wider notions of transnational migration,
resettlement, connection and attachment,
often closely associated with post-colonial
and ‘new ethnicities’ research (seetransna-
tionalism). For Kalra, Kaur and Hutnyk
(2005), there is a broad distinction between
the use of diaspora as a descriptive tool and
mode of categorization (including lists of vari-
ous criteria that characterize diasporas) and
more critical understandings of diaspora as a
contested process. Whilst some accounts iden-
tify different types of diaspora, including vic-
tim, labour, trade, imperial and cultural
diasporas on a global scale (Cohen, 1997),
other studies theorize diaspora and its implica-
tions for understanding space,identity, cul-
tureand the politics ofhybridity(including
Hall, 1990; Kalra, Kaur and Hutnyk, 2005).
Rather than analyse diaspora solely in terms of
‘race’ andethnicity, geographers and others
working across the humanities and social
sciences have explored thegender,classand
sexual spaces of diaspora. Geographers have
also stressed the importance of studying the
grounded politics of diaspora (including
Mitchell, 1997b). Both the conceptual study
of diaspora and the substantive study of differ-
ent diasporas develop critical perspectives
on globalization,neo-liberalism,multi-
culturalismandcosmopolitanism.
Both ideas about diaspora and studies
of particular diasporas are inherently geo-
graphical, revolving around space andplace,
mobilityand locatedness, thenation and
transnationality. The diasporic lives of trans-
national migrants, for example, are often inter-
preted in terms of ‘roots’ and ‘routes’
(Clifford, 1997). Whilst ‘roots’ might imply
an originalhomelandfrom which people have
scattered, and to which they might seek to
return, a focus on ‘routes’ complicates such
ideas by tracing more mobile, transcultural
and deterritorialized geographies of migration
and resettlement. As Paul Gilroy explains, the
spatialities of diaspora represent ‘a historical
and experiential rift between the locations of
residence and the locations of belonging’
(2000b, p. 124). A wide range of research
explores diasporic attachments to homelands
that might be remembered, imagined, lost
or are yet to be achieved, and the political,
economic and cultural materialization of such
attachments through political activism, the
transfer of remittances and diverse cultural
practices. Other research unsettles the idea
that people living in diaspora are bound to a
homeland or nation of origin and identifica-
tion. Avtar Brah, for example, proposes the
notion of ‘diaspora space’ to encompass the
‘intersectionality of diaspora,border, and dis/
location as a point of confluence of economic,
political, cultural andpsychic processes’ (1996,
p. 181). As Brah explains, ‘diaspora space as a
conceptual category is ‘‘inhabited’’ not only by
those who have migrated and their descendants
but equally by those who are constructed and
represented as indigenous. In other words, the
concept ofdiaspora space(as opposed to that of
diaspora) includes the entanglement of geneal-
ogies of dispersion with those of ‘‘staying put’’’
(p. 181). abSuggested reading
Brah (1996); Clifford (1997).difference The concept of ‘difference’ has
become an increasingly prominent concern
ingeography over the past two decades.
Geographers have looked at how socio-spatial
boundaries of inclusion and exclusion are pro-
duced on the basis of categories such asrace,
class,gender,sexualityordisability. Most
agree that these and other such categories are
socially constructed. This is not to say that
differences do not exist or are illusory but,
rather, to point out that the ways in which we
categorize ourselves and others are the result
of social practices. Further, these socially con-
structed differences have very real political
effects. As Audrey Kobayashi (1997, p. 3)
writes, ‘The concept of difference allows the
social creation of categories of people subor-
dinate to a dominant norm, and allows the
continuation of cultural practices that rein-
scribe difference as differential values placed
upon human life.’
In that difference arises from social practice,
it is also spatial. David Harvey (1996) argues
thatspaceandtimework to individuate and
identify people through the production of dif-
ferences along multiple axes. In other words,
geographically inscribed inequalities position
people and groups differently in relation to pol-
itical, cultural, ecological and economic
resources. Spatial practices such assegrega-
tionand thepolicingofborderswork to
enforce and consolidate difference. As David
Delaney(1998)showsinhisworkonrace,land-
scapeandlaw, the complex legal geographies of
propertyand public/private distinctions are
inseparable from the relations ofpowerand
domination that are associated with difference.
This means that some people have more access
torightsin certain spaces than others.
While ideas about difference often work to
delimit hierarchies and inequalities, differenceGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_D Final Proof page 159 1.4.2009 3:15pmDIFFERENCE