International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   Since ancient times, there have been people on the move who have tried to maintain their group identity in ways that often transcended natural barriers and political borders. Many claim, however, that the intensiveness and simultaneous dimensions of current transnational connections have increased the significance of this phenomenon ( Vertovec 1999 :447). Among the different kinds of transnational communities, ethnonational diasporic communities have recently been receiving much attention in IR literature. These studies have focused on relations of these communities with their kin in the homeland and in other states of residence, as well as on their influence on the foreign policy of their host states. Moreover, as H. Smith states, “[I]n an era of globalization, diasporas have been reconstructed as new and potentially powerful actors in international politics” ( 2007 :3). The study of diasporas is quite new in IR, interest in the literature growing only after the end of the Cold War. Earlier disinterest in the concept can be partly explained by the more general neglect of ethnonationalism in IR before the end of the Cold War ( King 1998 :3). As Bercovitch claims with regard to IR literature of the past, “All international problems were seen as territorial in nature, and groups or issues that could not be defined in territorial terms hardly figured in ... log in or subscribe to read full text