The Diaspora at Home

Abstract

The concept of diaspora can be fruitfully used to open up economic analysis. Unlike the current ways in which the terms immigrant, emigrant, and migrant have entered economics, the term diaspora shows promise in pushing us toward richer analyses of economic subjectivity. In addition, it opens the possibility for a more critical interrogation of the `international' and `national' than is currently available within mainstream economic analysis. However, the term can be pushed further. Using the experience of growing up Tamil in Bombay in the 1970s as its focus, this article complicates the concept of diaspora. It highlights diasporas `within' nations, and shows how groups may enter the diasporic experience without traveling. This exploration allows us to critically re-examine binaries of national—cosmopolitan, assimilation— resistance, necessary before we can usefully deploy the concept of diaspora for projects of cross-disciplinary conversation.

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