Open AccessOf Hubs and Hinterlands: Cyprus as an Insular Space of Overlapping Diasporas
Author(s) -
Janine Teerling,
Russell King
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
island studies journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.2
H-Index - 21
ISSN - 1715-2593
DOI - 10.24043/isj.261
Subject(s) - emigration , turkish , immigration , geography , settlement (finance) , diaspora , metaphor , colonialism , population , ethnology , space (punctuation) , genealogy , ethnic group , economic geography , history , sociology , archaeology , anthropology , demography , gender studies , linguistics , philosophy , world wide web , computer science , payment
This paper uses the metaphor of diasporic hubs and hinterlands to document and analyse the various diasporic formations that overlap and encounter each other on the divided island of Cyprus. After a review of the various ways that islands interface with migration processes and some essential historical and statistical background on Cyprus and its population, the paper considers a number of migrations/diasporas that are based on or affect the island. They include the emigration from the diasporic hub of Cyprus during the 1950s-1970s; return migration, both of the original emigrants and their descendants; the British military/colonial settlement of Cyprus; retirees and ‘lifestyle migrants’; and various categories of recent immigrants, for whom Cyprus is a diasporic hinterland. We draw both similarities and differences between migratory dynamics in the northern, Turkish Cypriot part of the island and the southern, Greek Cypriot part. In the final part of the paper we describe recent fieldwork on various spaces of inter-diasporic encounter in Cyprus.