In Nina Glick Schiller’s chapter of Lived Simultaneity and Discourses of Diasporic Difference , the
important aspect to take into perspective when viewing diaspora as a whole are
the lived experiences and discourses of the people in displacement globally.
Diaspora does not just happen within the context of ties to homeland and of
shared communities but transcend beyond the broader aspect of looking at
incorporations within a locality, the economy, the institutions, the forms of
cultural production, and social networks. In her chapter, she uses three authors’ works
to reference her own work of what stands to be her title Lived Simultaneity and Discourses of Diasporic Difference. Through
each authors’ own specific studies of Laotian women in Rhode Island, Vietnamese
in Montreal and Quebec, and Indian-American in New York Metropolitan, Schiller
comes to stand upon the fact that diasporic relations does not contest with just
subjectivity or identity politics and practices confined within a single state
but rather, by careful ethnography and studies of transnationalism processes,
relationships, and connections, diasporic relations generate a whole new
meaning. This meaning involves understanding and looking at the historical context
and inequalities of “local, national, and global power” (Schiller 167).
Question: As we are in the works of developing a working
definition of what is diaspora, what does it mean when taken into consideration
the unequal power balance and how does
that reinforces what diaspora mean today as the world itself is changing and we
along with it?
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