A map showing the countries with large numbers of people from the Greek diasporaThe word "diaspora" comes from Greek, meaning "a scattering of seeds". In English, it describes the movement of many people from their home country to other countries or even within their home countries. The reasons can range from economic, political, environmental or others.
Diasporas have happened throughout history. The Jews were expelled from Palestine 2600 years ago and experienced another diaspora when the Nazis wrecked havoc across Europe in the mid-20th century. Some modern diasporas include the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have left their country due to the occupation by the US military as well as the 1.3 million people who left New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Please click on one of the diasporas below, find some interesting information and write about it in the comments.
Australian
Basque
British
Chinese
Indian
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Ukrainian
I found the interesting information about Japanese diaspora. The first Japanese diaspora, or Nikkei, immigrated to Philipine before the Edo era, when the immigration movement became very popular. I didn't know that Philipine is one of the 3 major country where Nikkeis live. Whenever I heard the world "Nikkei", it reminds me of Brazil and America, where lots of Japanese crossed the ocean to start their new life. Some of the Nikkei people came back to live in Japan and have become popular (ex. Antonio Inoki etc.)
ReplyDeleteI chose China and I'm interested in Chinatowns. As a result of Chinese diasporas and their assimilation in one place, Chinatowns came into existence. I've already known that there are Chinatowns in many places but didn't know that many of them are the actual living and working communities for Chinese people. I thought Chinatown was just a commercial tourism. Although they function as centers of multiculturalism, they range from slum ghettos to modern sites of up-to-date development.Forming Chinatowns might be one of the methods for Chinese people to maintain their culture and tradition in an alien place.
ReplyDeleteT1 Rina
I was interested in Japanese case, so I chose it. Japanese diaspora means nikkei who emigrated from Japan to other nations and thier descendants. Here are three important eras. First they emigrated to the Philippines in 12th century. Second in Meiji era, they immigrated to the North America. And then to Mexico and Peru. Finally they are emigrants to the territories of the Empire Japan. Today the three largest countries with nikkei are Brazil, America and the Philippines.
ReplyDeleteAkiko Yamaoka T1
I am kind of interested in the definition of the African Union about African Diaspora goes with patriotism to the African Continent and the African Union.
ReplyDeleteConsidered the poor situation of African countries, this notion of diaspora offers a possibility for a large source of drive for development, say, remittance. The problem is whether people emigrant because of despair of or antipathy toward the country
I’m interested in Indian Diaspora, because I didn’t know much about it. One of the significant emigrations from India is the emigration of Romani people, traditionally known as “Gypsies”. They are believed to have originated in central India, and migrated to Europe or North America. What surprised me most about a Person of Indian Origin(PIO) who is a person of Indian origin, but not a citizen of India, is that they have PIO Card, which exempt them from many restrictions in foreign countries, like visa or certain economic limitations.
ReplyDeleteRie Nishimura
About British diaspora:
ReplyDeleteSince I was in Canada for a year and noticed that there are lots of British/English cultural remains in the country, I looked up the British diaspora page. I was interested in the divisions between British diaspora based on geography.
I knew that in the East Coast, especially Newfound land and Nova Scotia, their English is quite different and somewhat Scottish. And in British Columbia, rather English features are still left in their culture (afternoon tea and so on). I thought it very interesting to see such diversity within a country and see the history back on it.
Nike
I will give a comment about British diaspora. My original image of diaspora was spreading people who have political or ethnical persecution. However, going back to the starting point, British people was the pioneer of it. As everyone knows, American and Australian peple are one of the most popular emigrants of British people. I agree with this phrase "reached across the globe and permanently affected population structures in three continents." I think it may not be overstatement to say that todays strong countries were built by British diaspora.
ReplyDeleteSatomi Yoshida
I'm interested in Korean diaspora, because some friends of mine are Korean.
ReplyDeleteNow more than 900,000 Koreans live in Japan. Many of them are zainichi Koreans. It is well known that they were compel to reside in Japan during the colonial period of 1910 to 1945. My Korean friends say that they like both Korea and Japan, but in my opinion the government of Japan should guarantee the same righs as the Japanese have.
Yusuke
I read the article about Japanese diaspora and found the information about Japanese Bolivian.
ReplyDeleteJapanese settlement in Bolivia began when Japan and Peru contracts ended. Most of them come from Okinawa, the rest from Gihu, Kanagawa, Hiroshima and Osaka. They were assigned to work at rubber plantation. After that, they caught work in mining and railroad construction.
During World War 2, only 19 Japanese were expeled from Bolivia and sent to U.S. Since then, fortunately, local government which had many Japanese settlers did not take make anti-Japanese measures. After the war, government welcomed Japanese refugees.
AFter 1954, treaties lead agricultural Japanese settlers from U.S.-controlled Okinawa and mainland japan.
Before I find this article, I have never heard of Japanese Bolivian. I am curious to know how they reached Bolivia since it takes amlost 18 hours or so to go to Bolivia by airplane from Japan even by airplane.
Misato Noto
Japanese diaspora means "Nikkei" people, Japanese ancestry. However, I think these days, there will be a "second Japanese diaspora". I've read a column on the web recently, and it said many Japanese are trying to flee Japan, to have more healthy and wealthy life. Those people thinks Japan is not a livable country, so they have their children study abroad, work abroad, so that they can live in a low price Asian country, or a country that has better environment than Japan, in the future. I wonder Japan will exist or not in the next 100 years.
ReplyDeleteI got interested in Australian diaspora. This means Australian citizens who live in other countries. The number of them is about 1,000,000. Sometimes this diaspora refer to a "brain drain" from Australia, but a certain institute regard it as a "brain gain". A lot of Australian people tend to go to foreign countries like the United Kingdom and New Zealand in order to get new skills and expertise, while many of them return to their home country. As a result, the institute think, Australia can introduce such new brains from overseas. So, Australian diaspora is not always negative.
ReplyDeleteFutoshi
I'd like to write about Polish diaspora. I had never known the word "Polonia" before. The word means Polish diaspora and people of Polish origin who live outside of Poland. Many of Polonia are Jewish and they emigrated from Poland to other countries in the early twentieth century. It was because of the Holocaust. Most of the survivors of the catastrophe left Poland and they formed one of the big reasons of today’s large number of Polish diaspora in the world. Befor I read the information, I had thought that there had been many Polish Jews in Poland, so I was surprised to know that only 25000 jewish people live in Poland today.
ReplyDeleteMinami
I'd like to write about Japanese diaspora. I never thought Nikkei people as Japanese diaspora, so I was surprised at first. And by reading information, I was surprised that the first diaspora started before Edo era.
ReplyDeleteToday, many Nikkei people live their life in their living country. When I went to California, I took a tour there and the guide was a Nikkei sansei person. He was glad to know I came from Japan, and talked about himself and his family's history. His grand father and mother came to California for searching their job, he said.
Nana
Ukrainian Diaspora in America.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to find out that the biggest Diaspora of Ukrainians is in the United States of America (almost 350,000 people). Every Ukrainian knows about Ukrainian Diaspora in Canada (almost 100,000 people), but not many have ever heard about one in the US. It is also curious that Ukrainians in Canada are more nationally conscious then those in the homeland. As most of them belonged to Greek Catholic Church, they created Greek Catholic Church in Canada and the United States of America. Different religious, political and social organizations were also created. Emigrants of America have been always aware of the homeland problems as they have maintained links with it. The process of national re-awakening led to the support of national interests. They even sent their delegates to the Paris Peace Conference.
Anna
I would like to write about Japanese diaspora. First of all, I didn't know that there are many japanese people who moved to Peru. It's surprising that many moved to the remote countries like Brazil and Peru.
ReplyDeleteI have some Nikkei friends who are from Hawaii so it was interesting to learn the history about them on the link above. It seems to me that Nikkei people are not good at speaking Japanese or don't know Japanese at all. Though they have Japanese lineage, they are very different from Japanese people I think.
Mickie Yamanari
I read the article about Japanese diaspora.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I was really surprised at the fact that there were about 2.5 million nikkei living in their adopted countries.
Some information about nikkei people was written in the textbook I used in my junior high school days, but I didn't know about them so much.
As I read the article in Japanese diaspora, I got interested in the problems about nationality of those Nikkeijin born in Japan from two full-blooded Nikkeijin parents. It is true that there are legal problems However, I think that Japanese government should give them Japanese nationality.
T1 syunta
I am also interested in Japanese disapora, especially in return migration to Japan. It is said that many problems such as Japanese nationality and unemployment occurred with regard to migration to Japan and Japanese government seemed to take racist policies. I cannot quickly decide what policy should be taken. But I should know more detailed information about what is going on around them.
ReplyDeleteSentaro
Thanks for the great comments everybody - very interesting!
ReplyDeleteMy family was part of the Swiss diaspora. They were poor farmers who moved to the USA just before WW1. Americans didn't like Germans at that time, so my family changed our name from the German "Muller" to the English "Miller".
see u tomorrow!
British diaspora: those british people emigrated from the UK to mainly the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. British were one of the earliest people to emigrate to out side of Europe. They had huge influece on culture, structure, population of the countries they reached.
ReplyDeleteThe UK is not a big country but when I think about the number of the people left the UK and that they had so much effect on those colonised countries, and it is quite amazing.
Yurika
Australian Diaspora
ReplyDeleteWhen I hear the word Diaspora, it seems to have a negative meaning rather than a positive one. But I found out that it was not necessarily the case in Australia. Many Australian people move to different countries such as U.K., U.S., and even to Chile, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, etc for mostly an economical reason. The interesting this about this diaspora is that they come back to their home country after they learn skills and expertise overseas. As a result, they contribute to Australia and therefore the Australian Diaspora can be considered good by the government.
Ayaka. M
Japanese diapora
ReplyDeleteI didn't know there are numbers of people who moved to South America, not only Brazil but also other South and Latin American countries.
I understand that there was a restriction to immigrate to the U.S., but I wonder why Japanese people tried to move to the farthest place, the other side of the earth at that time.
I'm also very interested in about how nikkei people thinks about their nationality and identity.
Miho T1
I found the Japanese diaspora interesting, because I had the image of Japanese as tourists and not people who settled in foreign countries. I was surprised to find that this diaspora had such a long history.
ReplyDeleteThe Meiji governments wish to keep Japanese emigrants well-mannered abroad to indicate their being a dignified society, seemed a likely thing to do as a weak nation.This seems to explain why I have mainly only heard about Japanese academics going abroad during this era.
Kaori I
I read about Japanese diaspora. Although I knew there are Korean community in the USA, I didn't know Nikkei also has their own community there. I think it is very interesting to experience our country's atmosphere in other countries. I'm very interested in whether nikkei people sometimes have an urge for rice and miso soup even if they were not born in Japan.
ReplyDeleteT1, Akihiro Yamaguchi
I would like to comment about Chinese diaspora. Considering Chinese diaspora, I can't help think of Chinatown. The most similar Chinatown for me is in Yokohama, and I thought it was tourist spot for many Japanese. But, when I went to the Chinatown in Manchester, England, I was so surprised because there are only Chinese. I felt as if I wasn't in England but China. It was a amazing experience for me.
ReplyDeleteYoshiki Yajima
It doesn't surprise me much, founding out that there are about 7 million korean diaspora around the world. Actually it was obvious for me when I went to America and Canada. There were always korean communities wherever I went. Many of them were either studying abroad or immigrants. One of the easiest example can be found in the history of Japanese domination over Korea. It certainly forced many Korean people to speak like Japanese, live like Japanese, and study like Japanese, and its impact of domination still exists as in the form of diaspora.
ReplyDeleteI have chosen Basque diaspora. It was surprising for me that the article focuses on Basque immigrants in 18 or 19 century. It is because I was thinking that most Basque immigrants settled in Central America in the age of discovery.
ReplyDeleteMany spanish words left in those places also interest me because I am studying Spanish as a second foreign language.
T1 Yumi Mizuno
I read about Basque diaspora, and it was interesting to know that there are Basques in Asia, though the number of their population is small.
ReplyDeleteEspecially I found it interesting that some of the first Christian missionaries in Asia are Basque descendants, and Jesuit Francis Xavier is one of them.
I thought Francis Xavier was spanish, and I think it's no wonder that I misunderstood because no one teached or cared that he was actually Basque. The reason why I'm interested in the fact is that one of the most famous persons in Japan is a minority people, Basque.
Saki Ito, T1
I got interested in Indian diaspora since I saw many Indians in Australia.
ReplyDeleteI found that there are two types of Indians overseas: NRI (A Non- Resident Indian) and PIO (A person of Indian Origin). The number of PIO is increasing rapidly in this few years so that NRI will be increasing more next few decades.
However, the increasing number of Indian people let the discrimination in Australia happen. In last year some students from India in Melbourne, which has the biggest number of Indian students, were attacked. This was quite big news in Australia. I think the immigrants from India still have many problems in Australian society.
Eri
I read the article about Overseas Chinese.What I was interested in is that Overseas Chinese sometimes have conflict with local people because they keep their own culture. As long as a person is of Chinese descent, the person is considered Chinese if he lives outside of China. I have heard Chinese people value blood. I think the identity of Chinese people is very strong.
ReplyDeleteYohei Yasuhara
I'd like to write about Korean diaspora. By reading the article, for the first time I know about Sakhalin Koreans. They were forced to work in Karafuto prefecture during the Japanese colonial period of 1910-1945. After the world war two, a lot of Koreans who were force to be in Japan mainland could return to their home, but Karafuto was ceded by Soviet after the war, and because of the lack of relations between Soviet and South Korea, Sakhalin Koreans couldn't go home if their homes were in South Korea. It is a very sad hisory.
ReplyDeleteT1 Yumiko Nomura
I read the article about African diaspora. From a historical point of view, slavery and colonialism played an important role in African diaspora. African descendants have a long history of being enslaved, which is equal to a long history of diaspora. Today most of them inter-married with non-black people and large percentage of the world population seems to be Afro-descendants, although it is difficult to define their races.
ReplyDeleteT1 Yoshihiro
I found interesting information about Korean diaspora.
ReplyDeleteNearly 7 millions emigrants live abroad and about four-fifth emigrants live in only three countries; China, America and Japan.
The number of people who emigrated to China is over 2 millions.
Now that there are so many Korean diaspora in China, they are officially considered as one of the ethinic group by China government.
Yuko
I saw the page of British diaspora. There are a number of British diaspora around the world. When the word is interpreted to the maximum, the number of it goes to as large as tens of millions. This is why English became so popular that now there are 1.8 billion English speaker on the earth. When I stayed in Canada, the grandmother in my staying home was originally from Britain.
ReplyDeleteMinami.O
I checked the page about Polish diaspora. Since I didn't know much and partly forgot about historical issues in Poland, it was very interesting to find that there are as much as 15 to 20 million Polish diaspora(Polonia). This fact reflects frequent border shifts, resettlement, or political or economic emigration, the article says.
ReplyDeleteASSAN(Asami Sawada)