While the conceptual differences between globalisation, on the one hand, and diaspora and transnationalisation, on the other hand, may seem rather straightforward, it appears more difficult to distinguish the latter set of terms. The extent to which the literature on diaspora and transnational studies overlaps and intersects can be discerned from Tölölyan’s (1991: 5) memorable remark that contemporary diasporas are ‘the exemplary communities of the transnational moment’. Diaspora mixes, and overlaps with, meanings of words like ‘expatriate’, ‘migrancy’ and ‘exile’ to form ‘an unruly crowd of descriptive/interpretative terms’ that ‘jostle and converse’ in the modern lexicon of migration studies (Clifford 1994a: 303).
The contributions to the conceptual part of this volume focus on the origins of the two concepts, their expanding interpretation and applications to novel phenomena and the links between academic and wider public discourses. Some of the contributions focus on the history of the concepts and discourse analyses of their present uses, while others propose definitions of the two concepts and identify their various dimensions and contextual specifications. The general perspective of the contributions in this section is interdisciplinary in that the authors draw on insights from a variety of social science disciplines to advance their analysis. Nonetheless, the authors of the chapters are firmly rooted in specific disciplines: Bruneau in human geography, Dahinden in sociology, Weinar in political science and Paerregaard in cultural anthropology. The concepts of diaspora and transnationalism can be usefully grouped into three realms of meaning: descriptive-analytical notions, references to the social constitution of diasporic and transnationalist phenomena and references to a socio-cultural condition.