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Accepted Paper:
Diasporic Futures: Cypriot Diaspora, Temporality, and the Politics of Hope
Evi Chatzipanagiotidou
(Queen's University Belfast)
This paper traces the transnational connections of the Greek Cypriot diaspora with a focus on peace politics seeking reconciliation between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Although imagined as anchored in the past, diasporas are also made by their orientations towards the future and a politics of hope.
Paper long abstract:
This paper traces the transnational connections of the Greek Cypriot diaspora between the UK and Cyprus with a focus on peace politics that emphasise the need for reconciliation between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. It applies a temporal framework and proposes that diasporas and transnationalism –often analysed through an emphasis on space– have to be understood through an investigation of time. It argues that diasporas do not just exist, but are made, reorganised or enervated in and by time, aggregating at particular historical points and dissipating at others. Moreover, it illustrates that, although imagined as anchored in the past, diasporas are also made by their orientations towards the future and a politics of hope. Based on long-term anthropological research in Cyprus, the UK, and online, the presentation focuses on the Greek Cypriot diaspora as an epitomising case study of these processes. Connected to a divided island, British Cypriots have participated in the reproduction of conflict and partition but have also been active agents of peace-building and reconciliation. Focusing on the latter, I ask how the future mobilises the Cypriot diaspora and how the politics of hope shape transnational activity in the present into a conducive space for the articulation of counter-nationalist narratives and alternative visions of a ‘united’ future.