Types of Nationalism - Diaspora Nationalism

Diaspora Nationalism

Diaspora nationalism (or, as Benedict Anderson terms it, "long-distance nationalism") generally refers to nationalist feeling among a diaspora such as the Irish in the United States, Jews around the world after the expulsion from Jerusalem (586 BCE), the Lebanese in the Americas and Africa, or Armenians in Europe and the United States. Anderson states that this sort of nationalism acts as a "phantom bedrock" for people who want to experience a national connection, but who do not actually want to leave their diaspora community. The essential difference between pan-nationalism and diaspora nationalism is that members of a diaspora, by definition, are no longer resident in their national or ethnic homeland. Traditionally 'Diaspora' refers to a dispersal of a people from a (real or imagined) 'homeland' due to a cataclysmic disruption, such as war, famine, etc. New networks - new 'roots' - form along the 'routes' travelled by diasporic people, who are connected by a shared desire to return 'home'. In reality, the desire to return may be eschatological (i.e. end times orientation), or may not occur in any foreseeable future, but the longing for the lost homeland and the sense of difference from circumambient cultures in which Diasporic people live becomes an identity unto itself.