Citizenship and identity: living in diasporas in post-war Europe?

Abstract Diaspora, as a venerated concept, has a strong placement in our political and intellectual discourses. My article questions the deployment of diaspora as an analytical category in explaining the contemporary immigration experience. Focusing peculiarly on the ethnic axis of homelands and abroad, theories of diaspora overlook the transgressions of the national and lose sight of the new dynamics and topography of membership. I suggest that a more productive perspective is achieved by focusing our analytical providence on the proliferating sites of making and enacting citizenship. I do this by elaborating two paradoxes underlying the contemporary formations of citizenship: a) the increasing decoupling of rights and identities, the two main components of citizenship; b) the tendency towards particularistic claims in public spheres and their legitimation through universalistic discourses of personhood. These paradoxes warrant that we have new forms of making claims, mobilizing identity and practising citizenship, which lie beyond the limiting dominion of ethnically informed diasporic arrangements, transactions and belongings. Keywords: CitizenshipDiasporaIdentityRightsClaims-makingImmigrantsEurope