any possi-

bility of renouncing one’s citizenship once and for all—at the same time denied

those emigrants the capacity to accomplish from abroad such important duties of

citizenship as the right to vote, thus making them second-rank citizens due to their

spatial distance from the homeland. Historical evidence shows that the opportu-

nity for expatriate citizens to vote from abroad was off ered rather late in some

Western democracies, such as France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

For a long time, distance and dispersion from the homeland, materialized in

the form of a state or not, were incompatible with the normal existence of a na-

tion; the scattering of a whole people was a terrible curse, while dispersed life

was seen as a provisory situation until return to the land could occur. Th is view

has only recently changed. Nowadays, expatriate populations are more and more

integrated into the national landscape.

Two forms of a link between the inside and the outside may be elaborated: a

struggle from outside to make the land the territory of a nation or of the real nation,

and actions by the authorities and/or by “national” communities living abroad to

construct, transform, or maintain a link keeping together all parts of the nation.

If one wants to study the relationship between the defi nition of the nation and

the physical distance from the land considered as being precisely the crucible of

the nation, one has to draw a diff erence between two types of situations.

In the fi rst case, the defi nition of the nation is at stake in a confl ictual context

linked to a war of independence, a war against the occupation of the land by a

foreign power, or the claim by groups living outside the boundaries that the home

regime is illegitimate. In those cases, as long as no signifi cant opposition is able

to develop in the country, the truth of the nation is abroad. Th e fi ght for the ex-

pected result (i.e., acceding to independence, regaining self-determination, or

overthrowing the illegitimate regime) is mostly in the hands of politically active

people living in foreign countries. Usually, this situation is known as exile, and

we have recently described as exile polities the trans-state national political

fi elds formed by the collaboration and also sometimes concurrence between

these groups. Anti-Franco Spaniards, anticommunist East European exiles, anti-

Castroist Cubans, Tibetans struggling for a return to independence, Kurds,

Tamils, and Palestinians advocating for the creation of a new state for a stateless

people: the list could be long of all those populations for which the true spirit of

the nation was living abroad for some time before it could eventually fi nd a place,

or fi nd it again, with the establishment or reestablishment of an independent

state, or a political change. True Poland, real Cuba, Tibet, or Palestine only have a

political existence in the hearts and in the actions of people living far away from

their national land.

In the second case, there is no challenge to the political legitimacy to the re-

gime: the expatriates are not exiles fi ghting from abroad for self-determination,

the liberation of the country, or a political change. Th ey are mere migrants, or


1366 DIASPORA AND NATIONALISM


sons and daughters of migrants, who, despite their distance to the national terri-

tory, want to be integrated into a broader defi nition of the nation or become ob-

jects of such a redefi nition within the framework of a state policy directed toward

nationals abroad.

Some recent evolutions tend to show that a de-territorialized logic is increas-

ingly being added to the previous territorial logic of the nation. Transformations

of dual nationality and dual citizenship laws, of external voting, of political repre-

sentation of citizens living abroad, and more generally, of public policies directed

toward national populations abroad correspond to a large process in which home

states, host states, but also trans-state mobilizations by migrants are involved.

Examples of such policies through which states attempt to organize their rela-

tionship to the scattered parts of the nation and to breathe life into this link are

numerous all around the world: Ireland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, India,

Italy, Greece, Eritrea, Australia, Kenya, Mexico, Armenia, Nigeria, and Colombia,

to cite but a few.

If not always contradictory, these two forms may seem to stand at opposite

ends of the spectrum. Yet, the evolution of the word “diaspora” for a few decades

has encompassed them, as though they were identical. “Diaspora” is now used to

describe exile polities as well as any national group away from the homeland. In a

sense, this shift is logical because both phenomena ask a single question: what

are the spatial limits of the nation? Yet, merging both situations may result in

confusion of the issues. It is therefore compulsory to understand why “diaspora”

has come to such a crucial role in the vision of a nation that is no longer confi ned

to territorial limits.

Origins

If thinking about “diaspora and nationalism” is in fact thinking about “distance

and nationalism,” the word “diaspora” cannot just be cast away as though it were

not important. On the contrary, the evolutions of its uses are fundamental to any-

one trying to understand changes in nationalism issues since the 1960s.

Diaspora is an ancient Greek word that was fi rst used in the Greek transla-

tion (known as the Septuagint) of the Hebrew Bible in the third century BC, in

which it described the divine punishment Jews would endure (i.e., their disper-

sion throughout the world) if they would not respect the law of God. Until the

1960s, this old word was mostly limited to the religious realm. It was most often

applied to Jews, but also to Catholics and Protestants with the meaning of “reli-

gious minority.” Moreover, as it stemmed from the Jewish experience, it carried

the weight of a negative reputation: “diaspora” meant exile and persecution.

From the 1960s onward, new developments have occurred and the word has

acquired a much more positive meaning without yet replacing the negative one.




As compared with its earlier uses marked by religious (Jewish, Catholic, and Prot-

estant) history, it has undergone a progressive secularization, with more and more

nonreligious uses becoming acceptable in the social sciences. Another intellec-

tual factor favored this transformation. On the one hand, scholarly works began

addressing the issue of the “survival” or of the “upholding” of African cultures in

the New World, thus giving the opportunity for populations who were often dis-

criminated against because of the color of their skin to see themselves as having

a history and to build bridges with Africa. Another factor in the making of a more

positive vision of “diaspora” came from the evolution of the link between the state

of Israel and world Jewry. Of course, the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 re-

sulted from the Zionist refusal of a Jewish existence dispersed among the nations.

Yet, the fact that a million Jews refused to migrate to Israel despite the Law of

Return, while at the same time claiming their “particular attachment” to the fate

of this country, gave credit to the opinion that the boundaries of a nation were

not necessarily the territorial boundaries. “Diaspora” became a positive notion.

Th is possibility of an ethno-national link between a territorial center and dis-

persed communities combines with the increasing theoretical and empirical rec-

ognition of potentially plural ethnic or cultural identities to generate a split in the

meaning of “diaspora.” From the end of the 1960s, it could be used in reference to

very diff erent phenomena. It could mean the dispersion of a people without a

state (the Armenian or the Palestinian diaspora), a community of people shar-

ing the same origin though not being citizens of the state they feel close to (the

Jewish diaspora), or a broad cultural community sharing the belief in a common

origin without any relationship to a center at all (the black or African diaspora).

From the early 1960s onward, the original cultural identity of migrants was

no longer considered something that was bound to disappear. Th is important

change in the interpretation of identity gave rise to multicultural programs and

policies in some Western states (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Can-

ada) and fostered new, plural theories of ethnicity, taking into account the fact

that living in a territory did not necessarily mean keeping a one-and-only relation-

ship to its culture. Moreover, in parallel, some philosophical, anthropological,

and sociological theories (post-structuralism, postmodernism, cultural studies,

etc.) emerged from the late 1960s. Th ey were characterized by the ambition to de-

construct the notions of unity and oneness to concentrate on multiplicity and to

condemn the notion of center to concentrate on the periphery. By doing this, they

granted a particular importance to the ideas of space and spatialization, thus

making it possible for dispersion to be a diff erent rather than a pathological mode

of being in the world. Th is new vision quickly fi tted with the discovery in the

1980s that the world was becoming increasingly global. Taking into account new

opportunities to connect people and groups beyond state boundaries, the net-

work became the key notion to understanding the contemporary world. Th is

trend was confi rmed by the irruption of new technologies for information and

communication (fax machines, mobile phones, and especially, the Internet). In




this context, “diaspora” happened to be the right word at the right time. Th is new

insistence on space, on link, and on the potential multiplicity of identities quite

naturally met the word and made it a fundamental entry into the new world. But

the process of globalization is far from being uniform in its consequences. As the

political scientist James Rosenau and the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman have sep-

arately demonstrated, instead of favoring homogenization, globalization rather

tends to juxtapose two opposite dimensions: a state dimension and a nonstate

dimension, the dimension of travel and the dimension of origin, or to put it in

the words of the anthropologist James Cliff ord, the juxtaposition of “routes” and

“roots.” As we saw earlier, the acquired polysemy of “diaspora” authorized it to de-

scribe centered as well as centerless relationships. “Diaspora” thus became a word

capable of describing the world of the past as well as the contemporary world, the

state as well as the network, what is out of date as well as what is forthcoming.

Finally, the affi nity between the word “diaspora,” with all its stratifi ed mean-

ings, and the multifaceted transformations of the worlds of identity and space

and their interpretation in the social sciences made it possible for the word to go

beyond a mere conceptual use. Imported from the social sciences by community

leaders, civil servants, journalists, and Web masters, this practical use resulted in

its increasing capacity to embrace more and more populations and situations.

Now having become a “global word” that fi ts the “global world,” it may be used

without any precaution or defi nition. Its conceptualization made it available for

politicians and statesmen; its use even became institutionalized within the

framework of state policies, “diaspora” being increasingly used as the very name

of national populations or populations of national origin living abroad. Whereas

the notion of “ethnic group” can defi ne the common particularities of a popula-

tion living in one territory, the notion of “diaspora” made it possible to defi ne a

community all over the world.

If we concentrate more precisely on the link between “diaspora” and “nation-

alism” in the social sciences, we can notice that it was hardly mentioned before

the second half of the 20th century. If C. A. Macartney, in his National States and

National Minorities (1934), described the Gypsies as a people “which, however,

unlike all the others, has never attempted to found a state of its own, but has

been content, it appears, to live in an eternal diaspora,” he was an isolated case

before Arnold Toynbee granted a greater importance to diaspora peoples in his

Study of History (1934). Th e study of the relationship between diaspora and na-

tionalism really took shape in the second half of the 1970s and early 1980s.

In an article titled “Mobilized and Proletarian Diasporas,” published in the

American Political Science Review in 1976, John Armstrong was certainly one of

the fi rst scholars to seriously examine the role of diaspora, which he defi ned as

“any ethnic collectivity that lacks a territorial base within a given polity, i.e., is a

relatively small minority throughout all portion of the polity.” One year later, Hugh

Seton-Watson, in his Nations and States, wrote a section devoted to “diaspora na-

tions.” Experts in nationalism studies, such as Anthony Smith or Benedict Ander-




son, often referred to Jewish, Armenian, and Greek attempts at building a state of

their own in terms of “diaspora nationalism.”

As a sign that distance was not contradictory with nationalism any more, the

historian Benedict Anderson coined in the mid-1990s the phrase “long-distance

nationalism” to signal the current acceleration of an older phenomenon: identifi -

cation to a nation arising from confrontation with others and from the risk of

seeing one’s particularity diluted. In this respect, nationalism would in some way

be born out of exile. Transnationalization linked to the development of post-

industrial capitalism not only favors migrations but also the organization by mi-

grants and their descendants of some kind of relationship to their country of

origin, sometimes even infl uencing homeland policies so that the latter may take

into account their presence abroad.

Dimensions

Considering the distinction that we established at the beginning between exile

communities and communities living abroad, it may seem at fi rst glance that

their experiences are completely opposite from one another. Yet, the major axes

of their link to the homeland belong to the same broad categories. We can iden-

tify two of them, for which we’ll show the diff erences for the two aforementioned

subgroups: the importance of time and space, and the question of the political le-

gitimacy of the populations abroad.

Physical distance from the homeland logically implies a specifi c relationship

to space, but, as the sociologist Norbert Elias demonstrated, space cannot be dis-

sociated from time. Being away in space also means being away in time. In this

respect, exiled polities and expatriate communities resemble each other. Away

from the land, they also live in a diff erent time, since their host countries or coun-

tries of residence possess their own national time. Th ere is nevertheless a great

diff erence between exile and expatriate communities as far as this relationship to

time and space is concerned. Whereas expatriate communities generally have the

possibility of keeping contact with both the space and time of the homeland, the

exile cannot aff ord this contact and most often refuses it because he considers

any physical contact with the territory they are fi ghting for to represent the rec-

ognition of the present situation. For instance, people who have fl ed their coun-

try for fear of persecution because of their political opinions and who have been

granted refugee status must accept that they cannot go back to the homeland. If

they do, they will offi cially not be recognized as refugees any more. Th at dimen-

sion of exile is fundamental. Exile polities can only develop if they organize a

symbolic suspension of time and space, as though neither were linked to the

homeland any more. By doing this, exiles justify a struggle that is bound to last

until they return to the homeland. Th ey also run the risk of totally disconnecting




themselves from the homeland, since going back will expunge that vital aspect of

their political identity.

In his book Imagined Communities (1983), Benedict Anderson insisted on the

role that the invention of printing played in the diff usion of nationalism: identical

words could then be read by diff erent people in distinct places, thus building a

bridge between them and potentially synchronizing their spirits in a single realm.

Th e development of nation-states resulted in the formation of national temporal-

ities binding people together: time and space coincided. During the modern pe-

riod, every distance in space was therefore a distance in time, that is, a distance

to the nation. Th e period that witnessed the rise of electronics and information

science has been labeled “late modernity,” “second modernity,” or “hypermodern-

ity” precisely because space has progressively become more and more indepen-

dent of time. Th e consequences of such a revolution are obvious as far as the

upholding of a link to the nation is concerned. It has now become possible for

distant people to communicate almost instantaneously via e-mails, mobile

phones, chat rooms, portals, etc. Th e so-called new technologies of information

and communication allow migrants not to live their situation merely as a “double

absence,” neither here nor there, as the French sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad put

it a decade ago, but rather as a potential “double presence,” here and there, be-

cause even these words have lost part of their meaning.

Th e Internet is obviously the most important medium for this development

of potential ubiquity. Governmental sites giving expatriates as much information

as possible about their rights or about the internal evolution of the country, or

ethno-national portals designed by migrants or their descendents, instill conti-

nuity and instantaneity into the relationship established among state representa-

tives and “diaspora” representatives. Th e creation of an Internet site devoted to

this purpose is now of the very fi rst claims by expatriates. As a matter of fact, the

recent creation (2002) by the Eritrean government of a specifi c institution in

charge of contact with Eritreans abroad was immediately accompanied by a Web

site project as well as the construction of a database. Such core sites established

by states like India, Armenia, Greece, Italy, and so on, cohabit with other Web

sites, the purpose of which is to connect the various poles of the periphery. Simi-

larly, exile polities, too, take advantage of the lobbying, diff usion, and connection

opportunities off ered by the Internet. In 1996, a Burmese militant from the Uni-

versity of Wisconsin campaigned for democracy in Burma on his Free Burma Co-

alition site, which led the U.S. Congress to put the issue of economic sanctions

against the Rangoon regime on the agenda. Most exile organizations, be they

Sikh, Kurdish, Tamil, or others, make these sites powerful political platforms and

even, sometimes, the very place of their political alternative. Some years ago, one

could read the following on the fi rst page of the Sikh site (www.khalistan.com):

“Welcome to the sovereign cyberspace of Khalistan!”

Besides the relationship between time and space, the issue of legitimacy is

the second important axis. Earlier, we saw that, from a traditional vision, people




were considered weaker and less reliable the farther they were from the land. If

the legitimacy of distance is ever recognized, in the case of political struggle from

abroad, for instance, it seldom survives the contact between the nation and the

land again. Th e role of exile in the birth or in the return of the nation is often for-

gotten, if not denied. Algerian nationalism was born in France among Algerian

immigrants during the interwar period, and France remained the cru cible of na-

tionalism even during the Algerian War. Yet, after independence in 1962, that fact

was obliterated, whereas the national soil and the struggle of Algerians in Algeria

was highlighted. It took almost 20 years before the real history started to be told.

When the defi nition of the real nation was not at stake, national populations

living outside the frontiers would not be considered deserving of much attention

for a long time. In the 19th century, the national territory was the container of the

nation, citizenship as such was only taking shape as a matter of international law,

and emigrants used to be seen by the home state as lost citizens. Th e recognition

that diplomatic protection of citizens residing abroad was part of the duties of

the state only started at the end of the 19th century, but it seldom gave birth to

actual positive policies directed toward them. Th ere was a shift from indiff erence

or abstention to the implementation of a policy of attention toward expatriates

from the 1960s to the 1970s onward.

Th ree domains are aff ected by these policies: dual nationality, external vot-

ing, and political representation, each one representing a further step in the recog-

nition of expatriates’ importance for the nation. If we fi rst look at citizenship, we

can notice that a major change occurred around the 1960s, driving more and more

countries to at least tolerate dual nationality. In 2001, 92 countries in the world

allowed, implicitly or explicitly, some form of multiple citizenship. To take an ex-

ample, only 2 out of the 19 Latin American—Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking

—countries recognized dual nationality before the 1980s: Uruguay (1919) and

Panama (1972). Th roughout the last 30 years, 8 others voted for provisions in this

domain, 6 of them during the 1990s (Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican

Republic, Ecuador, Mexico). Th e same acceleration process took place on all

continents, often following waves of access to independence. Out of the 14 non-

Spanish- and non-Portuguese-speaking countries of Central and South America,

9 of them recognize dual nationality, and out of those 9, 8 of them recognized it

just after their independence (from the early 1960s until the end of the 1980s).

Many of the countries that allowed their citizens to retain their nationality in the

last 30 years had earlier been part of empires, and signifi cant portions of their

population had migrated to and settled in the metropolis or in other regions of

the empire. Such nationality policy was therefore crucial in the national project.

Contrary to a commonly held view, dual nationality and dual citizenship are

diff erent things. Th e latter implies full access to political rights, including voting

from abroad, which is not the case with the former. Often neglected, this issue is

crucial. At the end of the 20th century, only about 60 states had legal provisions

allowing external voting (i.e., gave their citizens residing abroad the possibility to




vote without going back to their home country). Interestingly, the most ancient

democracies refused this possibility until recently: Australia admitted it in 1901,

France just after World War II, the United States in 1975, the United Kingdom in

1985, and Canada in 1993! It seems that there is now an increasing trend, but the

introduction of external voting can be explained by national peculiarities rather

than by the waves of democratization of the 20th century.

Finally, a few countries went so far as to allow citizens abroad to vote for their

own representatives. Only three European countries have chosen to do so: France,

Portugal, and, recently, Italy. Th e latter case is particularly interesting. Th e Ber-

lusconi government formed in June 2001 included a ministry for Italians abroad.

It was headed by Mirko Tremaglia who had parliament adopt the law allowing

Italians to vote from abroad and notably to elect 12 deputies and 6 senators. In

one of history’s frequent ironies, it was precisely the Italian vote from abroad that

sealed Berlusconi and Tremaglia’s defeat in the April 2006 general elections by

electing 4 pro-Prodi senators and thus giving the Unione Party a majority in the

senate.

“Diaspora” has certainly become the most common name used in political

discourses to encompass all national, or of national origin, populations living

abroad. Contrary to what is usually considered the defi nition of nationalism, di-

aspora helps to identify a group without—and not within—its boundaries. Th e

emotional dimension implied by the opportunity to be in direct connection, more

or less formally, with the homeland makes “diaspora policies” rather popular, in-

side and outside the country. “Diaspora” is much more inclusive than such for-

mer denominations as “citizens abroad” or “nationals abroad” for it keeps the

idea alive that the nation is a family and that distance does not really matter. Giv-

ing a specifi c name—and especially diaspora—to populations abroad shows the

particularity to create the group in question rather than only describing it. Th e

philosopher John Austin decades ago insisted on the performative dimensions of

speech: language sometimes does what it says. When we say “I swear,” we indeed

do it through speech. I want here to insist on another potential dimension of

speech, what I call its formative dimension. When a politician or the leader of an

organization says “our diaspora numbers 2 million people,” he does not only count

dispersed people but he makes them a single group; he contributes to forming

the group he only pretends to describe.

Th at dimension insisting on primordial ties is symbolically important to the

general framework of nationalism, but it sometimes hides other interests, most

often economic ones, as can be seen in the cases of China and India. In the 1970s,

both countries shifted from a policy of abstention (even encouraging their expa-

triates to integrate abroad) to a policy of attention favoring fi nancial investment

from abroad to accelerate the modernization of the country. Th is policy has

proven to be successful in China, since it is estimated that 70 percent of the for-

eign direct investment (FDI) in this country comes from overseas Chinese. It rep-

resented a total $26.8 billion between 1979 and 1991 (Th orpe 2002, 8–9). It reached




around $40–45 billion per year between 1997 and 2001, and even rose to $72 bil-

lion in 2005, thus making China the fi rst country in the world in terms of FDI re-

ceived (UNCTAD 2006, 51).

Th e beginnings of the Indian policy follow the same path. In the late 1970s,

the government created the category Non Resident Indians (NRIs) and off ered fa-

cilities for investing and setting up businesses in India. Th e relative failure of this

policy, the fact that expatriates claimed a stronger link to the homeland, and the

coming to power of the nationalist Hindu party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),

all account for the launching of a broader policy in the late 1990s. In 1999, this

policy created the PIO (Person of Indian Origin) scheme, giving the possibility

even to former Indian citizens to return without a visa. In 2001, an offi cial report

drew the lines of that new policy, insisting on an ethnic defi nition of the nation

and on the economic importance of expatriates at the same time. However, suc-

cess is not certain because the Indian population, inside or outside the country,

is fragmented along four lines that still remain predominant: religion, language,

region of origin, and caste.

Today we see evidence of more and more nation-states trying to include ex-

patriates and people of national origin into the defi nition of the nation. Also, an

Indian government ministers assemble during the fi fth Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (Overseas Indian Conference) in New Delhi, January 8, 2007. During the annual gathering of Non Resident Indians (NRI), the government seeks to tap the Indian diaspora’s expertise, experi-ence, and capital for balanced economic development of the country. (Raveendran/AFP/Getty Images)




increasing number of ethnic organizations abroad claim the creation of better

links with the homeland. Yet, this trend also gives way to a few backlashes. Th e

greatest one is the accusation of disloyalty aimed at expatriates on the grounds

that they live away from the homeland. Nowadays, disloyalty is often replaced by

lack of confi dence. It is often estimated that expatriates would be better citizens

if they lived in the country rather than abroad. So, Ireland and Greece do not have

any provision on external voting, even though their rates of citizens residing

abroad are certainly the highest among the countries of the European Union,

precisely because they fear domestic politics could be infl uenced by people not

living in the country.

Th e second backlash is the risk of exaggerated primordialism. Th e develop-

ment of policies of return that allow any returnee of national origin to recover

his/her citizenship often coincides with a noninclusive nationality law in the

country, thus preventing foreigners and minorities from ever being part of the

national community. Such is the case in Israel, Greece, Italy, Estonia, and Ger-

many. Th e primordial tie is seen as the base of the nation; “diaspora” may then be

part not of a national but of a nationalist framework proclaiming the idea of a

closed—as pure as possible—national identity. Logically, however, such policies

may be strongly resented in countries where great numbers of dual nationals live.

As a matter of fact, their loyalty to the host country may be suspected in times of

military crisis (during both world wars for instance) or in times of identity crisis,

an example of the latter being Samuel Huntington’s refl ections on the dilution of

American identity due to the rise of dual nationality.

Consequences

Globalization is very often interpreted as the end of the nation-state because

state boundaries cannot function as walls of the national container any more.

Th e emergence of many fl ows, fi nancial, economic, informational, and human,

has made them porous. But this porosity is not necessarily to the detriment of

the state, for trans-state phenomena are not necessarily nonstate phenomena.

Evidence shows that states also go through a “trans-statization” of themselves.

If the globalization process is an open spatialization of economic, political,

c ultural, and social relations, it also encompasses state capacities to go beyond

their borders. Th e evolutions that have taken place in some countries for the last

30 years certainly point out that the relation of the state, as a historical political

form, to space and distance is changing; being “out of sight” is not tantamount to

being “out of mind” any more. Th e nation extends its limits beyond state borders,

and the very defi nitions of nation and nationality are being transformed since

not only citizens abroad, but also former citizens or descendents of former citi-

zens, still belong to the nation. Arjun Appadurai called these new entities “trans-




nations,” but this term does not show that many nations live beyond state borders;

I would rather call them “trans-state nations.” Th is new paradigm has certainly

never been more clearly presented than by Mexican president Ponce de Leon in a

discourse before the Mexican Federal Congress in May 1995: “Th e Mexican nation

goes beyond the territory contained by its borders. Th erefore an essential element

of the ‘Mexican national program’ will be to promote the constitutional and legal

amendments designed for Mexicans to retain their nationality” (quoted in Vargas

1996, 3–4; italics added for emphasis).

One might think, considering the examples given so far, that the insistence

on national “diasporas” is the prerogative of nonindustrialized and non-Western

countries. Th at was certainly true until recently. Th ere is recent evidence of evo-

lution in this respect. For instance, an offi cial Summit of European Diasporas that

gathered the representatives of 24 European states was held in June 2003 in Th es-

salonica at the initiative of the Greek foreign ministry. Its aim was to raise aware-

ness on this issue and “to focus attention on the importance of Europe’s diasporas,

the role they can play in EU policy development, and to begin a process that will

lead to stronger EU-diaspora ties” (Summit of European Diasporas 2003, 2). More-

over, the 2004 comparative study report issued by the European Confederation

called “Europeans throughout the World,” sponsored by the European Commis-

sion, called for the inclusion by any European Union (EU) member state of legal

provisions concerning national election voting rights for any citizen living abroad:

Th ere is a need for the Member States and the EU institutions to formally recog-

nise in all appropriate instruments, the solidarity with expatriate European citi-

zens, wherever they are found in the world and to fully recognise the resource:

economic, cultural, educational, social, linguistic . . . which the expatriates repre-

sent for the countries and for Europe. (European Confederation 2004, 39)

For their part, Australian authorities, too, have engaged in exploring opportu-

nities of building stronger bridges with their “diaspora,” thus slightly changing

the defi nition of the country itself, making it not only a country of immigration

but also a country of emigration.

Th is recognition of the place expatriates occupy in the frame of the nation

can even go further when people of national origin come to be included in the

defi nition of the “diaspora.” Besides the Indian case with the PIO scheme and

the enforcement of an Overseas Citizenship of India since December 2, 2005, the

Irish and Armenian cases are emblematic of this trend. Mary Robinson, presi-

dent of the Republic of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, played a prominent role in

this a cknowledgment of the “Irish diaspora,” most notably in her “Cherishing

the Irish Diaspora” discourse of February 3, 1995, before the two chambers of the

Parliament:

Four years ago I promised to dedicate my abilities to the service and welfare of

the people of Ireland. Even then I was acutely aware of how broad that term the




people of Ireland is and how it resisted any fi xed or narrow defi nition. One of my

purposes here today is to suggest that, far from seeking to categorize or defi ne

it, we widen it still further to make it as broad and inclusive as possible. (Robin-

son 1995)

Th e current Article 2 of the Irish Constitution, modifi ed by referendum in May 1998,

specifi cally states that “the Irish nation cherishes its special affi nity with people

of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage.”

Th e Armenian case is an interesting example of a shift from exile polity, as

long as the Republic of Armenia was a Soviet Republic, to an expatriate commu-

nity from the Armenian independence in 1991 onward. Th e most important fea-

ture of the diaspora policy of the Armenian Republic is the organization of

Armenia-Diaspora conferences that gather representatives of the state and of the

Armenian communities in the world. Th ree of them actually took place in 1999,

2002, and 2006. Th eir fi ndings did not result in the immediate acceptance of dual

citizenship, since the constitutional ban on dual citizenship was not removed be-

fore a referendum held on November 27, 2005. Yet, these conferences actually

drew the spatial trans-state limits of the Armenian nation, as it is clear from the

fi nal decision of the fi rst conference in 1999:

All the components of our national entity—the Republic of Armenia, Artsakh and

the Diaspora—are interdependent. . . . Th e Republic of Armenia and its state in-

stitutions must necessarily readdress their role in support of the Diaspora’s needs

and aspirations. Armenians are Armenian everywhere, and there is no diff erence

as to where they are. Th ey cannot be “odars” [ foreigners] in their homeland, and

the Republic undertakes to overcome the Constitutional exclusion of dual citi-

zenship, and to allow each and every Armenian to establish a full presence in his

or her homeland. (Armenia-Diaspora Conference 1999)

Th is short excerpt, as well as the other examples cited above, shows well how

globalization and technology have transformed the relationship between those

who live inside and those who live outside. Th e opportunity to create or restore

links without taking spatial distance into account allows for original forms of

community. Dispersion may not be considered a curse any longer, for the cre-

ation of trans-state networks—including states—might well be the form of being

together that best fi ts the world we now, and certainly tomorrow will, live in.

About 200 years after the development of classical nationalism that was cen-

tered on the exclusive notions of territory, peoplehood, and nationality, an alter-

native framework and defi nition of the nation emerged. In this new defi nition,

the inside—the national territory—is intimately connected to the outside—the

diaspora—thus giving birth to possible unbound, trans-state nations. Th is does

not mean that the nation-state as such has disappeared or is bound to disappear.

Recent technological and intellectual transformations have made it possible to

dissociate the nation-state from its “natural” territorial borders and to include




kin populations living abroad. Th e scope of the nation and of nationalism has

thus been extended, and “diasporas” are less and less considered social aberra-

tions and have become actors and targets of national policies.

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Diaspora and Nationalism