Transnational and diaspora identities

Question 1

Brick Lane (2003), a novel by Monica Al

Answer 1

Bengali migrants who live in the East End of London encompasses the pains and possibilities of migration - her husband’s humiliation to find employment and states, her daughters’s adept negotiation to different demands of Bengali and British estate and Nazneen’s own awakening as she charts new life in a foreign country.

Question 2

Giddens (1990)

Answer 2

Migration movements can be seen as an integral part of globalisation - those economic, social, cultural and political processes whereby places across the globe are interconnected

Question 3

Cliddord (1994)

Answer 3

The term diaspora is an attempt to encompass the different and complex belongings of peoples who may be dispersed across geographical boundaries and may have connections to several different places they call ‘home’

Question 4

Cohen (1997)

Answer 4

different kinds of diasporas. He suggests the common features of diaspora include: ‘dispersal from an original homeland, often traumatically,to two or more foreign regions’; ‘ a collective myth and memory about the homeland’; ‘a strong ethnic group consciousness sustained over a long time and based on a sense of distinctiveness, a common history’; ’a sense of empathy and solidarity with co-ethnic members in other countries of settlement; ‘a troubled relationship with host societies suggesting a lack of acceptance’

Question 5

Gilroy (1994)

Answer 5

the cultures of the black Atlantic are characterised not by a return to African ‘roots’ but by the interconnection of many interlinked ‘routes’ between different places.
He argues that the music of the black Atlantic diaspora - blues, reggae, jazz, soul, rap - have all been produced through particular fusions of influences in different places.

Question 6

Bhachu

Answer 6

races a ‘cultural narrative’ of the salwaar-kameez, from an item of negatively coded ‘ethnic clothing’ to a highly fashionable garment that was given prominence on the global fashion stage when worn by Princess Diana

Question 7

Brah (1996)

Answer 7

For Avtar brah, Diaspora spaces are ‘the point at which boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and otherness, of “us” and “them” are contested

Question 8

Eade, 1997)

Answer 8

The name Banglatown creates a space for a Bengali diaspora where individuals assert their identities as simultaneously British and Bengali

Question 9

Banglatown

Answer 9

Banglatown celebrates the possibilities of diaspora connections in creating new and vibrant cultural and social spaces in British cities. Investment in Banglatown raises the visibility of Bangladeshi-Britons nd provides an important site on which to centre key celebrations such as the Brick Lane Festival