Multiple Homes and Parallel Civil Societies: Refugee Diasporas and Transnationalism‪.‬

Asylum seekers and refugees have been key players in the making of diasporas and transnational communities. The human rights approach to asylum seekers and refugees which appeared to be the hall mark of western states during the cold war era has disappeared. This "disappearance" has been clearly marked particularly in the aftermath of 9/11. Asylum is now increasingly perceived through the lens of migration and security issues. A pervasive national security oriented discourse advances the sacrifice of fundamental rights and freedoms not only for local populations but very systematically and effectively for refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants. Border controls, confinement and encampment of refugees, interdiction policies, "destitution as a threat to asylum seekers" and deportation are all mechanisms by which North America and "Fortress Europe", steadfastly attempt to prevent refugees and asylum seekers from reaching their shores. These special issues of Refuge, the current one and the following one, dealing with refugee diasporas and transnationalism, are being published in this context. (1) Transnationalism as a phenomenon incorporates the economic, cultural and political practices of migrants, including refugees, who traverse several national borders. The terms diaspora and transnational have simultaneously become metaphors and categories that include various communities of displaced people, circulating migrants and people in limbo. While theorizing diaspora has a longer history, the "displacement" of the study of diaspora from history to area studies, cultural and literary studies and geography is relatively new. The conflation of studies in diaspora and transnationalism in the past decade has a symbolic representation in the title of a journal: "Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies". While this conflation opens up new and challenging areas for research enquiry, it also creates some conceptual confusion and at times, uncritical interchangeability of diaspora and the transnational in a simplified manner.