Diaspora & transnationalism are widely used concepts in academic & political discourses. Although originally referring to quite different phenomena, they increasingly overlap today. Such inflation of meanings goes hand in hand with a danger of essentialising collective identities. This book analyses this topic.

/pdf/diaspora-and-transnationalism-concepts-theories-and-methods-25q08r6c71.pdf

Diaspora and transnationalism : concepts, theories and methods

Denna avhandling ar en komparativ undersokning av pagaende forandringsprocesser bland kurder i Marseillesregionen i Frankrike ochStockholmsregionen i Sverige. I fokus star skiftet fran en endimensi ...

/pdf/from-victim-diaspora-to-transborder-citizenship-diaspora-2m1s8ww3h6.pdf

FROM VICTIM DIASPORA TO TRANSBORDER CITIZENSHIP? Diaspora formation and transnational relations among Kurds in France and Sweden

This thesis concerns a sociological analysis on the role of generations in the processes of the construction of national identities, and long-distance nationalism in diasporic settings. The empirical case taken is a political generation of Kurds from Turkey who once arrived in Sweden as political refugees. 
The primary aim of the thesis is to study how national identities are constructed and maintained in the political generation of interest here. Twenty-three men and women who arrived in Sweden in the years surrounding the military coup of 1980 have been interviewed. They are all from Turkey and have all been involved in the Kurdish resistance during the 1960s and/or 1970s. Theoretically the thesis draws on the concepts of sociological generation, diaspora and long-distance nationalism. The analysis contained herein adresses questions of how Kurdish national identities of this political generation are constructed and maintained in a diasporic setting. 
Using a narrative approach the thesis demonstrates how competing stories together form a complex and intricate narrative. The stories are both backward- and forward-looking, articulating different experiences of suffering, strength, emancipation and challenges. 
The backward-looking stories are on the one hand associated with experiences of political unrest, violence and denial. On the other hand these stories articulate senses of idyllisation, displacement and longing for a homeland lost. These are the stories of a defeated political generation and fit into the dominant diaspora victimisation narrative. The forward-looking stories concentrate on the subjects efforts in developing practices and strategies in their present lives in diasporic settings. In Sweden they have continued to commit themselves to the Kurdish cause. Gradually new political strategies developed and many of the interviewees became engaged in transnational networks. The forward-looking stories indicate that the generation has come to challenge the dominant diaspora victim narrative. Simultaneously, however, their their position as a defeated political generation was challenged. The results also point to the fact that national identities are complex and changing.

/pdf/reluctant-victims-into-challengers-narratives-of-a-kurdish-46o9g6abei.pdf

Reluctant Victims into Challengers - Narratives of a Kurdish Political Generation in Diaspora in Sweden

The purpose of this article is to examine the experiences of two generations among the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden: those who migrated as adults and those who were born and/or raised in Sweden. The focus will be on issues of identity, home(land) and politics of belonging with regard to generational and temporal aspects. We will argue that there are significant differences among the older and younger generations with regard to their experiences that demand different theoretical and analytical conceptualisations.

https://journal-njmr.org/articles/10.2478/njmr-2014-0008/galley/119/download/

Temporal and Generational Impact on Identity, Home(Land) and Politics of Belonging among the Kurdish Diaspora

As the most figurative asset of membership in a majority or minority and the most symbolic aspect of national authority, language is a major site of struggle for majority power and minority resistance. For the purposes of this study, which focuses on the question of Kurdish linguistic rights in Turkey, the sites of struggle for majority power and minority resistance are as follows: the documents of international and European organisations on the linguistic rights of minorities, the impact of the modernisation and nation-state building process in Turkey on the Kurdish-speaking community and the resistance engendered by the Kurdish intelligentsia in the European diaspora and in Turkey against the majority power delimiting the Kurdish linguistic rights. The problematisation or de-normalisation of minority rights and minority resistance constitutes the overall aim of this study. This problematisation is done in two parts, first of which includes a deconstructive analysis using three binary oppositions: the minority and the majority; the individual and community; and the public and private sphere with special reference to language, a significant component of nationalist discourse. This movement also forms the basis of the second part, which critically examines the relationship between power and resistance by the help of post-structuralist understanding of power. Kurdish linguistic rights are a recently specified aspect of the Kurdish question in Turkey, which stretches from the late Ottoman period of administrative reforms to the Republican era of the Turkish modernisation and nationalisation projects. This linguistic aspect enables Kurdish intellectuals in Turkey to criticise Turkey’s EU harmonisation process for being delimited by the binary oppositions between the individual and community and between the public and private sphere. These criticisms are included in the critical analysis of the principle of majority in Turkey through the interviews conducted with Kurdish intellectuals in Turkey. The extent of the potential for leading emancipatory politics for the Kurdish community is also analysed through the interviews conducted with Kurdish intellectuals in the European diaspora and in Turkey. Having said this, the viewpoints of Kurdish intellectuals in the European diaspora are much more vocalised in order to analyse the effects of living in the EU territory when it comes to stimulating a distinctive, namely transformative and trans-national standpoint and resistance. In this respect, this study tries to bring up that what has not been studied before, namely to connect the approach of Kurdish intellectuals on the question of Kurdish linguistic rights in Turkey with a critical analysis of the liberal nation-state philosophy and minority rights.

/pdf/between-majority-power-and-minority-resistance-kurdish-52dpx7q3wx.pdf

Between Majority Power and Minority Resistance: Kurdish Linguistic Rights in Turkey

/pdf/diaspora-global-politics-kurdish-transnational-networks-and-4qt3kmeanr.pdf

Diaspora global politics. Kurdish transnational networks and accommodation of nationalism

https://zenodo.org/record/7634385/files/GHGT-16-full-paper_Emanuelsson%20et%20al_Conference%20proceedings.pdf

Ann-Catrin Emanuelsson

Papers

Diaspora global politics. Kurdish transnational networks and accommodation of nationalism

The cost of CCS - a product chain analysis of the cement and pulp industries