List of Diasporas - I

I

• Icelandic diaspora: at an estimated number of 150,000, half of which are in Canada. See Icelanders.
• Inuit people, their homeland spans across 4,000 miles (6,400 km) of northern most reaches of North America along the Arctic Ocean. About 800,000 Inuit (a.k.a. "Eskimos") live in four countries: The U.S. (Alaska), Canada (Nunavut is a territorial government established in 1999), Greenland (the "Greenlandic" people, the majority are of Inuit and Danish-European ancestry), self-ruling territory of Denmark, and about 3,000 in the Chukchi Peninsula, Russia facing the Bering Strait.
• Indian Diaspora: They number up to 20 million, according to statistics provided by the Government of India. They are broadly divided into two groups i.e. NRIs (Indian citizens not residing in India) and PIOs (Persons of Indian Origin who have acquired the citizenship of some other country). Major populations exist in Mauritius (where they form the majority), Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Fiji, Malaysia, South Africa, Nepal and Réunion, primarily from 19th century indentured workers. Recent immigration to United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
• Indochinese diaspora - includes the refugees from the numerous wars that took place in Southeast Asia, such as World War II and the Vietnam War.
  • The Vietnamese diaspora - fled communist rule in Vietnam following their victory in the Vietnam War (see South Vietnam) went to the United States (see Vietnamese Americans), the migration peaked in the 1980s and 1990s (esp. the largest Vietnamese-American community is in Orange County, California). The Vietnamese also went to Canada, France (and overseas territories), Germany (also the Vietnamese guest workers in the former Communist East Germany), Italy, the Middle East, Australia, and other Asian countries (most went to Hong Kong, when it was a British colony, before the handover to the People's Republic of China in 1997, and Macau, which was under Portuguese rule until the handover to the People's Republic of China in 1999).
  • The wave of Hmong tribes from Laos, Laotians, Cambodians and Thai refugees and economic immigrants (Vietnamese who arrived since 1990) arrived in North America (i.e. the US and Canada), Europe (esp. France), across Asia (most went to Thailand), Oceania (Australia) and South America (concentrated in French Guiana).
  • Some millions of Indochinese were of ethnic Chinese descent, the majority of Chinese/Sino-Vietnamese from Vietnam, Chinese-Cambodians of Cambodia and Thai-Chinese of Thailand had emigrated in the late 20th century.
• Indonesian diaspora - refers to any ethnic in Indonesia living outside of their homeland, the majority of Indonesian expatriates live in Malaysia, the U.S., Japan, the U.A.E., Australia, and the Netherlands, esp. South Moluccans, a predominantly Christian ethnic group found asylum and religious freedom by the thousands in Holland since the 1950s.
  • Minangkabau diaspora - two of three Minangkabau people live in diaspora. Matrilineal system indirectly caused the diaspora in Minangkabau community. Nowadays, over a million Minangkabau people living outside of Indonesia, mainly in Malaysia and Singapore, but they recently joined the Indonesian emigration to Australia, China, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines.
  • Javanese diaspora - occurred in the Dutch colonial era. Vast numbers of Javanese send to other of Dutch colony as coulies. Most of them were send to Suriname, New Caledonia, and East Sumatra, as well in the late 20th century the Javanese were introduced to the island of New Guinea by Indonesian government endorsed settlement programs in the West Papua province. But others live in Malaysia, Europe, North America, the Middle East, South Africa and Australia.
  • Indo diaspora - During and after the Indonesian National Revolution, which followed the World War II, (1945–1965) around 300.000 people, pre-dominantly Indos, left Indonesia to go to the Netherlands. This migration was called repatriation. The majority of this group had never set foot in the Netherlands before.
• Iraqi diaspora - Refugees from Iraq have increased in number since the US-led invasion into Iraq in March 2003. As of November 4, 2006, the UNHCR estimated that 1.8 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighboring countries, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month. There are over 200,000 Iraqi refugees said to resided in Egypt and 100,000 more in the Persian Gulf states.The main destinations for Iraqi immigration in the 2000s (decade) are the UK, Sweden, Germany, Canada, Australia and South America (i.e. Brazil).
• Irish diaspora - consists of Irish emigrants and their descendants in countries such as the United States (see Irish Americans), the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, South Africa, and nations of the Caribbean and continental Europe, where small but vibrant Irish communities continue to exist. The diaspora contains over 80 million people and it is the result of mass migration from Ireland, due to past famines and political oppression. The term first came widely into use in Ireland in the 1990s when the then-President of Ireland, Mary Robinson began using it to describe all those of Irish descent. Notable people of the global Irish diaspora are United States presidents John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Chilean liberator Bernardo O'Higgins.
• Italian diaspora - occurred between 1870 and 1920 due to the economic crises on the peninsula, reaching the number of 10 million emigrants. Vast numbers of Italians (Sicilians, people from Veneto and other depressed areas) emigrated to Brazil, Argentina (an estimated one-third to half of Argentinans are of Italian descent), the United States (see Italian Americans), Canada (see Italian Canadians), Australia (see Italian Australians), and elsewhere in the Americas (i.e. Chile, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela), Europe (i.e. the UK, Malta, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden), smaller numbers of Italians went to South Africa and Israel (Italian Jews), and small Italian expatriate communities once thrived until the mid-20th century in Africa and the Middle East (Algeria, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey). See also Sicily and Sicilian.
  • Istrian exodus- The real diaspora of the 20th century came after the end of World War II, with 350,000 Italians leaving their homeland on the eastern front after the capture of Istria and Dalmatia by the Yugoslavs. Most of them were relocated in Italy itself; a lower percentage flew overseas (the racer Mario Andretti for example).