Diasporic Nationalism, Citizenship, and Post-War Reconstruction

Abstract

While ties between Cambodian diasporas and Cambodia have been significant and enduring over the decades of conflict, the political changes engendered by the internationally endorsed elections of 1993 have transformed the scope and characteristics of the transnational traffic. Shaped by complex ideological, class, gender, and generational dynamics, Cambodian diasporas’ re-engagement with the ancestral homeland has since acquired a multidimensionality that extends beyond mere monetary remittance. Spanning both private and public spheres, from national to household levels, these transnational encounters necessarily dislodge the narrow analytic focus and assumptions that accompany much of the discourse of transnationalism, and interrogate critical issues of nationalism, citizenship, and belonging.