Diasporas In Modern Societies By William Safran An Analysis

William Safran in his essay Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return (1991) identifies six characteristics that feature the categorizing of diasporic communities. The first feature, as he mentions, is the ‘dispersal from center to periphery’, a creation of a collective memory, non-belonging to or indeed non-acceptance by the host country, a strong wish to return to the ideal homeland, a belief that the homeland will be peaceful, secure and prosperous and lastly a continuous relationship with the home country and its people (84).The sense of non-belonging can really be debated if we take into account the Arab American situation in the united states today. The feeling of non-belonging is clearly depicted in the works of some of the early Arab American writers, and came into a full picture immediately after 9/11 attacks.
Safran has explained this by saying that some diasporas stuck in the host culture as there is no homeland to return to, and even if a homeland may exist, it is not a welcoming place with which they can identify politically, ideologically, or socially or because it would be too inconvenient and disruptive, if not traumatic, to leave the diaspora(91). In the meantime, Safran asserts that the myth of return serves to solidify ethnic consciousness and solidarity when religion can no longer do so, when the cohesiveness of the local community is loosened, and when the family is threatened with disintegration