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Environmental or Political Activities and the Local Conceptualization of the Concept of Diaspora

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of 2014, Macedonians who had migrated to Italy started to organize a protest against construction projects for hydro power plants in western Macedonia, the home region of the Torbeši, or Macedonian-speaking Muslims. At that time, the Torbeši did not found associations or start political activities; the protests, first of all, stressed the ecological dimension. Beyond this, they fought for more democracy and transnational political participation. At the same time, these migrants began to describe themselves as the “diaspora”, although they conceptualized this term locally and did not link themselves with the Macedonian diaspora living mostly in the USA, Canada, and Australia. In this paper, I will analyse this local conceptualization of the concept of diaspora in the particular context of environmental activities, as well as narratives and imaginaries of relations to the home region, the Macedonian state and its institutions.

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