TY - JOUR
T1 - CRITICAL REALISM, ASSEMBLAGES AND PRACTICES BEYOND THE STATE: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSING GLOBAL DIASPORA ENGAGEMENT
AU - Craven, Catherine
PY - 2018/10
Y1 - 2018/10
N2 - In recent decades state-based diaspora engagement institutions have proliferated.
Meanwhile, the surge in diaspora engagement initiatives by non-state global governance
actors is also on the rise. However, such ‘global-ising’ of diaspora engagement does not
describe a simple ‘scaling-up’ of policies from the domestic to the supranational level.
Rather, it suggests a reconfiguration of policies, actors and spaces by and through which
diasporas are now being engaged/governed. No doubt, this calls for a reassessment of
existing analytical frameworks. This paper makes the case for a new ontological perspective
for studying global diaspora governance. It proposes that existing analyses of diaspora
governance lack explanatory power for a number of reasons. They either fall into the trap of
methodological nationalism, and thus fail to account for the complexities of contemporary
global social and political configurations, or, if they do problematise complexity, they do so
in a way that depoliticises global governance processes. Instead, this paper argues for a
critical realist ontology, which suggests that we think about global diaspora engagement
through the concept of the assemblage. Assemblages, this paper argues, allow us to consider
global diaspora engagement as complex relations between human and non-human agents
whose configurations shape the conditions of possibility for action in a particular
circumstance. When paired with Bourdieusian practice theory, the assemblage can also act as
the (de-/reterritorialised) field within which practices are hierarchically ordered, thus
enabling the study of how political struggles unfold inside specific configurations of global
diaspora engagement.
AB - In recent decades state-based diaspora engagement institutions have proliferated.
Meanwhile, the surge in diaspora engagement initiatives by non-state global governance
actors is also on the rise. However, such ‘global-ising’ of diaspora engagement does not
describe a simple ‘scaling-up’ of policies from the domestic to the supranational level.
Rather, it suggests a reconfiguration of policies, actors and spaces by and through which
diasporas are now being engaged/governed. No doubt, this calls for a reassessment of
existing analytical frameworks. This paper makes the case for a new ontological perspective
for studying global diaspora governance. It proposes that existing analyses of diaspora
governance lack explanatory power for a number of reasons. They either fall into the trap of
methodological nationalism, and thus fail to account for the complexities of contemporary
global social and political configurations, or, if they do problematise complexity, they do so
in a way that depoliticises global governance processes. Instead, this paper argues for a
critical realist ontology, which suggests that we think about global diaspora engagement
through the concept of the assemblage. Assemblages, this paper argues, allow us to consider
global diaspora engagement as complex relations between human and non-human agents
whose configurations shape the conditions of possibility for action in a particular
circumstance. When paired with Bourdieusian practice theory, the assemblage can also act as
the (de-/reterritorialised) field within which practices are hierarchically ordered, thus
enabling the study of how political struggles unfold inside specific configurations of global
diaspora engagement.
M3 - Article
SN - 2517-6226
JO - The SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research
JF - The SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research
ER -