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Diaspora as a speech act in international politics: who says 'diaspora' and why ?
Unformatted Document Text:  1 Francesco Ragazzi Robert Schuman Foundation Fellow PhD Candidate, Sciences-Po, Paris francesco.## email not listed ## Diaspora as a speech act in international politics : who says ‘diaspora’ and why ? 1 Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Montreal, March 11 th , 2004 If there were to be only one certainty concerning the notion of diaspora in the Social Sciences, it would be the complexity and the diversity of the attempts to define everything that is related to it: What is a diaspora? Is it a valid concept? What does a diaspora do? etc. This questioning begins with the very graphic transcription of the term: diaspora, Diaspora with a capital “D”, “diaspora” in inverted comas, or “diasporas” in plural. We can expose in the first lines of this paper, what we do not wish to discuss here. This paper will not be about defining what would be, “according to us” a diaspora, neither will it be about delimiting the borders of the concept, nor about reconsidering the eternal definition which decorates the introduction of any text on “diasporas”, namely Khachig Tölölyan’s 1991 2 definition. It is for at least two reasons that we do not intend to engage in these complicated distinction and characterization operations. The first reason is that our task, in this paper, will not be to discuss “diaspora” as a concept in the Social Sciences in general, but rather as an operational concept in the field of International Relations. This reduces considerably the field to be cleared, although it implies, as it will be seen, to cross disciplinary boundaries of Political Science, Anthropology and Sociology. But there is another reason for which we will not launch out in great discussions, and it is of methodological nature. Indeed, too often, academic discourses on “diaspora” focus on the determination of “objective criteria” to determine what is suitable or not to call “diaspora”. This approach leads to the unusual 1 This paper is based on the research I undertook for my DEA Degree at Sciences-Po, Paris. (Sept. 2003). I wish to thank particularly Christian Lequesne, Didier Bigo for their comments and their help. A great part of this reflection could not have existed if it had not been for an encounter with Riva Kastoryano and Stéphane Dufoix. His paper « Notion, concept ou slogan : qu’y a-t-il sous le terme de « diaspora » ? », Communication au Colloque « 2000 ans de diasporas » , Poitiers, février 2002 was particularly enlightening. 2 According to Tölölyan, diaspora are “the exemplary communities of the transnational moment”, Tölölyan, Khachig ‘The Nation-state and its others: in lieu of a preface’ in G. Eleyand R. Grigor Suny, eds. Becoming National: A Reader Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Authors: Ragazzi, Francesco.
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1
Francesco Ragazzi
Robert Schuman Foundation Fellow
PhD Candidate, Sciences-Po, Paris
francesco.## email not listed ##
Diaspora as a
speech act
in international politics : who
says ‘diaspora’ and why ?
1

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Montreal,
March 11
th
, 2004
If there were to be only one certainty concerning the notion of diaspora in the Social
Sciences, it would be the complexity and the diversity of the attempts to define everything
that is related to it: What is a diaspora? Is it a valid concept? What does a diaspora do? etc.
This questioning begins with the very graphic transcription of the term: diaspora, Diaspora
with a capital “D”, “diaspora” in inverted comas, or “diasporas” in plural.
We can expose in the first lines of this paper, what we do not wish to discuss here. This
paper will not be about defining what would be, “according to us” a diaspora, neither will it
be about delimiting the borders of the concept, nor about reconsidering the eternal definition
which decorates the introduction of any text on “diasporas”, namely Khachig Tölölyan’s
1991
2
definition.
It is for at least two reasons that we do not intend to engage in these complicated
distinction and characterization operations. The first reason is that our task, in this paper, will
not be to discuss “diaspora” as a concept in the Social Sciences in general, but rather as an
operational concept in the field of International Relations. This reduces considerably the field
to be cleared, although it implies, as it will be seen, to cross disciplinary boundaries of
Political Science, Anthropology and Sociology. But there is another reason for which we will
not launch out in great discussions, and it is of methodological nature. Indeed, too often,
academic discourses on “diaspora” focus on the determination of “objective criteria” to
determine what is suitable or not to call “diaspora”. This approach leads to the unusual
1
This paper is based on the research I undertook for my DEA Degree at Sciences-Po, Paris. (Sept. 2003). I wish
to thank particularly Christian Lequesne, Didier Bigo for their comments and their help. A great part of this
reflection could not have existed if it had not been for an encounter with Riva Kastoryano and Stéphane Dufoix.
His paper « Notion, concept ou slogan : qu’y a-t-il sous le terme de « diaspora » ? », Communication au
Colloque « 2000 ans de diasporas » , Poitiers, février 2002 was particularly enlightening.
2
According to Tölölyan, diaspora are “the exemplary communities of the transnational moment”, Tölölyan,
Khachig ‘The Nation-state and its others: in lieu of a preface’ in G. Eleyand R. Grigor Suny, eds.
Becoming
National: A Reader Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.


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