Networked Diaspora

* Article: The ‘Iranian Diaspora’ and the New Media: From Political Action to Humanitarian Help, originally published in the journal Development and Change, 40(4): 667-691.

Shorter version via http://www.arsehsevom.net/zine/?p=8

Description

"Scholars Halleh Ghorashi and Kees Boersma look at the ways in which new technology impact the identity of diaspora groups:

One of the impacts of recent globalization is the formation of new offline and online transnational connections among migrants worldwide. The formation of these networked communities is often linked to concepts such as home(land) and identity.

For as long as people have looked for new opportunities, resources and biotopes, migration has taken place. It is only in modern times that the displacement of people has occurred under the constraints of nation states, regulations, and rules of legitimization.[1] In the modern world, system boundaries — national borders — are seen as regulating the process of demographic developments and migration flows. The era of globalization, characterized by what Manuel Castells[2] (1996) calls the rise of the network society, has created a foundation for the emergence of newly constructed forms of local and/or transnational cultural ‘imagined communities’.[3] One of the impacts of recent globalization is the formation of new offline and online transnational connections among migrants worldwide. The formation of these networked communities is often linked to concepts such as home(land) and identity." (http://www.arsehsevom.net/zine/?p=8)