Diasporic Homecoming and the New Indian City “We set out, [my father] and my mother and I, for Karol Bagh. ‘15/64 Western Extension Area, Ajmal Khan Road,’ he chanted momentously in the back of the car. We drove through the wide, fluid streets of the bureaucratic area…the entire area was bursting at the seams: shops and warehouses extended out onto the streets, apartments had grown upwards and outwards into every possible gap, and parked cars filled in the rest. We missed our turn and had to do a U-turn, a mistake that cost us half an hour…My father became increasingly upset as we penetrated deeper and deeper into the end-of-day clamour. ‘Karol Bagh used to be a bagh,’ he said, ‘a garden. I used to ride my bike on these streets. What happened?’”—Rana Dasgupta

Current studies on international migration often focus on transnational processes and networks conducted across borders. While states increasingly engage with their overseas populations, their strategies are becoming ever more creative. As such, we see the development of state diaspora strategies emerging that aim to connect with diaspora to influence their economic, political, social and cultural activities. One particular state strategy that is receiving increasing attention is the strategy of extending dual citizenship to overseas populations in order to create national solidarity and to promote investment and remittances back home. While the existing literature is comprehensive, there is a significant lack of research that aims to determine if these strategies have a real influence over diaspora activities and performance. As such, this thesis aims to determine whether dual citizenship facilitates home engagement. Using a transnational perspective, this research explores the relationship between citizenship, diaspora and transnational engagements within the context of Philippines by conducting semi-structured interviews to better understand how individuals perceive and engage in the policies that are targeted towards them.

This dissertation examines the homeland-diaspora nexus with a focus on how homeland conflict affects diaspora targeting and insecurity in Israel.

archives@tulane.edu / This dissertation investigates the site of El Tesoro, Hidalgo, Mexico during the Early Classic period Chingú phase (A.D. 200-500). Archaeological evidence, including material culture and burials, has previously indicated that this site was settled by a group of people with affiliations both to Teotihuacan, in the Basin of Mexico, and the Valley of Oaxaca, the Zapotec homeland in southern Mexico. I argue that the Chingú-phase occupation of El Tesoro is best understood as a creolized community of Zapo-Teotihuacanos that were likely related to members of the Oaxaca Barrio of Teotihuacan who migrated into southern Hidalgo during Teotihuacan’s expansion into that region. Evidence to support this argument comes from a variety of datasets presented herein, including: qualitative and quantitative analysis of ceramic attributes, artifact distribution and spatial patterning, ceramic compositional and provenance studies, and inter-site burial comparative analysis. Ceramic attribute analysis showed that El Tesoro’s potters recreated vessels from the Valley of Oaxaca, although with some divergence in style, and from Teotihuacan, but that they also created new, hybridized vessels that combined elements from both traditions. Artifact distribution maps indicated that Zapotec-style and Teotihuacan-style pottery overlapped throughout the site, suggesting that these vessels were used by the same people and in the same contexts, possibly side-by-side and interchangeably. X-ray diffraction and neutron activation analysis conducted on a sample of sherds recovered from surface collection at El Tesoro indicate that Zapotec-style and Teotihuacan-style pottery vessels were constructed on local clays, using similar past recipes. Finally, comparison between mortuary practices at El Tesoro and two locations in Teotihuacan, the Oaxaca Barrio and La Ventilla B, supported the results of the ceramic analysis, showing a hybridization of burial traditions at El Tesoro that replicated aspects of typical Teotihuacan and Zapotec burials, but in a novel way. Based on these datasets and analyses, I argue that the Chingú-phase population at El Tesoro should be considered a creolized group with affiliations both to Teotihuacan and the Valley of Oaxaca, and that they likely settled in southern Hidalgo during Teotihuacan’s expansion into that region and are an offshoot population of the Oaxaca Barrio of Teotihuacan. / 1 / Haley Holt Mehta

Cardiovascular diseases are major causes of mortality and hospitalization for adult Indigenous peoples. Historical, socio-economic, environmental and cultural risk factors have been identified in the literature and new evidence is emerging regarding culturally relevant health promotion approaches for Indigenous peoples at risk of developing or currently experiencing cardiovascular disease. Self-management of care is considered a central component to effective cardiovascular disease management. This approach requires a working knowledge and understanding of cardiovascular disease medications, and an ability to effectively communicate with healthcare practitioners. Another important associated risk factor for Indigenous peoples with heart disease, is the gap between patient - practitioner understanding of heart disease. The biomedical perspective supported by Western scientific evidence, makes little room for Indigenous knowledge. Indigenous peoples may wish to include Indigenous knowledge and/or Traditional Medicine in their self-care approach. The findings of this research demonstrates that Indigenous peoples primarily have a biomedical understanding of their heart disease and most are unaware of how various socio-historical and socio-cultural factors such as the negative inter-generational impact of residential school and contemporary experiences of oppression and discrimination are linked to their heart disease. This situation can be attributed to an Indigenous knowledge diaspora experience that includes the severance of access to Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous languages during the residential school period and the dominance of biomedicine in health care delivery. The concept of ‘diaspora health literacy’ is critically discussed as a potential tool to address the Indigenous knowledge diaspora barrier. It is proposed that Indigenous peoples with heart disease can enhance their self-care when culturally relevant health literacy approaches are available to them. In turn, healthcare practitioners can broker an ‘Indigenous therapeutic relational space’ with their Indigenous patients by initiating a culturally relevant health literacy assessment and a harmonized implementation model. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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This research asks the question of how three young adults construct identity while living in diaspora. The subjects of the research came to the United States as a part of the Somali Bantu resettlement in 2004. The study begins with a trajectory analysis of the people now known as Somali Bantu, beginning with their forced migration to Somalia and the various factors shaping their status in the country. The analysis continues through the period of displacement, flight, and human warehousing in the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps of Kenya and includes an examination of how bureaucratic labeling as refugees, and the public rhetoric of mainstream media further shaped the story of the Somali Bantu. Each of these moments through the refugee trajectory are foundational to the self-representations emerging in diaspora. Using autoethnographic and portraiture methodologies, the author analyzes the subjects' discursive practices associated with cultural sustainability, as well as deployment of social media in rejecting and resisting social and cultural influences that threaten the integrity of Somali Bantu identity in the United States. The dissertation also situates the subjects within the broader Somali Bantu diaspora in the United States and Europe as they create home through a Somali Bantu aesthetic, form community through mutual assistance associations, construct mediascapes that circulates information globally, and build a transnational movement that aims to end the suffering of Wagosha people in Somalia. Overall, the research demonstrates the discursivity of identity, showing how a particular group reconstitutes itself through engagements with multiple and often disparate cultures, traditions, languages, and histories. / Ph. D.

This dissertation focuses on the experiences of Haitians living in France who are active in organizations seeking to benefit Haiti. Focusing on “hometown associations”—collectives formed by members of the diaspora who are generally from the same town, that engage in activities and projects for the benefit of their home country—my main question is how do a group of Haitians, committed to transnational engagement between France and Haiti, manage the challenges, pressures, and expectations in being a “diaspora” in light of the category’s increasing institutionalization? Previous research has examined the impact of hometown associations in nations such as Mexico, but I sought to understand their importance in the context of personal, national, and international agendas, agendas that often neutralize or undermine the purpose of hometown associations. Despite increasing attention by national and international policy makers citing diasporas as integral to the survival and growth of struggling nations, my research shows that there is little support given to such collectivities, especially in the case of the Haitian diaspora. I argue that diaspora as a category has become more institutionalized, and as a result is inhibiting progressive, grassroots change more that it empowers. My research hopes to highlight this trend so that policy makers and humanitarians can take a step back to better identify the future of diaspora as a geopolitical force for change in countries like Haiti, and gauge whether it can still function under the weight of its signification. / text

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