Diaspora, Hybridity, and the National Conception Elise Burch Nations are an imagined construct.

They are a product of man rather than of nature and as such, their existence is not self-sustaining. Nations are also, technically, fluid concepts. Throughout the course of history, borders and boundaries have changed for various reasons. Whether from internal collapse or external pressures, the fact remains that nations are immaterial; however, the modern nation has become an overwhelming identity. There are at least two different explanations of identity. The first defines it in terms of one, shared culture a sort of collective one true self hiding inside the many other m more superficial or artificially imposed selves, which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common. Such identities attempt to reflect a common historical experience and shared cultural code, which provide a heterogeneous population as one people, with stable, unchanging, and continuous frames of reference and meaning, beneath the shifting division and vicissitudes of actual history (Hall 234). National identities are such a pan-cultural identity, if artificially imposed, that do not necessarily erase the preceding regional ones, but for the nation to persist, it must supersede them. Through the flow of political power, they have superseded regional identities in an attempt to maintain homogeneity. Fusing identities are inherently simplistic to encompass the populations entirety while not subjugating and lack a specific local origin to avoid alienation. Though too rudimentary to define all of a person, they are instead a form of connection between heterogeneous groups creating an overlying homogenous identity. National identities are not necessarily the most prevalent aspect of a personal identity, but they must be the most prevailing. Imbedding of the identity eventually renders the nation a basic element of person. It becomes a part of self, thus insuring secure loyalties. Protection of and loyalty to a nation becomes as natural as protection and loyalty of self. With some, the divide between self and nation predominantly wanes and defense of nation develops into selfdefense. The second related but different view of cultural identity recognizes that. As well as the many points of similarity, there are also critical points of deep and significant difference, which constitute personal identities. Such identities rely not specifically on a permanent definition, but relate strongly to the changes induced throughout life and history. Hence, identity is a matter of becoming as well as of being. It is only from this second position that the diasporic experience can be properly understood. In this conception, identity does not proceed in a straight unbroken line from some fixed origin. Difference persists in and alongside continuity (Hall 236-8). As currently conceived, nations rely on singular, simple identities, on homogeneity; however, as shown through the diasporic identity, humanity is not an innately homogenous organ. However, a dissenting body is not, by definition, a cohesive one. Being a body usually harboring diversitys contradiction, a highly individualistic body also lacks cohesion. By this basic quality, nations are generally difficult to sustain. For one to persist it requires a generalized simple identity to transcend differentiating factions. The people of a nation allow a portion of identity definition to be external. Through this slight conceding of personally identity to a national identity, the hope is to

achieve the security bestowed without personal effort provided by a nation. Through the incentive of protection and representation, a nation insures its citizens support through the rhetoric of persons empowerment via the exponentially culminated powers of a unified mass (i.e. the nation). Thus, the more complete the individual surrendering of self, the stronger the nation, and so the stronger the citizen if not necessarily the individual or resident. A citizen is one who has committed this act of surrendering to a single national identity. Citizens loose independence of self, as an externally imposed system now defines a part of personal identity. They are rendered equally dependent upon the nations continuation to justify identity as the nation is upon the citizen to substantiate power. Conversely, residents are those who live within the boundaries but are not dependent upon it solely for identity and so are not as loyal to the causes and decision of a nation as the citizens ideally are. As nations are conceptual, simply by not lending support residents pose a threat. Diaspora bestows importance to subtly different qualities of the loyalties of citizens and residents. Before assessing the loyalties of diaspora, the definition of the population of the diaspora must be critiqued. Though most immigrants begin as part of the diaspora, a large portion are eventually assimilated and some consider both the home country and diasporic community more alien that the host country. Such are not part of the diasporic community. They might interact with it regularly, even intimately, and the "native-born" community does commonly classify them as a part, but they are not technically of it. At times, persecution may even force such individuals to align with the diasporic for reason of security, but again this does not necessitate a return to diaspora just an alliance for convenience and protection, which is usually temporal in nature. One is only a part of diaspora if the myth of the desired return and the idealization of a country as the home or mother country are maintained. The sense of attachment or, in some way, connection to the land from which exile was forced must operate at the very least as a powerful, personal metaphor (Karla 10). Once a person loses the identification of a nonresidential home and thus loses, the prevailing compulsion of somewhere external to return the person is no longer diasporic. No matter how many cultural performances preserved, without this external alignment a person is not diasporic, accordingly, the diasporic retain heterogeneity and so dilated loyalties. In this, it is they, which threaten the singularity of identity and thus the continuation of the homogenous national identity. The permanent, defining characteristic of the return stems from the traditional manifestation of the diaspora in which such a return was at least frequently difficult, if not physically barred. Such forced exile became essential to heightened sense of longing for home and this is still central to the understanding of diaspora culture, despite the easing through modern transportation (Karla 10). Perhaps the most closely related concept, and so the one most frequently confused, is that of immigration. Immigrant, as a term to describe communities, has fallen into disrepute. It marks groups who have never migrated but are the offspring of migrants as not belonging to a particular place. The word itself, rather than relating to an actual event of movement, becomes a euphemism for not from this place, or for one who belongs somewhere else. Secondly, it implies a one-off event that people migrate from one place and settle in another. Combined with hyphenated, hybrid identification, it

can be argued that diaspora actually allows analysis to move beyond the static, fixed notion of immigrant. Diaspora allows migration as more than a one-off event with oneway consequences, but rather as an ongoing process of building links and relationships, which in fact change both the sending and receiving countries (Karla 13-16). Pan-national identities embody simplicity to avoid contradiction and in this fact, diaspora causes issues. Those in diaspora maintain multiples of such basic, underlying, personal identities and thus are the embodiment of contradiction. As it exists now a nation cannot be a multiplicity. As ones self and ones nation are ideally one, for a nation to exist substantially a citizen must forfeit multiplicity. The diasporic however, are just that and so they lose connection to a singular national identity. They become the citizen of no nation and the resident of many. Residency in multiple nations challenges core aspects of governance in at least two ways. First, multiple belonging calls into question the very notion of governance because it is not readily obvious which state is ultimately responsible for which aspects of transnational migrants. Furthermore, transborder citizens multiple experiences of governmental and political socialization do not occur in isolation thus they are exposed to different ideas of citizens rights and responsibilities and different histories of political practices (Levitt 178-180). Multiple identities contradict and so the diffused loyalties allotted by contradiction are constantly questionable. The diasporic exist in opposition to the basic nature of simplistic identity system of the modern nation paradigm. Todays world involves interactions of a new order and intensity. Cultural transactions between social groups in the past have generally been restricted through the problems of time, distance, and limited technologies. In the last few centuries, the nature of the gravitational field seems to have changed. The technology transfers and accelerations of recent centuries have escalated the process. Cultural affinities and dialogues revolutionized (Appadurai 24-28). As hybridity grows through this increasing globalization, the nation will struggle to perpetuate itself. This process characterizes the mobility of populations and markets, which is denationalizing national economies and territories and thus decentered sovereignty. It transcends territory, location, distance, and border, and accompanies rapid migration of people across border and thus has raised questions about identity, citizenship, and nationality. The process of globalization and its indicative expansions have altered the geographic hegemony of national governments and borders. The diasporic increase through globalizing tendencies is also emphasizing diasporas embodiment of the question of border and the issue of defining the nation in modern society (Tololyan 21-25). Consequently, the central problem of todays global interactions is the tension between cultural homogenization and heterogenization (Appadurai 30-31). Those in diaspora harbor multiple loyalties. This is necessitated by the continuation of the diasporic state rather than allowing assimilated. Diaspora is permanently marked by its relationship between home and away, away signifying some sort of loss (Karla 11). The country of residence cannot be the country viewed as home as mother to continue the diasporic state and so generating a multiplicity of loyalty. Classically, diaspora relates to forced movement, either through physical exile or financial flight (Karla 10). The social body embodies a consequent sense of loss; as such, the host country is viewed often as impersonal, even hostile. In many instances, the relationship never progresses beyond that of an employee and its massive, disembodied workplace.

In fact, one of the reasons for the increasing attention paid to diasporic ties may be because of increased significance as conduit for the flow of money. The notion of migration contains with it the idea of transfer of people form one place to another. Traditionally, in many ways this involved a loss to the home, especially if the person migrating has been educated significantly. However, the flows in the other direction now come in two forms: as remittances and as investment. Thus, diasporic connections provide various new means for the mobilization of people and capital (Karla 22-25), As such, the idea of deterritorialization embodied by diaspora may also be applied to finance, as investors seek best marks for their investments, independent of national boundaries (Appadurai 36). As the political and economic implications of diasporic activity revolve around, under, in-between, and sometimes through an overarching structure of the nation, this increased economic flow brings the host and home country into a form of competition of loyalties (Karla 28). Consequently, the diaspora often manipulates the host for personal gain, usually, of the economic through sometimes of the social, nature. The host country thus becomes the provider of the diasporic community, and though many begin ambivalent towards the nation most do eventually gain attachment, even lend loyalty. The important aspects of the nature of this loyalty are that, unlike that of a citizen, the loyalty of a resident is usually conditional. The loyalty of those in diaspora is doubtful partially as the loyalty based upon rational, logical, calculated decisions. The host country is the country with which alignment is regularly more beneficial but a mother country is by very definition the one which holds through sentiment often through an idealized, nostalgic myth. In many ways, nations depend on emotions as ideas about personal memory tie closely to debates about identity (Blunt 12). Residents, and thus the diasporic, are not bound to the host country by emotional loyalty. More critically, the diasporic harbor emotional loyalties towards a different, external body. The loyalties of the diasporic are questionable and as they are a population of uncertain loyalty and so a weakness (threat) in unity (stability) of a nation. However, while the diaspora alignment with home is undoubtedly rooted in emotional image of nostalgia, it would be in gross error to assume that this the singular reason for the sustained connection. Diasporic communities are also ethnic colonies, as active arenas for the articulation and development of a distinctive set of human, economic, and conceptual resources. They are therefore the prime source of the social, cultural, and psychological capital base on which to launch an ever-widening series of challenges to which their members would otherwise have been defenselessly exposed (Ballard 595). The formation and sustaining of diasporic communities is also in resistance to the sense of norm imposed by the culture of the native-born host culture. The diasporic maintain difference and multiple alliances voluntarily and usually in direct opposition of the homogenizing tendencies of assimilation. Through the maintenance of identification with both home and host, diaspora is adding allowance of multiplicity to identity. The diasporic are redefining immigrants as transnationals as hybrids. They live experiences and every day activities shaped by multiple connections and linkages to several nations and cultures through globalizing cultural trends. The web of contradictory discourses related to home, tradition, community, nation and loyalty experienced by the diasporic demand a rethinking of tradition notions of identity (Bhatia 619). The diasporic identity, being hybrid, lacks

singularity and thus the dependent loyalty to one body sustained by a basic citizen. Traditionally, immigrant diaspora implied permanent displacement and a complete break from the home and so a hard transition to the host. The journey involved a movement away from ones culture and customs and a step toward acquiring an ethnic identity, and then an eventual assimilation in to the melting pot of the majority culture. It is now being recognized that some migrants remain strongly influenced by continuing ties to the home and social networks stretching across national borders. Increasing, the lives of individuals are no longer bounded by a singled nationality. The new transnational diaspora both creates and transform social networks, circuits of capital and commodities, and cultural practices and rituals that exist in the country of settlement and the home society. Due to globalization, those of the modern Diaspora travel back and forth between multiple societies and inhabit multiple homes (Bhatia 623). Diasporas are calling into question the neat divisions of connection into local, national, transnational, and global. In one sense, all are now local as near and distant penetrate individuals daily lives within a locale. However, within this locale, a person may participate in personal networks, or receive ideas and information that connect them to others in a nation-state, across the border of a nation-state, or globally, without ever having migrated. By conceptualizing transnational, diasporas are transcending the boundaries of nation-states, individuals within these fields are, through everyday activities and relationships, influenced by multiple sets of laws and institutions (Levitt 156-162). They are becoming a direct challenge to the conception of the necessity of singular identities. A person in diaspora identifies, usually, most fundamentally with the home and most functionally with the host. The nature of the loyalties is therefore different, the home being more a source of nostalgia and the host a source of practical advantage, nevertheless, by identifying with multiple cultures the diasporic can easily align with each and it is through this blurring of alignment that loyalties have begun to be questioned. Those in diaspora are not singular; they are not homogenous. They are not necessarily more individual or more independent that the singular, in fact contradictive forces still bind most and many can actually become more restrained than those with only one leash are. What they are is a redefinition of national identities. They introduce the contradiction hybridity and challenge the nation as conceived today. By lacking the presumption of singularity, the diaspora simply cannot maintain the loyalty necessitated by the nationalized identity. In the modern era, the nationstate is theoretically the principal body of affiliation for all those within its border. Through this, the nation can represent the interest of those it claims to represent. Diasporas complicate this easy formulation (Karla 20-21). The identities of the diasporic are hierarchically fluid, allowing loyalty to have an almost fickle nature. The diaspora threatens current national conception through the imposition of fluid loyalties. Tensions of a multiplicity of alliance are a basic characteristic of those in diaspora. Those who nurture identity through having a foreign country as home hold themselves as residents. Just as simplification of identity eases the definition of a nation, diasporas multiplicity threatens by diluting the very image construct of its power base. Sustaining multiple contradictions simultaneously eventually renders the amassing body impotent. Diaspora questions the nation by fundamentally puncturing the notion that territorial associations or land and cultural affiliation are natural sources of identification (Karla

31). Without solidarity, a body lacks the ability to assert its own existence upon reality. As such, the existence of the nations current conception derives directly from the cohesive actions of its unified body. The nation is this formation of unity, specifically singularity and homogeneity. That which generates heterogeneity is that which embodies paradox stemming from the demanding of a decision between either admitting the invalidity of a defining characteristic or the intentional retention of inconsistency. Both options open a nation to external threat through the allowance of internal dissention. Being imaginary, the nation must artificially impose itself upon personal identities to deter such fragility through the generation of a unifying mass identity. This mass identity is fragile, threatened constantly by the lack of solidity in the actual world and so to maintain structure, the identity must be simplistic and, ideally, homogenous. Diaspora challenges this. The diasporic embody hybridity, multiple alliance. As such, it threatens the continuation of the current national identity. A nation is a conception of unity, of singularity and homogeneity. It strives to attain unity as a tool to defend against external threats via lacking internal weakness. As diaspora generates a multitude of options, it allows vulnerability through negation. Those in diaspora persist the multiplicity of identity for to surrender any part of it would necessitate a fragmentation and partial deletion of self. The diasporic condition thus questions modern notions of belonging. Diasporic subjects are carriers of a consciousness, which provides an awareness of difference, and this sense becomes a basic aspect of self-identity. The sense of difference forms a part of identity production and reproduction through transformation and difference. It is by recognizing difference, rather than denying it in an attempt to be part of a homogenous whole, that diasporic consciousness emerges. Here, again, the central, unavoidable unifying cultural force against which diasporic consciousness emerges is the notion of the nation and the ideal of a cultural norm ascribed to or proscribed by those occupying its boundaries of the nation (Karla 30). The multiple alignment, for such individuals, is just as defining a characteristic for them as singularity is for the other. To maintain diaspora is to truly be hybrid, to truly embody multiple cultures and to hold, honestly, multiple loyalties. The different fractions of self frequently contradict, but this contradiction is something often celebrated by those of hybridity as something new, something wholly original. By continually embodying multiple national identities, the diasporic subject is slowly nullifying each through the disintegration of cultural boundaries and the allowances of multiple alliances. The nation cannot continue as it currently prevails. Both the ever-increasing population of those in diaspora and general globalization are soon to culminate into a conception of self that simply will not be cohesive with the nations current conceptualized form. By viewing diaspora as a way of looking at the world which disrupts homogenous ideas of nationality, conceptions moves away from considering it in terms of a descriptive tool for categorization. People do not neatly fit into categories. Diaspora cannot be considered a homogenous group of people, but rather a process which impacts personalized definition. In a sense, diaspora first means to be from one place but of another. The diasporic identity is the heterogeneous oscillation between where you are and where you have come from. This formulation questions absolutist notions of nationalism that firmly place belonging in the arena of territory and history: people belonging to a particular place (Karla 27-29). Belonging is now both about being from a

place and a process of arrival and so never a simple question of affiliation to a singular idea of nationalism, but rather about the multivocality of belonging. Diaspora is allowing for the deformation of the modern nation. The nation is, however, faux, which allows for great fluctuation despite periodic, austere rigidity. Currently, the national concept is attempting to defend itself through an increase in laws and mandates to more effectively define. However, this will not stem the tide of the hybridization of cultures. The potential for erasing ethnic and national ties is inherent within the notion of diaspora (Karla 33). Diasporic communities are steadying losing severe minority status in many countries. For the nation to continue, it must regain some of its fluidity. The necessity of a homogenous body is being forfeit. Diaspora is already beginning the process. By bearing contradiction smoothly, the diasporic exist outside of the system, and by holding a permanent existence, they are providing an alternative to the homogenous system. More importantly, they are actually weakening each nation. Nations, being imaginary, must have support internally and acknowledgment externally. They do so through citizen loyalty and a solidified presentation of self. Diasporas, by not being indebted to any one nation for personal identity or alignment, do not generate the loyalty necessary to uphold any nation. They may benefit the home and the host economically, but they do not sustain the homogenous nation. The growing diasporic population increasingly dilutes the loyalty bases of the nation, and this dilution of national loyalties is likely to increase through globalization. The nation must alter its conception to endure societys changes. Diaspora exists in opposition to the homogenous nation, and though it is likely the nation will continue, its nature is steadily altering. A world so connected, renders national homogeneities impotent.

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