New Spheres of Transnational Formations: Mobilizations of Humanitarian Diasporas

Abstract

The subject of this article is the reinscription of a new diaspora in the public sphere by which governments and multilateral institutions are mobilizing. The following argues that these kinds of mobilizations have had the effect of subverting traditional approaches to diasporic linkage that in African and African American studies have privileged trans‐Atlantic slavery and its consequent social dislocations and led to the marginalization of other forced and voluntary diasporic linkages. As this article argues, one such movement often excluded from popular diasporic theories in the Black Atlantic region represents new types of economic linkages being deployed alongside various UN stakeholders and members of business communities of the Global South. These formations carry the mission of developing concrete goals to end global poverty through eradicating war and developing new diasporic projects that will accelerate economic growth in the South. The author calls for a rethinking of the contemporary processes that are at play in diasporic invocations of a post‐9/11 period and shows how the call for nationals abroad to invest in their “home” countries is being used to create new diasporic linkages. In this regard, the article introduces the notion of humanitarian diasporas in an effort to rethink transatlantic slavery as the central basis for conceptualizing the starting place of African diasporic theorizing in the North American Academy.

Diaspora, Digital Media, and Death Counts: Eritreans and the Politics of Memorialisation

“…New media are now a central feature of the contemporary lives of migrants who use cell phones, chat rooms, blogs, Facebook, Skype, YouTube, and, most recently, Twitter to create and sustain complex transnational networks (Parham 2004, Bernal 2005a, Ignacio 2005, Panagakos and Horst 2006, Gajjala 2008). There is a growing recognition of the significance of diasporas (Werbner 2002, Braziel and Manur 2003, Zeleza 2009, Clarke 2010, Knott and McLoughlin 2010. Transnational relationships between sending states and diasporas, moreover, are now an established political reality even as their form and content shift and evolve (Bernal 2004, Kleist 2008, Lyons and Mandaville 2012.…”

Natural Disasters: Altruism, Interests, and Opportunities

“…In terms of performance, Fadalla (2008), in studying the relief activities in Sudan, speaks of a neoliberal agenda undertaken deliberately, and Clarke (2010), in discussing various actions in Africa, reports the existence of a "humanitarian diaspora" subservient to the interests of similarly neoliberal governments. Brauman (2004) makes use of the term "aid industry" and is skeptical of the defense that the agencies are better prepared than governments to respond to emergencies.…”

New Roots

“…Where Africana studies in the us have been primarily focused on the geographies of blackness that emerged through the trans-Atlantic slave trade, accounting for questions of space, place and mobility that go beyond slavery can allow a better understanding of the new ways in which black people are reconfiguring and reframing diaspora (cf. Clarke 2010).…”