
In this article by DIASCON Project Member Bruno Lefort, the reproduction of antagonist relationships between diasporic populations is envisioned through an inverted lens.
Contrary to conflict transportation theories, which tend to focus on societal and transnational contexts, the study reintroduces the complexity of people’s daily experiences to propose a more nuanced understanding of what identities and potential tensions between them can actually emerge in everyday situations.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among young people of the Lebanese diasporas in Montreal, it becomes possible to shed light on the ways people at the same time adhere, transform, and take their distance from certain conceptions of their identity to carve out a place for themselves in the society where they live. Following this idea, the article demonstrates that life trajectories as well as social hierarchies and exclusion practices manifested in everyday encounters play a critical role to grasp how young diasporans make sense of identity categories, inspiring them to continuously renegotiate and reinvent what being Lebanese in Montreal can mean in their existence.
[The full article is available here]