4.

Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology

and practice
Carolin Fischer

INTRODUCTION

Transnationalism and diaspora are important subfields in the study and governance of inter-
national migration. As such, they received much attention from scholars and policymakers.
However, the study and governance of transnationalism and diaspora is not free of contesta-
tion. I argue that an important area of contestation, which has been largely omitted from the
focus of academic debate, is situated at an epistemological level.1 It derives from the paradox
that a transnational perspective transcends nation state-based epistemologies, whereas the
notion of diaspora – as a specific transnational phenomenon – tends to receive an essentialist
framing. As a result, diaspora studies often reify nation state-based framings and explanations
of social phenomena which a transnational perspective strives to dismantle. This raises the
question how and with what effects forms of migration governance and concomitant policies
address or respond to this paradox. To tackle this puzzle, the chapter begins with an overview
of key developments in scholarship on transnationalism and diaspora. It focuses particularly
on overlaps and disconnections to specify the paradox. Subsequently, it examines how this
epistemological problem plays out in forms of practical migration governance that target
diaspora populations either implicitly or explicitly. To this end, the chapter zooms into two
specific areas of intervention: (i) diaspora institutions and diaspora policies and (ii) immigrant
integration. Both areas of governance relate to the phenomenon of diaspora in different and
contradictory ways, whilst reifying nation state biases in terms of underlying assumptions and
in terms of the actors involved. Hence, different approaches to the political governance of dias-
poras as particular forms of transnational populations clash with a transnational epistemology.
An exclusive focus on state-led politics, however, obscures diaspora as a subject of trans-
national claims and meaning making. The final section of the contribution therefore proposes
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an actor-centred approach to entanglements of transnationalism and diaspora. Drawing on

the so-called reflexive turn in migration studies (Nieswand and Drotbohm 2014), I argue
for an unbiased and open-ended approach to the meanings that individuals assign to their
cross-border relations with people and places. This actor-centred approach broadens our
understanding of the political in the sense that it moves away from a purely institutional focus.
Conceptually, this actor-centred approach has significant parallels with Amelina’s analytical
concept of ‘doing migration’ (Amelina 2017; see also Fischer and Dahinden 2019). The
analysis of ‘doing diaspora’ offers a counterweight to state-led forms of practical diaspora
governance as it sheds light on meanings and positionalities that often remain eclipsed.
At the same time, I situate constructions of diaspora and diaspora engagement in concrete
socio-political and discursive contexts.

47

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 48 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration

THE EMERGENCE AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF

A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

To a large extent, migration in the modern age is inherently transnational as it happens in

a world that is organized in nation states (see also Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin, Chapter
3 and El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). As part of their mobility practices, people cross
nation state borders. Transnational migration has thus been an empirical fact since the foun-
dation of the modern nation state. But it was not until the mid 1990s that scholars adopted
an explicitly transnational perspective to study and better understand forms, contexts and
implications of contemporary migration. In 1995 Glick Schiller et al. drew attention to ‘the
processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link
together their societies of origin and settlement’ (Glick Schiller et al. 1995: 48). They defined
these processes as transnationalism. Building on this definition, subsequent scholarship broad-
ened the scope beyond the bi-polar space that spans migrants’ country of origin and settlement.
Increasingly, transnational migration was framed as taking place within fluid social spaces
that are constantly reworked through migrants’ simultaneous embeddedness in more than one
society and geographical locality, respectively (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004; Pries 2005). In
addition to migrants’ home and host countries, these fluid social spaces were found to often
include other sites around the world that connect migrants to their co-nationals and other social
groups. Such an extended understanding of transnationalism acknowledges that both migrants
and non-migrants shape existing or create new, transnational social spaces, which they inhabit
and give meaning to (Dahinden 2009). This is because the flow of people, goods, ideas, norms
and practices also shapes the lives of those who do not physically move themselves (Levitt
2001; Levitt and Jaworsky 2007).
There are variations in the dimensions and forms of relationships that unfold between
people and places (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007; Yeoh et al. 2003). To capture different
articulations and implications of transnationalism, Levitt and Glick Schiller (2004) propose
a distinction between transnational ways of being, meaning activities, practices, networks,
etc. and transnational ways of belonging. The latter include ideas of solidarity, reciprocity and
belonging which are crucial for the establishment and maintenance of transnational fields.
It is important to acknowledge, however, that cross-border kinship or solidarity networks as
well as collective representations of ethnicity and groupness are neither given, nor necessarily
durable (Brubaker 2002). Rather they are ‘done’ or ‘undone’ in transnational space, within and
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between generations, and they are closely linked to local contexts which provide constraints or
resources (Faist 2000; Moret 2018).
A transnational perspective stands for endorsing a particular approach to migration as an
empirical phenomenon, which widens the scope of research that views ‘immigrants as persons
who uproot themselves, leave behind home and country and face painful processes of incorpo-
ration into a different society and culture’ (Glick Schiller et al. 1995: 48). As such, it brings to
light processes which traditional migration research fails to capture. This includes simultane-
ous identification with multiple places; complex perceptions of belonging; and forms of social
and political engagement across nation state borders. However, the emergence of a transna-
tional perspective was more than an added dimension to the study of migration. Indeed, the
transnational perspective on migration as an empirical phenomenon contributes to social
science more generally (Faist et al. 2013; Glick Schiller 2015). Dahinden (2017: 1481) argues
that ‘[t]he main merit of the “transnational turn” in the 1990s […] is that it triggered a para-

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 Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice 49

digm shift within migration research, away from the study of migrant “transnationalism”’. As
exemplified by Wimmer and Glick Schiller’s seminal critique of methodological nationalism
(Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003), embracing a transnational perspective becomes a way to
develop explanatory frameworks for current transformations and to revise traditional social
theory. Thus, a transnational perspective is of deep, epistemological significance.
The paradigm shift to which Dahinden alludes is part of a broader development that schol-
ars recently began to frame as the reflexive turn in migration and mobility studies (Amelina
2017; Nieswand and Drotbohm 2014). The focus is on how migration became a subject
of scientific inquiry (Nieswand 2018). This implies that the naturalization of borders and
the privilege of sedentarism over mobility are being called into question (Amelina 2017).
Proponents of a reflexive approach argue that any scientific analysis is marked by a specific
methodological standpoint (Nieswand and Drotbohm 2014), as a result of which researchers
contribute to shaping their research objects (Schinkel 2018). One important advancement of
reflexive approaches to migration and mobility consists in drawing attention to the fact that
state-centred regimes reproduce categories such as migration, mobility, refugees or diaspora
(see also El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). Nation states as bounded territorial entities
thus shape instances of knowledge production (Pott et al. 2018; cf. Jeandesboz in this volume,
Chapter 27). A transnational perspective not only adopts a broader and more inclusive focus
on migration and mobility as subjects of empirical inquiry. It also transcends the nation
state-centred framework of analysis in which the study of migration has traditionally been
situated.

SITUATING DIASPORA IN TRANSNATIONAL STUDIES

The concept of diaspora is at the same time an empirical manifestation of transnationalism

while exemplifying prevailing nation state-based epistemologies. Conceptually, transnation-
alism and diaspora have different genealogies but both are related. Diaspora is a historical
notion that goes back to the Jewish, Greek and Armenian experiences of forced displacement
and dispersal (Cohen 2008; Tölölyan 1991, 2012). Diaspora populations are marked by several
distinctive features which Brubaker subsumes as follows: dispersion, homeland orientation
and boundary maintenance (Brubaker 2005: 5–6). As such, it has clear overlaps with transna-
tionalism as a description of an empirical phenomenon in the sense Glick Schiller et al. (1995)
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originally coined the term. However, not every person leading a transnational life is therefore
part of a diaspora. Likewise, the category of transnationals does not exclusively include
migrants. Many former migrants in turn may not maintain transnational lives and activities.
Diasporas thus constitute a subset of transnationals whereas both transnationals and diasporas
intersect with migrants (Bakewell 2008). Lacroix (2019: 174) holds that diasporas do not
emerge from mere mass emigration. Rather, diaspora-formation involves the maturation of
a shared identity that comes out of different exchanges, confrontation, associational mobiliza-
tion and artistic expression.
Similar to transnationalism, the concept of diaspora transcends the old assimilationist, immi-
grationist paradigm. However, it also reiterates Glazer and Moynihan’s observation that ‘the
point about the melting pot … is that it did not happen’ (1963, v). Regardless of human mobil-
ity being historically constitutive of societies across the world, migration and the presence
of migrant others are not accepted as normal in modern society (see, for example, Schinkel

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 50 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration

2018). If migration was not considered as an anomaly, there would be no point in speaking
about diaspora in the first place. Regardless of globalization and the constant cross-border
movements of people, goods and ideas (Appadurai 1991), we are far from having surpassed
the age of the nation state in exchange for de-territorialized identities and a non-essentialist
idea of the relationship between politics and culture and territory (Brubaker 2005). Hence,
grand claims about radical breaks and epochal shifts should be treated with caution (Favell
2001). To date, the nation state is the primary concept against which diaspora is defined – and
often celebrated (Clifford 1994; Tölölyan 1991). As a result, discussions of diaspora tend to be
informed by a strikingly idealist, teleological understanding of the nation state, which is seen
as an unfolding of the idea of nationalizing and homogenizing the population.
The paradox in the relationship between diaspora and transnationalism thus derives from
the multi-layered implications that are tied to the notion of diaspora. Diasporas, according
to the paradigmatic definition, constitute an inherently transnational phenomenon. They
emerge through transnational processes while representing complex transnational processes
themselves. In many ways they exemplify what has been described as transnational ways of
being and transnational ways of belonging. At the same time and due to its nation state-centred
underpinnings, diaspora has come to reify the idea of bounded communities that are united in
their shared culture and shared national origins (Brubaker 2005).

TRANSNATIONALISM AND DIASPORA IN THE GOVERNANCE

AND POLITICS OF MIGRATION

The paradoxical relationship between diaspora and transnationalism is not only reflected in
scholarly accounts. It is also at the heart of different areas of migration governance (see, for
example, Agunias and Newland 2012). For example, two areas marked by the governing role
of the nation state are diaspora institutions and integration policies. Both areas of governance
(implicitly) target diaspora populations, albeit in very different ways. Whilst the former are
based on the extension of access and membership across borders, the latter limit membership
and its signifiers to territorially bounded nation states (El Qadim, Chapter 19; on border
regimes, see also Rajaram, Chapter 15, both in this volume). Hence, while diaspora poli-
cies embrace the idea of transnationalism, immigrant integration constitutes a fundamental
contradiction to transnationalism as an epistemological position. The concept of diaspora
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thus highlights the merits and pitfalls of a transnational perspective with regard to migration
governance.

Diaspora Institutions

Diaspora institutions are defined as ‘formal state offices dedicated to emigrants and their
descendants’ (Gamlen 2014: 182). In this broad definition, Gamlen (2014: 182) includes
‘full or shared ministries, governmental departments, and interdepartmental committees, […]
legislative-branch institutions, such as parliamentary standing committees, dedicated seats in
the upper or lower house of the legislature, and councils formally appointed to advise on leg-
islation affecting diaspora groups’. Diaspora institutions are an established phenomenon that
can be traced back to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with countries such as Mexico,
Poland and Italy being early examples (Délano 2011; Smith 2003). However, diaspora insti-

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 Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice 51

tutions have spread exponentially in recent decades. In 1970, fewer than ten states worldwide
maintained diaspora institutions; the number rose to 40 by 2000 and in 2014, 110 of the 193
United Nations member states maintained at least one diaspora institution, and at least 47
states had more than one (Gamlen 2014: 185).
Diaspora institutions encompass a broad range of governance practices. For example,
migrants and their descendants are courted in campaigns to encourage financial remittances
and investments (Aparicio and Meseguer 2012; Brinkerhoff 2008, 2012). They are granted
new categories of extra-territorial citizenship and voting rights, sometimes with dedicated
representatives in origin state legislatures (Bauböck 2009; Collyer 2014; Gamlen et al. 2019;
Lafleur 2011) and harnessed through heritage tourism campaigns (Abramson 2019; Mahieu
2019). These and other government initiatives to engage diasporas have come to represent
a regular feature of twenty-first-century politics and migration governance more specifically
(Faist 2010; Gamlen et al. 2019; Østergaard-Nielsen 2003). Another area of diaspora gov-
ernance has emerged in the context of international development cooperation. Many govern-
mental or non-governmental institutions have set up initiatives which seek to engage diaspora
groups in ‘home country development’ action (Sinatti and Horst 2014; Stielike 2017). Fields
of practical engagement include local development initiatives in countries of origin, humani-
tarian aid and emergency responses, as well as networking and capacity building in countries
of settlement (see, for example, DRC 2019; GIZ 2018).
Key purposes of diaspora institutions are to extend domestic politics and issues beyond
national borders, to shape migrants’ senses of self, and to reconfigure the spatiality of states
beyond the idealized form of the territorially discrete nation state unit (Agnew 2003). Diaspora
institutions represent ‘state-led transnationalism’ (Margheritis 2007) in that they project
states’ domestic policies beyond their borders into populations that both reside abroad and
also remain involved at home (Gamlen 2014: 189). Such policies embrace transnationalism
instrumentally. At the same time, however, they reify the nation state, because diaspora is
understood as a form of dispersed belonging defined by nation states (Cohen 1996; Gamlen
2014). Diaspora institutions thus contribute to perceptions of emigrants and their descendants
as a category of belonging defined by, rather than in opposition to, the origin state (Délano
Alonso and Mylonas 2019; Gamlen et al. 2019; Ragazzi 2009).
A closer look at diaspora policies and diaspora institutions as one specific form of migra-
tion governance reveals the controversial link between transnationalism and diaspora. The
controversy derives from the disjuncture between transnationalism as cross-border politics,
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identifications and practices (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007) and transnationalism as an epistemo-
logical stance (Dahinden 2017; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003). Whilst the former is both
a precondition and an inherent feature of diaspora institutions and diaspora policies, the latter
remains largely absent from this specific area of migration governance and the way it has been
studied thus far.
First, diaspora policies and diaspora institutions are transnational because they build on
and strive to further enhance livelihoods and loyalties that transcend nation state borders. The
underlying aim of such state-led outreach activities, in turn, is to foster transnational identi-
fications and encourage transnational flows of money or social remittances. Diaspora institu-
tions and policies thus strive to craft both transnational ways of being as well as transnational
ways of belonging (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). They acknowledge that different forms
of cross-border exchange form a vital dimension of peoples’ everyday lives and transnational
relations and flows can involve multiple places and thus resemble a multi-nodal network

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 52 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration

(Levitt and Jaworsky 2007). Such recognition of and attempts to further expand transnational
ways of being and transnational ways of belonging, however, are instrumentalist. State actors
seek to benefit from transnational identifications and transnational practices of those consid-
ered part of the diaspora. Diaspora institutions and policies are designed to capitalize on the
administrative fact that emigrants often remain nationals of their country of origin. At the same
time, it is the state that defines who is included or excluded from the diaspora. Nationality is
conflated with an idea of belonging to an extended community of citizens and concomitant
loyalty. Diaspora institutions and policies reify the idea of diasporas as bounded entities. This
is unsurprising because states aim to retain their credibility, authority and representativeness
of what is believed to be their people. Acknowledging heterogeneity in terms of political
opinions and agendas, class backgrounds and loyalty, as well as concomitant ruptures and
contestations, put states at risk of losing credibility and authority. Attempts of the Turkish state
to represent its citizens abroad, for example, contrast sharply with Alevi attempts to organize
around a distinct religious and cultural identity (Özkul 2019).
Second, more recent accounts of diaspora politics embrace transnationalism epistemologi-
cally. Such contributions recognize the need to move away from static, state-centred catego-
ries when studying diaspora politics. Scholars such as Délano Alonso and Mylonas (2019; see
also Fischer and Dahinden 2019) examine the various actors within and beyond the state that
participate in the design and implementation of policies categorized as ‘diaspora engagement’.
Efforts to engage migrants and their descendants are also shaped by global norms about
how best to manage migration for mutually beneficial development, and how best to respect
migrant human rights in destination states. International organizations such as the United
Nations or the World Bank, for example, have been making efforts to promote certain forms
of diaspora engagement in specific global regions. Such initiatives and underlying norms
have developed in the absence of a centralized, universally supported and thus binding global
migration governance framework. Scholars have also examined how emigrant or co-ethnic
groups are constituted (or not) by government bureaucracies at different levels, as well as by
political parties, diaspora entrepreneurs and diaspora groups, or by international organizations
as ‘diasporas’ (Délano Alonso and Mylonas 2019). Such forms of diaspora governance are less
state-centred as far as the actors involved are concerned. However, the populations targeted
by non-state actors are still framed as members of bounded nation state-based communities.
Regardless of the approach taken to the study of diaspora institutions, the persons assumed to
form part of a diaspora are perceived as belonging to a certain national entity.
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Immigrant Integration

Immigrant integration is a second field of migration governance that targets those perceived
as members of a diaspora. It relates to transnationalism in a very different way than diaspora
institutions. Across industrialized countries of the global North, integration became ‘the most
widely used general concept for describing inclusion of migrants and ethnic minorities in
national communities as primary target of post-immigration policies’ (Bommes and Morawska
2005: 44). In the absence of an agreement about what constitutes integration, most scholarly
attention has focused on migrants’ adjustment and the ways in which integration outcomes
might be understood or measured (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Phillimore 2018; Penninx and
Garcés-Mascareñas 2016). Integration is both means and ends in the sense that the concept
refers to both an accomplished condition, and to the process of getting there (Rytter 2019:

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 Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice 53

682). Immigrant integration policies are not specifically designed for perceived members of
diasporic groups. They aim, however, at supporting peoples’ immersion into the society of
settlement, thus addressing immigrant groups as others based on their ascribed identity, such
as the (ancestral) origin. While integration policies and discourse primarily target persons who
migrated themselves, they also set the benchmarks for perceptions and evaluations of migrant
descendants (Alba and Foner 2015; Favell 2016). Talk of and demands for integration in public
and political discourse rest on, produce and reproduce specific imaginaries of culture, race and
belonging that often disqualify certain groups of immigrants per se and cast them as inferior
and suspect (Rytter 2019: 680). As a policy goal, integration posits society as a static object
over individuals whose being signifies a certain degree of ‘integration’ as an individual-level
trait and task. ‘Integration’ is the state of an individual, and hence – in line with the neoliber-
alization of migration and integration policies (van Houdt et al. 2011) – ‘integration’ becomes
a matter of ‘individual responsibility’ (Schinkel 2018: 3)
Integration policies do not form a unique set of interventions. There is a multitude of
national models of integration policies, which focus on education, language skills, labour
market participation, as well as social and cultural practices (Ager and Strang 2008).
Regardless of national specificities of policy frames and policy measures, many of the pro-
grammes in place have been criticized for their primary focus on migrants rather than society
as a whole. They overlook the importance of transnationalism and local levels (Penninx and
Garcés-Mascareñas 2016). Integration policies revolve around dialectic ideas of differences
and sameness. However, differences are exclusively attributed to ‘others’. They are cast as
signs of problems posed by those considered as introducing these differences from the outside
into an otherwise unscathed inside. Integration policies suggest that despite all mobility, ‘there
is still a “society” that is not mobile, that can be circumcised out of the super-diverse chaos of
movements, trajectories, backgrounds and origins’ (Schinkel 2018: 10). Hence, contemporary
migration is predicated on the existence of an international system of nation states, which
promotes the production of migrant others as particular subjectivities (Korteweg 2017; El
Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). Such critical accounts demonstrate not only that integra-
tion constitutes an important dimension of migration governance. They also unpack how the
idea of integration reifies the nation state as a natural unit of belonging and social organiza-
tion. However, there is a fundamental disconnect between research on the links between and
compatibility of transnationalism and integration, and integration as subject and objective of
migration governance. Whilst the former underlines that people can live, belong and engage
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in multiple national spheres, the latter rejects transnationalism both as an epistemological

position and as a form of being and belonging.
This clash in objectives between integration policies and diaspora institutions and policies
can be summarized as group maintenance vs. disappearance of groups. The idea of diaspora
features centrally in different areas of migration governance, even if the notion of diaspora is
not explicitly used, as is the case for most immigrant integration policies. However, debates
on the interplay of transnationalism and immigrant integration tend to ignore that both areas of
governance are based on essentialist ideas and assumptions of belonging as a result of which
people are framed as members of a specific bounded group. While diaspora institutions and
policies implicitly underline the idea of lasting differences and distinctions based on national
origin, integration policies seek to erase such differences. Yet, the very attempt to dismantle
differences reinforces them at the same time. In principle, diaspora and immigrant integration
policies target the same – imagined – groups of persons and forms of migration-induced

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 54 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration

difference. However, both areas of governance are fundamentally incompatible as far as

their objectives and anticipated effects on such difference are concerned. Diaspora policies
capitalize on the assumption of transnational belonging, while immigrant integration policies
cast transnational belonging as a problem. Those targeted are thus caught in the tension
between the encouragement of transnational belonging, on the one hand, and the expectation
to exchange transnational belonging with national immersion, on the other hand.

WAYS FORWARD: PROPOSING AN ACTOR-CENTRED

APPROACH TO TRANSNATIONALISM AND DIASPORA

So far, I have been reviewing two areas of migration governance that target ideas of trans-
nationalism and diaspora in different – even contradictory – ways. Notwithstanding these
differences, it emerges that ultimately immigrant integration as well as diaspora institutions
and policies are based on a state-centred epistemology. Both areas of governance are there to
serve the interests of nation states, be it control over groups of nationals that live outside the
state territory and secure ‘diasporic’ support for economic prosperity, political influence, etc.
(diaspora institutions) or the maintenance of imagined homogeneity (integration). To this end,
they build on the assumption that there are clear-cut groups that identify and act along ethnic
lines. Such ethnic conceptualizations disregard diaspora as a site of and subject to individual
meaning-making. At the same time, both fields of migration governance exemplify what
Amelina (2017: 5) refers to as state-led instances of ‘doing migration’, meaning that certain
markers of identification and notions of national belonging are inscribed in forms of migration
governance. In the analysis of diaspora institutions and immigrant integration policies, I have
demonstrated how diaspora and transnationalism can be used as heuristic tools to trace how
modes of governance draw on certain constructions of social reality. A critical focus on the
epistemological underpinnings of the links between transnationalism and diaspora in migra-
tion governance certainly sharpen our analytical lens. However, can such a critical approach
also contribute to rethinking the link between transnationalism and diaspora, and help to
develop new avenues for migration governance?
I argue that the nation state-centred bias that is inherent to diaspora institutions and integra-
tion policies begins to crumble once we adopt an actor-centred approach to explore who uses
notions like diaspora and to what ends. How do (im)mobile subjects define their own identifi-
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cations and practices? And how does transnationalism contribute to shaping them? By address-
ing such questions, an actor-centred approach helps to reveal the socially generated quality of
phenomena such as diaspora, and it adds complementary dimensions to their meanings and
articulations. In an empirically grounded contribution to the discussion on transnationalism
and integration, Bivand Erdal (2013) argues for analysis through migrants’ own expressions
of phenomena like integration or transnationalism. She bases her plea on identified tensions
between different understandings of integration and points at a fundamental shortcoming of
integration policies. Based on her actor-centred analysis, Bivand Erdal (2013: 996) underlines
that integration policies often lack a transnational perspective that could acknowledge the
transnational lived experiences of migrants themselves. To complete the picture and balance
hegemonic, state-led representations, it is therefore important to also access instances of
meaning-making from a migrant-led bottom-up perspective. Such an approach is transnational
in the sense that it does not draw forgone conclusions based on a person’s national or ethnic

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 Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice 55

background. In fact, we can apply Amelina’s idea of ‘doing migration’ (Amelina 2017) to
doing diaspora respectively. It enables us to highlight the intentions and objectives at play
whenever the notion of diaspora is used and to explore specific ways of transnational being
and belonging that are tied to notions of diaspora which different actors employ. Dominant
conceptions of diaspora not only omit important dimensions and articulations of diaspora.
They may also be met by contestation of those to whom the label is applied.
Only a few studies have looked at transnational identifications and governance implications
in combination. Fischer and Dahinden (2019), for example, explore instances of doing dias-
pora that involve different actors. To identify and contextualize diverse meanings of diaspora,
we focus on how and with what effects different actors use the notion of diaspora as a category
of practice. Based on a study of Afghan migration to Europe, we highlight the processes and
objectives at play whenever the notion of diaspora is used as a category of self-identification
or external classification. We find that persons of Afghan origin may either positively or nega-
tively identify with a wider Afghan diaspora or the idea of such a diaspora. Identification con-
stitutes an act of self-positioning amidst co-nationals of Afghan origin and vis-à-vis society and
public discourse more broadly (Fischer 2017). Conversely, external actors may apply diaspora
as a social category when referring to Afghans outside Afghanistan. We find that the notion
of diaspora is used to distinguish between those perceived as established and well-integrated
persons of Afghan origin, on the one hand, and recently arrived Afghan refugees with different
socio-economic backgrounds and different needs, on the other. Newly arrived refugees are
assessed and classified against the backdrop of an assumedly well-integrated Afghan diaspora
population (for example, Skodo 2017; Wilhelm 2015). Rather than confirming the existence
of a certain group that can be targeted by specific policies, we show that the notion of diaspora
constitutes a rich but fluid resource. It can be mobilized for self-identification and position-
ing, and for political ends. Using the notion of diaspora as a flexible tool rather than a fixed
category enables us to explore applied notions of diaspora that often go far beyond the mere
classification of a specific migrant population.
What does such an actor-centred approach imply for modes of governance and policy-making?
While it is unlikely to change dominant forms of governance, it helps us identify the under-
lying framings and social constructions that inform those policies in the first place. Adopting
an actor-centred approach to doing diaspora signals that diaspora is a result of interactive
individual, organizational and institutional repetitive practices and routines (Amelina 2017).
At the same time, it allows us to scrutinize who is affectively addressed in the first place and
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whether and in what ways certain fields of migration governance respond to the interests and
concerns of its subjects, that is, migrants who are either required to integrate or targeted as
members of a wider diaspora. An analysis of migrants’ own reflections on issues such as trans-
nationalism, diaspora or integration sheds light on transnational realities in a dual sense. First,
it illuminates the transnational – in terms of multi-local – context in which people and their
experiences are embedded. Second, it sheds light on migrants’ emic reflections on state-led
policies and their objectives. An actor-centred approach thus helps us refine our understanding
of the role transnationalism plays in shaping peoples’ identifications and sense of belonging. It
also helps specify to what extent and to what ends people self-identify as members of diaspo-
ras. Ultimately, an actor-centred approach helps us trace how certain definitions of migration,
diaspora or integration have emerged, stabilized and become inscribed in political regulations
and social routines that have effects on mobile and immobile individuals. It enables us to retain
the usefulness of diaspora as a concept by unpacking in what ways and with what effects it is
linked to the teleology of different actors.

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 56 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration

CONCLUSION

Today we see increased cross-border flows of different nature: persons, information, knowl-
edge, goods and trends (Appadurai 1991). They constitute the basis for both diaspora institu-
tions and policies, and immigrant integration as two distinct fields of migration governance.
Both areas of governance target diaspora populations because they are seen as members and
representatives of a particular nation state. They do not acknowledge diaspora as a category
of practice, an idea and principle that actors strategically employ to position themselves in the
context that constitutes their daily environment.
Migration governance is a heterogeneous field of different individual policies and their
underlying objectives. The same migrant population may be subject to the policies of different
state and non-state actors. Diaspora policies and integration policies exemplify such entan-
glements and their inherent contradictions. The above sections demonstrate how both policy
fields potentially target the same constructed migrant or ethnic minority groups. However, we
are faced with the contradicting aims to amplify the visibility and transnational engagement
of diasporic groups, on the one hand, and to support their disappearance, on the other hand.
Regardless of their different objectives, however, both policy fields rest on the same basic
parameters and nation state-centred epistemologies which promote the construction of migrant
groups in terms of their ethnic and national origin. At the same time, diaspora policies and
immigrant integration policies reflect two dimensions of the political zeitgeist in migration
governance: on the one hand, people are expected to be of political or economic use to their
(ancestral) country of origin. On the other hand, they are expected to integrate and become
invisible in their country of residence. Both these perspectives are utilitarian in the sense that
they prioritize state interests over the interests and needs of those forming part of perceived
diasporas.
However, this state-led way of doing migration needs to be juxtaposed with a migrant-centred
approach to social identification, engagement and lived experience, which offers an important
corrective to the dominant view and its implications. Revisiting the links between transna-
tionalism and diaspora reveals how widespread modes of knowledge production on migration
and mobility both affect, and are reflected in, instances of migration governance. In line with
recent debates on knowledge production in migration studies (also see Jeandesboz in this
volume, Chapter 27), this contribution has demonstrated how a transnational epistemology, in
conjunction with a ‘doing migration’ approach, proposes original ways to revisit the underpin-
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nings and inherent contradictions of specific areas of migration governance.

NOTE
1. I use the notion of epistemology as a reference to the nature and production of knowledge and to
the sources and scope of justified belief more specifically. Epistemology is thus an answer to the
question ‘How do we know what we know and why do we consider our knowledge as justified?’

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 Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice 57

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