Routledge Handbook of Diaspora Studies

The word ‘diaspora’ has leapt from its previously confined use – mainly concerned with the dispersion of Jews, Greeks, Armenians and Africans away from their natal homelands – to cover the cases of many other ethnic groups, nationalities and religions. But this ‘horizontal’ scattering of the word to cover the mobility of many groups to many destinations, has been paralleled also by ‘vertical’ leaps, with the word diaspora being deployed to cover more and more phenomena and serve more and more objectives of different actors.

With sections on ‘debating the concept’, ‘complexity’, ‘home and home-making’, ‘connections’ and ‘critiques’ this collection of 40 original contributions plus an editorial introduction the Routledge Handbook of Diaspora Studies is likely to remain an authoritative reference for some time. Each contribution includes a targeted list of references for further reading. The editors have carefully blended established scholars of diaspora with younger scholars looking at how diasporas are constructed ‘from below’. The adoption of a variety of conceptual perspectives allows for generalization, contrasts and comparisons between cases.

Robin Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Development Studies and Senior Research Fellow, Kellogg College, University of Oxford. He writes on globalization, development, migration, creolization, diasporas and identity. His books include: Frontiers of identity: the British and the others (1994), Global diasporas: an introduction (2008), Encountering difference: diasporic traces, creolizing spaces (2016) (with Olivia Sheringham) and Island societies (2017). He is currently writing an intellectual history of key intellectuals at eight universities where he has held academic appointments and, with Nicholas Van Hear, developing a solution to the problem of mass displacement using the notion of ‘Refugia’.

Carolin Fischer is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. Her current work examines how migrant descendants experience, interpret, appropriate and modify otherness in their everyday lives. In 2015 Carolin completed a doctorate in Development Studies at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral thesis is about the lives and civic engagements of Afghans in Germany and the UK. During her time at Oxford, Carolin worked as a research and teaching assistant at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), the International Migration Institute (IMI) and the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC). Carolin’s areas of interest are identity formation, inter- and intra-group dynamics and forms of civic and political engagement in the context of migration and mobility. Her recent work has appeared in Ethnicities, The Journal of Intercultural Studies and Global Networks.