Dias-para: neighbourhood, memory and the city

Home-city geographies: Urban dwelling and mobility

“…Another approach to exploring the interplay between urban dwelling and mobility has been through a focus on the city itself as ‘an important site of diasporic belonging and attachment’ (Blunt and Bonnerjee, 2013: 236). Jayani Bonnerjee’s (2012) research on Anglo-Indian and Chinese residents in Calcutta, and those who have moved to Toronto and London, highlights the importance of the neighbourhood as a site of home and belonging which is recreated in different locales both at home and in diaspora. Playing on the Bengali word for neighbourhood, para (see also Ghosh, 2014), Bonnerjee uses the term ‘dias- para’ to explore how the idea of neighbourhood ‘is reproduced through close-knit community links and interactions’ and ‘sustained through memories of quotidian life in Calcutta’ (p. 21).…”

“…One way of studying home in its urban context, for example, is to move beyond photographs that focus solely on the domestic interior – and the study of family photography within largely domestic spaces – to take photographs out of windows, of the domestic exterior, and of the wider street, neighbourhood and city within which homes are located (Chambers, 2002). At the same time, the revival of mental mapping as a way of understanding people’s lives within their urban neighbourhoods (Bonnerjee, 2012) can be extended to include urban homes and the ways in which both are shaped by migration and other mobilities (also see Jackson, 2015, who uses mapping exercises to explore home and belonging among homeless people in a day centre in London).…”

“…Our analysis of urban domesticities, domestic urbanism and the home-city geographies that connect them addresses the intersections of urban dwelling and mobility in three key ways. First, building on research that moves beyond a focus on migrant home-making in the city to explore streets, neighbourhoods and the wider city itself as home (Blunt et al, 2012; Bonnerjee, 2012) and arguments about transnational urbanism (Smith, 2001), translocality (Brickell and Datta, 2011) and diaspora cities (Blunt and Bonnerjee, 2013), home-city geographies address broader relationships between dwelling and mobility and the ways in which they intersect urban and domestic scales, unsettling the boundaries between them. Second, our understanding of urban dwelling and mobility is informed by recent work that considers relationships between urban change and the increasing diversification of certain spaces within the city.…”

South Asian cities and diasporas

“…Underpinning our research across this range of cities and communities, we developed the idea of 'diaspora cities' to encompass cities as sites of departure as well as resettlement and to explore the extent to which the city more than the nation and/or 'homeland' is an important site of belonging, identity and attachment for communities living in diaspora. Whilst this research focused on four small minority communities -and is represented by two papers published in this special issue (Bonnerjee 2012, Blunt et al 2012) -such ideas have wider implications beyond our focus on minority communities. Perhaps most importantly, thinking in terms of a diaspora city reveals the ways in which cities are already diasporic, shaped by multiple migrations that unsettle ideas about ethnicity, origin and a nation as 'homeland'.…”

Home, city and diaspora: Anglo–Indian and Chinese attachments to Calcutta

“…Building on such research, in this article we develop the idea of 'diaspora cities' to explore the significance to many people living in diaspora of the city as home rather than of the nation as 'homeland'. We stress the importance of migration and diaspora in the cities of both departure and resettlement in an attempt to contribute a distinctively diasporic focus to broader work on comparative urbanism (Blunt et al 2012a(Blunt et al , 2012bBonnerjee 2012;Lahiri 2010Lahiri , 2011. 1 Unlike research that explores diasporic homes in relation to domestic homemaking and/or the nation as home or 'homeland' (Al-Ali and Koser 2002; Levin and Fincher 2010;Wiles 2008), we consider memories, ideas and practices that revolve around the city as home in 'diaspora space' (Brah 1996).…”