Diaspora Assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Diaspora Assignment - Essay Example Croatian people have been dominant in many fields in the Australian society, especially in the sporting arena where they have made such a great impact by comprising the majority players in most Australian football clubs. This paper provides a critical analysis of the Croatian diaspora in Australia, development of media in the Croatian diaspora community in Australia, and examples of how media compares and contrasts to mainstream media on same key issues in the community, among other things. History of the Diaspora The concept of the diaspora grew out of the historic experience of scattering Jews outside their native lands and it implies that a whole community, usually a nation inhabiting a compact territory, underwent a forced dispersion. This concept was made popular in the sociology of migration in the 1990s and the relationship between the scattered communities and the homeland is crucial in defining the diaspora (Raggazi, 2009, p. 1). The homeland for immigrants is a source of id entity, in addition to being their source of values and loyalty; it can be generally understood that every diaspora is a migrant community because of the consciousness of belonging to a common nation and/or a distant homeland and acting upon this consciousness that eventually defines the diaspora. Diasporas are normally connotations of historically enduring strong emotional ties to the homeland, usually concerning some historical injustice that needs redress (Colic-Peisker, 2008, p. 158); the Croatian Diaspora in Australia was in response to the Yugoslav crisis of the 1980s and the war for independence and its aftermaths. The typical feeling of a lost homeland and tragic exile among the immigrants and the need to redress the historic grievances felt by a majority of the Croatian emigres led to the rise of diasporic transnationalism (Colic-Peisker, 2008, p.158). The emigres assumed leadership of Croatian communities outside Croatia and focused on the fight for Croatian independence f rom the communist Yugoslavia, and by 1991 when Croatian independence was confirmed by the failure of communism, Croatian emigres all over the world were known as an intensely politicized diaspora dominated by nationalist leaders. The most vocal part of the Croatian Diaspora in Australia had intensely emotional and political connection to the homeland, and its pronouncement of anti-communism and separationist agenda made it a clear-cut case of long-distance nationalism. The Croatian diasporic nationalism had two peaks: the 1970s after the Croatian Spring, Yugoslav Communist authorities had suppressed a Croatian nationalist movement in 1971, and during the war for Yugoslav succession in 1991–1995, which politically mobilised a large number of Croats in Australia. Development of Media Media development in the Croatian Diaspora in Australia has been stifled by lack of freedom of the press and the successive ongoing media manipulation that seeks to limit the influence of media bot h in the diaspora and in the homeland. In the old Yugoslavia, the Communist government controlled media and the Croatians knew only a limited range of information, and up to date, the Croatian media is not yet free and impartial. For instance, Karolina Vidovic, a Croatian journalist whose programme has been