Diaspora Meaning: Scattered Peoples and Their Homelands

Diaspora meaning, sense by sense

1. A scattered population. People who share an origin but now live across many countries: the Lebanese diaspora in West Africa and South America.
2. The process of scattering. The movement of a people away from their homeland: centuries of diaspora.
3. The Jewish Diaspora. Usually capitalized, this refers to Jewish communities living outside the Land of Israel, a dispersal that historians trace back to the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BCE.
4. The places themselves. Sometimes the word means the countries or regions where such communities live: artists in the diaspora.

A diaspora means more than scattered migrants. The word usually suggests a shared memory of a homeland, and some ongoing connection to it through language, food, faith, family or politics.

A word about sowing seed

The Greek source is diaspora, "a scattering", from diaspeirein: dia (across, in every direction) plus speirein (to sow or scatter). The picture is of seeds thrown across a field. The same root appears in spore.

The Greek word appears in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, in Deuteronomy 28:25, about the scattering of the people. English records show it from the early nineteenth century, first for a dispersed Protestant community and from the later nineteenth century for the Jewish dispersion. In the twentieth century it widened to cover many peoples.

Examples of how the word is used

• The city's Ethiopian diaspora gathers every year for a festival of food and music.
• Remittances from the diaspora make up a large share of some countries' income.
• She writes novels about growing up in the diaspora, caught between two languages.
• The election allowed citizens in the diaspora to vote from abroad for the first time.
• Historians describe the forced movement of Africans across the Atlantic as the root of the African diaspora in the Americas.

Diaspora, immigrant, expatriate and exile

A single person is not "a diaspora". You would say a member of the diaspora or someone from the diaspora.

How scholars and governments use it

Researchers disagree on how wide the word should stretch. Some use it strictly, for peoples dispersed by force or disaster who keep a strong collective memory and hope of return. Others apply it to almost any migrant community that keeps ties to its origin, including people who left for work or study. Both uses are common, so pay attention to context.

Many governments have offices or programs for their diasporas, aimed at investment, culture and voting rights abroad. India, for instance, uses legal categories such as Non-Resident Indian and Overseas Citizen of India for parts of its large global diaspora. Related ideas include ethnicity, culture and indigenous identity.

Usage tips and common slips

• Pronunciation. Say dy-AS-puh-ruh; the loud part is AS. A less common variant starts with "dee".
• Capital letter. Capitalize it for the Jewish Diaspora in historical writing; lowercase is normal for other groups.
• Plural. Write diasporas when you mean several different groups.
• Adjective. Diasporic describes things linked to a diaspora: diasporic literature, diasporic identity.
• Not just any trip abroad. Tourists or short-term students are not usually described this way.

Where you meet the term

News about migration, remittances and overseas voting uses it constantly. University courses in history, sociology and literature study diaspora communities and their writing. Community groups, festivals, food writing and music scenes describe themselves through it. For more terms about society and belonging, browse the society and government word list and the page on community.