Fewer Stateless Diasporas

We have seen that some currently existing diasporas arose in antiquity or during the Middle Ages and despite enormous hardships have survived until today – those are the historical diasporas. The diasporas that arose much later, from the seventeenth century onward, many of which resulted from the great waves of migration that took place from the middle of the nineteenth century to World War II – those are the modern diasporas. Finally, all other diasporas either have been formed recently (i.e., since World War II) or are still in various stages of evolution – those are the incipient diasporas.

In Chapters 1 and 3 a further distinction was proposed: that between state-linked diasporas and stateless diasporas. It should be noted that although there are obvious differences between those two categories, most diasporas in both categories are similar in their attachments to their ethno-national identities and to their homelands and in regard to the problems they face in host countries. During certain periods in their histories, some diasporas were not connected to sovereign states, so at certain times those were stateless diasporas. For example, during long periods the Jews, Greeks, and Armenians (historical diasporas) and the African-Americans and Poles (modern diasporas) each had no sovereign national state in the territory they regarded as their homeland. Also, the Gypsies have no clearly defined homeland, and they have never had a state of their own.