List of Diasporas - J

J

• Jassic (or Yassic) people, a small ethnic group of peoples that resided in enclaves in Hungary, Romania, throughout Russia and the Ukraine. The Jassic are ethnologically related to the Ossetians of the Northern Caucasus range, along with distant Iranian and Turkic peoples in their linguistic similarities between the Iranian language and somewhat the Turkish language. Their ancestral origin may have been of North Caucasian origins, perhaps mixed with peoples from Persia or Iran, and more precisely, the steppes of Central Asia about 3,000 years ago when migratory patterns of Indo-European and later Uralic peoples arrived in Eastern Europe. The Jassic people are minuscule in number, dwindled down by each generation, and they were assimilated into the Hungarian population and Slavic majorities they lived among with. Yassic people are thought to forefathered Georgians and ancient peoples of the Middle East such as the Kassites whom later became Sumerians, Akkadians or Babylonians in ancient Mesopotamia of present-day Iraq.
• Jaffnese/Ceylonese Diaspora - refers to the diaspora of Sri Lankan Tamils, especially those post-1983 due to the civil conflict in Sri Lanka. This has created huge Tamil communities in countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and other European countries. In many ways, the Jaffnese Diaspora is compared to the Jewish Diaspora, both historically, socially and economically. It is a subset of the greater Tamil Diaspora.
• Jamaican diaspora - An estimated 3 million Jamaicans live outside the island country of Jamaica, an English-speaking majority African descendant country in the Caribbean. The main destinations for Jamaican immigration in the 20th century are the U.S., Great Britain and Canada. But, Jamaican immigration across the Caribbean, to Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, and even Africa are well noted. Jamaicans living aboard, such as Bob Marley introduced the music form of reggae to the international music market in the 1970s.
• Japanese diaspora - Brazil (see Japanese Brazilian), the United States (see Japanese Americans), Canada (See Japanese Canadian) and the Philippines (see Japanese Filipinos), as well sizable communities in Peru (see Japanese Peruvian), Argentina (see Asian Argentine), Chile and Ecuador, and smaller numbers of Japanese in Australia, New Zealand, Cuba and Mexico are the countries with the highest numbers of Japanese people outside Japan. The largest community of ethnic Japanese is in Hawaii where they make up a quarter of the state's population. However, there are smaller Japanese communities around the world that developed in the late 20th century such as throughout western Europe (esp. the Japanese expatriate colony in Dusseldorf, Germany), eastern Russia and South Africa. The Japanese population used to have nicknames to indicate generational levels: "Issei"-foreign born parents, next is "Nisei"-1st generation born outside Japan or children, and "Sansei"-2nd generation born outside Japan or grandchildren.
  • Okinawans - An Asian people closely related to the Japanese in terms of culture and language, from the island of Okinawa, politically part of Japan since 1878. After WWII, the U.S. briefly ruled Okinawa from 1945 to its return to Japanese rule in 1972. Since then, tens of thousands of Okinawans settled in the U.S. and in the 1960s, massive settlement programs of Okinawan farmers into Latin America, the majority in Brazil and Peru, and some Okinawan transplants in Ecuador, Bolivia (the Santa Cruz, Bolivia province area) and Paraguay (i.e. the Gran Chaco) to develop their countries' agricultural farmlands.
• Jewish diaspora - in its historical use, refers to the period between the Roman invasion and subsequent occupation of Land of Israel beginning AD 70, to the re-establishment of Israel in 1948. In modern use, the 'Diaspora' refers to ethnic Jews who continue to live outside of Israel. Some Jews, particularly assimilationist Jews and recent converts, do not regard themselves as part of a diaspora community.
  • Jewish groups and histories greatly vary from one another in each country, notably large communities represented in the global Jewish diaspora. Currently, North America and Europe are home to the vast majority of diaspora Jews.
  • Sephardic-Jewish Diaspora - in 1492 Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain expelled all persons who were not members of the Roman church specifically Jews and Christians of Jewish origin. The Sephardi Jews, as they were known, resettled across Southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, but others went to Germany and the Netherlands (where they merged with the local Ashkenazi), and some went to Britain, North and South America, and other colonies of the British and Spanish empires by the late 16th century.