List of diasporas

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History provides us with many examples of notable diasporas.

Note: the list below is not definitive, and includes groups that have not been given significant historical attention. Whether the migration of some of the groups listed fulfills the conditions required to be considered a diaspora may be open for debate.

Eurominority.eu map (the EU) Peoples of the World, includes some diasporas and underrepresented/ stateless ethnic groups - [1]

Contents: Top · 0–9 · A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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  • Danish people a.k.a. Danes who originate in the small Nordic country of Denmark. They have historically migrated all over Europe, and about a million Danish emigrants in the last two centuries to all the world's six continents. An example of Danish culture overseas is in Solvang, California in the USA.[citation needed]
  • Dutch diaspora - the Dutch originally came from the Low Countries and northern France. Millions of Dutch descendants live in the United States (Dutch American), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, India (Sri Lanka), Africa (the Congo when it was the Belgian Congo until 1960), the Caribbean (Aruba and Netherlands Antilles which is officially Dutch territory), and South America (Suriname formerly was Dutch until independence in 1975), but Dutch descendants are found in Brazil and Argentina. The four million white (European) Afrikaaners of South Africa are descendants of Dutch, French Huguenot and German settlers brought over to the colonial Dutch East India company in the 16th century (see South African diaspora).
    • Flemings, a subgroup of Dutch/Low German speaking people of the country of Belgium, about 50-55% of the country's population speaks Flemish, one of Belgium's two major and three official languages. Flemings migrated to all the six continents of the world, sometimes in droves to nearby countries of France and the Netherlands, other European nations of the UK, Germany and Sweden, and they founded new settlements. The Azores, a Portuguese territory was once called the Islas de las Flamandes (the Fleming Islands) in the 16th century. The West Flemish population in the Nord département of France struggle to preserve their endangered language.
    • Frisians, an ethnic group related to the Dutch live in the Frieslands on the northern half of the Netherlands, along with northwestern Germany and southernmost Denmark. The Frisians have their own language, history and customs. Frisians are thought to date back 5,000 years, migrated to the Rhine delta by the North Sea and were successful in draining out the marshes to make it inhabitable to establish cities and farmland. Frisians also migrated worldwide, a number of them were employed in the oceanic fishing markets.
  • Dominican people from the Dominican Republic formed a Dominician diaspora. Today, over a million Dominicans live in the USA (See Dominican American), followed by Canada, Latin America (see Dominican Argentine), Spain and elsewhere. Dominicans lived outside the country in over a century (since 1900) but esp. since the 1960s, Dominicans leave the country in search of available work and employment opportunities. Dominican immigration to Puerto Rico beginning in 1990 became very high in numbers per ratio to Puerto Rico's population, including illegal entries on dangerous rafts through the Mona Passage between the two islands (see Hispaniola).

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  • Ecuadorian diaspora - People from Ecuador who reside in countries across the Americas (i.e. the U.S., see Ecuadorian Americans, also in Canada, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil), Europe (esp. Spain and Italy, with some in France and elsewhere), and smaller numbers in Japan and Australia.
  • Egyptian Copts, members of the Coptic Christian Church based in Egypt for about 2,000 years. Copts are thought to be connected with cultures and peoples of Ancient Egypt, then the religion was displaced by the arrival of Islam 1,400 yrs. ago. About 3 million Coptic Christians live around the world, the largest numbers are in North America and Australia; and Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway and Sweden in Europe.
  • Eritrea - Around half a million of the total five million Eritreans fled the country during the thirty year Eritrean War of Independence. They have formed communities all over the western world (i.e. USA in Washington D.C., and Los Angeles; and Europe: Sweden, Germany and Italy). There are more than half a million Eritreans in refugee camps (most in Sudan).
  • Estonians - When Estonia was invaded by the Soviet Army in 1944, large numbers of Estonians fled their homeland on ships or smaller boats over the Baltic Sea. Many refugees who survived the risky sea voyage to Sweden or Germany later moved from there to Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States or Australia. Also, with the June deportation of 1941 and March deportation of 1949, Soviet Union forcibly transferred tens of thousands of Estonians to Siberia. Some of these refugees and their descendants returned to Estonia after the nation regained its independence in 1991.

[edit] F

"Speak French, Be Clean" written across the wall of a Southern French school, a byproduct of the French Government policy to eradicate Occitan and all regional languages in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
    • Occitans are persons from Southern France, some are known to speak the Occitan language or Langue D'Oc for thousands of years, but in general decline from pressures by the French Republican government since the early 19th century. Occitans were often felt denied the right of their cultural heritage and some relocated out of France in quiet protest to other countries, esp. French-speaking Canada and other parts of La Francophonie (French Empire and French-speaking areas of Europe). Also there have been Occitan-speaking settlers in Pigüé, Argentina; sporadically Mexico and Chile; and even into the USA in Valdese, North Carolina. Occitania is a regional-cultural movement that developed since the 1970s throughout the southern half of France with adjacent parts of Switzerland, Italy and Spain.[citation needed]

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  • Jassic (or Yassic) people, a small ethnic group of peoples that resided in enclaves in Hungary, Romania, throughout Russia and the Ukraine. The Jassic are ethnologically related to the Ossetians of the Northern Caucasus range, along with distant Iranian and Turkic peoples in their linguistic similarities between the Iranian language and somewhat the Turkish language. Their ancestral origin may have been of North Caucasian origins, perhaps mixed with peoples from Persia or Iran, and more precisely, the steppes of Central Asia about 3,000 years ago when migratory patterns of Indo-European and later Uralic-Altaic peoples arrived in Eastern Europe. The Jassic people are minuscule in number, dwindled down by each generation, and they were assimilated into the Hungarian population and Slavic majorities they lived among with. Yassic people are thought to forefathered Georgians and ancient peoples of the Middle East such as the Kassites whom later became Sumerians, Akkadians or Babylonians in ancient Mesopotamia of present-day Iraq.[citation needed]
  • Jaffnese/Ceylonese Diaspora - refers to the diaspora of Sri Lankan Tamils, especially those post-1983 due to the civil conflict in Sri Lanka. This has created huge Tamil communities in countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and other European countries. In many ways, the Jaffnese Diaspora is compared to the Jewish Diaspora, both historically, socially and economically. It is a subset of the greater Tamil Diaspora.
  • Jamaican diaspora - An estimated 3 million Jamaicans live outside the island country of Jamaica, an English-speaking majority African descendant country in the Caribbean. The main destinations for Jamaican immigration in the 20th century are the U.S., Great Britain and Canada. But, Jamaican immigration across the Caribbean, to Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, and even Africa are well noted. Jamaicans living aboard, such as Bob Marley introduced the music form of reggae to the international music market in the 1970s.[citation needed]
  • Japanese diaspora - Brazil (see Japanese Brazilian), the United States (see Japanese Americans), Canada (See Japanese Canadian) and the Philippines (see Japanese Filipinos), as well sizable communities in Peru (see Japanese Peruvian), Argentina (see Asian Argentine), Chile and Ecuador, and smaller numbers of Japanese in Australia, New Zealand, Cuba and Mexico are the countries with the highest numbers of Japanese people outside Japan. The largest community of ethnic Japanese is in Hawaii where they make up a quarter of the state's population. However, there are smaller Japanese communities around the world that developed in the late 20th century such as throughout western Europe (esp. the Japanese expatriate colony in Dusseldorf, Germany), eastern Russia and South Africa. The Japanese population used to have nicknames to indicate generational levels: "Issei"-foreign born parents, next is "Nisei"-1st generation born outside Japan or children, and "Sansei"-2nd generation born outside Japan or grandchildren.
    • Okinawans - An Asian people closely related to the Japanese in terms of culture and language, from the island of Okinawa, politically part of Japan since 1878. After WWII, the U.S. briefly ruled Okinawa from 1945 to its return to Japanese rule in 1972. Since then, tens of thousands of Okinawans settled in the U.S. and in the 1960s, massive settlement programs of Okinawan farmers into Latin America, the majority in Brazil and Peru.
  • Jewish diaspora - in its historical use, refers to the period between the Roman invasion and subsequent occupation of Land of Israel beginning AD 70, to the establishment of Israel in 1948. In modern use, the 'Diaspora' refers to Jews living outside of the Jewish state of Israel today. Not all Jews, though, regard themselves as part of a diaspora community.

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  • Khmer people - The main ethnic group of Cambodia have historically emigrated in the 18th, 19th and esp. 20th centuries. The largest Cambodian communities are in the USA, Canada, France, Thailand, Vietnam, China (with Hong Kong), Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain and Arabia (i.e. the U.A.E).[citation needed]
  • Korean diaspora - a people from the Korean peninsula located between China and Japan. The first wave of Korean diaspora was during the Japanese colonial occupation (1910–1945), the peace treaty division of the Korean peninsula into two republics, the Korean War (1950–53) produced a wave of millions of war refugees who fled to the United States, Canada, China, Japan, the Philippines, South Vietnam until 1975, and the USSR, now Russia. Today, Korea remains a politically divided geographic unit. South Korea was under military rule 1953-1987, now a civilian democracy, but economic problems and a sense for adventure made over 500,000 South Koreans emigrate to the United States and Canada, and 100,000 more to Europe, Australia and South America (i.e. Brazil and Argentina). North Korea remains under an isolationist military state under Communism since 1948, while millions of political refugees fled to nearby China for freedom in the late 20th century.
  • Kosovan diaspora - Ethnic Albanian peoples from Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia and Serbia in the 1990s.
  • Kurdish diaspora - Kurdish diaspora is the Kurdish populations found in regions outside their ancestral homeland Kurdistan. The United Nations declared the Kurds the largest ethnic nationality (over 20 million) without a country in the world, followed up by Palestinians of the Middle East.

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  • Lebanese diaspora - An estimated 18 million Lebanese live worldwide. Over half of the country's population consists of Christians (i.e. Maronites) and the rest are Muslims. Lebanese are found in over 150 countries, the largest known Lebanese community is in the U.S. followed by Canada; and Australia, where Lebanese immigration has occurred in large numbers since the 1960s. Although there are millions of Lebanese descendants in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America, the Lebanese are also present in much of the continental span of Africa.[citation needed]
  • Lithuanian diaspora - the majority of post-WWII Lithuanians live in North America (Canada and the United States) and across Europe (France, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Netherlands and England), but are scattered across Russia and the former USSR, and smaller numbers in Mexico and Brazil. The Lithuanians and their ethnological kin, the Latvians may be the oldest Indo-European speaking peoples known and may resided in the Baltic states for 5,000 years. Between 1880 and 1910, over 40,000 Lithuanian Jews immigrated to South Africa to avoid persecuation. To date around 80% of the 75,000 Jews in South Africa (around 60,000) are of Lithuanian descent.[1]
  • Latvian diaspora - the majority of Latvians whom left Latvia in WWII reside in North America (the US and Canada), across Europe mainly in Eastern countries and the former USSR with just as many in Western Europe and Scandinavian nations, and the rest in former Latvian lands in the Baltic states (Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Belarus). The most Russified of the three Baltic states, Latvia struggles with the issue of national identity after one million ethnic Russians and other Russian speaking people settled there since 1940.
    • Latgalians, a predominantly Catholic people in eastern Latvia in the region of Latgale and have a close history with Lithuania, due to differences in church denomination between them and Latvians whom are a majority Lutheran along with Estonians not ethnically related to Latvians and Lithuanians.

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  • Macedonian diaspora - formed from Macedonian refugees and economic migrants from Macedonia, to the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, Italy, Greece, and many other European Union states. There are approximately 2,500,000 Macedonians worldwide, with more than a third living outside the Republic of Macedonia.
  • Maghrebi diaspora - consists of people from the North African countries, notably Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. The largest Maghrebi community outside of North Africa is in France, where it is estimated that North Africans make up the majority of the country's Muslim population. [2]
    • Algerian-French residents make up an estimated 5 to 8 percent of the ethnic makeup of France's population, despite the French government does not keep data records on race and ethnicity. Algerians resided in France for over 150 years as a result of the French colonial period in Algeria from 1830 to 1962, when the seven year Algerian War brought independence. The largest North African French communities are in Marseille, Paris and Lille.
    • Moroccans are found throughout the world, mainly in the Maghreb nations of North Africa, Egypt and the Middle East (a large Jewish colony in Israel) and expatriate communities in Europe (i.e. the largest being in France, followed by Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Portugal, Great Britain and Ireland) developed by Moroccan immigration since the 1950s.
    • Tunisians in Europe, the largest number of Tunisian expats live in France and Italy (former colonial rulers), Egypt, Israel, Turkey and throughout the European Union.
  • Maltese diaspora: established mainly in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and America. Large communities existed in Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt but were mostly dispersed by the mid-20th century when these countries acquired independence. Since Malta's membership of the EU in 2004, new communities were established such as the one in Belgium.
  • Mexican Americans (Mexican diaspora)- over 20 million people of Mexican ancestry live in the United States, ranging from recent immigrants since the 1970s to long-established Americans of Spanish or Mexican descent. The majority of Mexican Americans live especially in the American Southwest, which borders with Mexico, an area that belonged to Mexico from 1821-1848. They were fundamental to development in the states of California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico in the 20th century. Los Angeles is said to be the second largest Mexican city (home to one to two million alone), while the populace of San Antonio is over half of Mexican descent. Also known by other ethnic self-titles, like Chicanos, La Raza, Tejanos, Hispanos and Californios, however are officially called Hispanics and Latinos in terms of ethnic/cultural origins, but Mexican Americans had a large mestizo or mixed European/Native American heritage.
  • Moldovan diaspora - A Romanian province was divided many times in its history, they are of ethnically Romanian origin. A diaspora indicating most of the Moldovans who have moved out of Moldova. Most found their homes in the Soviet Union and the Baltics. There is also a diaspora in Western European countries such as Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and the Netherlands.
  • Moravian Church - has a nickname "the Moravian Diaspora"[citation needed] named from a religious, not ethnic' identity, having been founded in the province of Moravia, now in the Czech Republic. During the 16th and 17th centuries, religious persecution drove the majority of church members to other countries, and by the late 18th and 19th centuries, the church had managed to grow, thrive and survive. There are hundreds of thousands of Moravian church members in small communities in Europe (the Netherlands), the Americas (the United States), Africa (South Africa), east Asia (South Korea), the Indian subcontinent (India), and Oceania (Australia). However, the vast majority of these would consider themselves natives of the country where they live - the nickname (presumably) being of only historic interest.
  • Mormons, a Christian religious group whose official name is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, as well smaller other churches based on Mormonism. Just under 50 percent of all Mormons live in the United States, while about three-fourths of the population of Utah are Mormon and form large minorities in 8 other Western U.S. states, such as California is said to have the most LDS church members by population. Mormonism began as a small following of Christians who followed the teachings of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement in the early 19th century. The following were often forced to migrate and lived in the states of New York, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri by 1840. The Mormons were expelled by mob violence (Joseph Smith was killed) and persecution by neighbors in the 1840s and their new leader Brigham Young took the Mormons throughout the Great Plains and Rockies to settle the Salt Lake Valley, then a part of Mexico but soon to become part of the U.S., in 1847. Mormons play a fundamental role in the development of Utah and most other Western states, with Utah becoming a state in 1896. Today, an estimated 13 million Mormons are found around the world, after missionary activity and conversion programs extended the L.D.S. and other Mormon-based churches worldwide, the largest concentrations of Mormons other than the U.S. are Mexico, Canada, South America, the South Pacific (esp. in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga), Scandinavia, Britain and East Asia, but the fastest growth in Mormonism in the late 20th century was in Africa, India and Eastern Europe.
  • Montenegrins, a diaspora of South Slavs in the country of Montenegro whom had a 650 year tradition of independence and autonomy. They were a former republic of pre-1991 Yugoslavia and later a co-republic with Serbia until Montenegro declared independence in 2006. Over 1.3 million Montenegrins live in the Balkans, while half a million more are in Western Europe, 600,000 live in the USA and another 1 million around the world (i.e. Canada, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Australia).
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscogee_(Creek)#Muscogee_diaspora_.281814.29 Muscogee Diaspora, part of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma USA (see Urban Indians).

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The Five congressional districts in Oklahoma. The Map shows districts 1 and 2 with parts of 3 4 and 5 are former Indian Territory from 1830 to 1907. The largest American Indian tribal groups live there in the eastern half of the state, most notably the Cherokee, Choctaw and Creek Indian Nations, whose populations mostly live outside of them.
  • Okies from the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The state has a long history of settlement, emigration and mass dispersal of a subculture across the USA and elsewhere in the world, due to economic conditions and conflicts with the U.S. government. Many happen to be Native Americans yet most of the population is White American and a sizable minority are African American. Oklahoma was formerly reserved for Native Americans dislocated by white Euro-American settlement and the Indian Wars in the 19th century, mostly in the Great Plains of the United States and Western United States regions. See also Texans of Texas, Crackers of Florida and Southeastern United States where the main origin of Oklahomans came from.[citation needed]
  • Oromo and Ethiopian peoples of Ethiopia, an estimated 30-50 million who have gone by different ethnological names like "Abysinnians", "Erthyreneans" and "Amharics". Ethiopia's population is highly diverse. Most of its people speak a Semitic or Cushitic language. The Oromo, Amhara, and Tigreans make up more than 3/4s of the population, but there are more than 80 different ethnic groups within Ethiopia. Some of these have as few as 10,000 members. They live across the continent of Africa, while a mass movement of Ethiopian immigrants during the 20th century into the Middle East (one major area of choice is Israel), Europe, South Asia, East Asia, Australia, North America (esp. the U.S. and Canada), and Latin America has created a global Oromo-Ethiopian diaspora.

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  • Ukrainian diaspora, represented by Ukrainians who left their homeland in several waves of emigration, settling mainly in the Americas (United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina), but also Australia, east Asia (China) and across Europe. Also includes the tens and millions of Ukrainians who migrated from Ukraine to other parts of the former Soviet Union (mainly Russian Federation) during the Soviet time. Ukrainians in the Middle East should be noted and the large-scale Ukrainian with Russian Jewish emigration to Israel.[citation needed]
    • Ruthenians and Carpathians, self-titles for Slavic peoples from the small region of Ruthenia, encompasses easternmost Slovakia, southeast parts of Poland, northern edges of Hungary and westernmost Ukraine, had preserved a unique ethnocultural identity, but lacked an independent country of their own for almost a millennia. In the late 19th century and again between World Wars I and II, over a million Ruthenians fled their homeland and settled across Western Europe (France, Germany and Austria), North America (the U.S. and Canada) and the USSR (Russia), but lesser numbers settled in East Asia (China), the Middle East (Turkey), South America (Brazil) and Australia in the late 20th century.

[edit] V

  • The Venezuelan diaspora - People from Venezuela who live outside of their territory: Mainly in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Spain and Italy. Most of them arrived to escape from the military dictatorship of the 1950s and the political repressions in the 1960s. Recently, there's been a growing number of Venezuelans in Canada almost all of them working for the Oil industry after the 2002 strike. See also Venezuelan American. Since the arrival of President Hugo Chávez, a significative growing number of young Venezuelans are feeling their country in search of better living standards and work opportunities.

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  • Welsh diaspora - The Welsh (or in the Welsh language - Cymry) are a Celtic people from Wales one of the four countries of the United Kingdom who manage to preserve their Celtic heritage after a millennia of English and then British rule. An estimated 5 million people of Welsh ancestry live globally in areas formerly part of the British Empire (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and lesser numbers in Latin America) and about 2 million Americans are of Welsh descent. In the 19th century, over 500,000 Welsh miners migrated out of Wales throughout the British Empire, western Europe, the Americas (the U.S. such as Jackson County, Ohio was nicknamed Little Wales) and South Africa for mining jobs, but others came as shepherds, factory workers and fishermen. The Welsh fought hard to preserve their culture, such as the revived Welsh language and their sense of identity in face of forced assimilation to the Anglo-British fabric. In the late 19th century, a small but solid group of Welsh people settled in Patagonia, creating the Welsh community known as Y Wladfa that survived to this day in the Argentinan provinces of Chubut and Santa Cruz. Many there are bilingual in Spanish and Welsh.
  • Western Sahara the people on the exile of Mali, France, Spain, Algeria (mainly Tinduf), Mauritania, Niger, Italy and Senegal. And on the Free Zone of the Saharaui Republic.
  • West Philadelphia was a recent scene of the Urban Indian culture, especially of the Lenni-Lenape or Delaware Indian tribe. Their community of University City, Philadelphia is called "Lenapehoking" for the indigenous name for the region. Also the Iroquois Confederacy formed communities there and in Boston, New York City, Washington DC and Cleveland by the BIA relocation program during the mid-20th century. Although miniscule in number, many of them (their moniker the "Mohawks") arrived as skyscraper construction workers.[citation needed]
Sticker from the American Indian activist community of West Philadelphia in Philadelphia PA USA.

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[edit] Various

  • Various Native Americans of the United States have diaspora legends, stories and identity, but this applies only after contact with Europeans and removal of entire tribal peoples by post-colonial white European governments from the 16th to 19th centuries.
  • Various ethnic minorities from areas under Russian and Soviet control following the Russian Revolution, continuing through the mass forced-resettlements under Stalin.
  • Various groups fled in large numbers from areas under Axis control during World War II, or after the border changes following the war, and formed their own diasporas. Only a few larger sized ethnic groups and nationalities were able to restore autonomy after the fall of Communism and the disbanding of the Soviet Union (1990–91).

[edit] References

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