Diaspora Online: Identity Politics and Romanian Migrants

After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, millions of Romanians emigrated in search of work and new experiences; they became engaged in an interrogation of what it meant to be Romanian in a united Europe and the globalized world. Their thoughts, feelings and hopes soon began to populate the virtual world of digital and mobile technologies. This book chronicles the online cultural and political expressions of the Romanian diaspora using websites based in Europe and North America. Through online exchanges, Romanians perform new types of citizenship, articulated from the margins of the political field. The politicization of their diasporic condition is manifested through written and public protests against discriminatory work legislation, mobilization, lobbying, cultural promotion and setting up associations and political parties that are proof of the gradual institutionalization of informal communications. Online discourse analysis, supplemented by interviews with migrants, poets and politicians involved in the process of defining new diasporic identities, provide the basis of this book, which defines the new cultural and political practices of the Romanian diaspora. Diaspora Online had an official launch at the Romanian Cultural Institute in London on 21 October 2013. The event opened a new partnership between ICR and Goldsmiths’ Centre for the Study of the Balkans that encourages creative research and significant thinking relevant to the study of Romanian topics and the Balkans. The same day, the Romanian daily broadsheet Cotidianul published an article about the book (http://www.cotidianul.ro/literatura-romana-la-londra-si-poznan-224869/). I was interviewed by Radio România Cultural (the Romanian equivalent of Radio 4). The ten-minute interview about the relationship between disaporic culture and national culture was broadcast on 6 November 2013. On 5 December, the book was presented in ActualITAtea Magazin, an Italian language online publication of the Romanian diaspora in Italy. On 6 December, the president of the Romanian Party in Italy talked about the book on Romit TV and discussed the importance of political action on the part of disaporic groups.