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1. 
   pohnpei397 Teacher
   Community / Jr. College

   eNotes Editor

   Diaspora -- the people from a country who have left that country and spread out in the outside world.  Ex: Jewish diaspora from Israel to Europe and America.

   Expatriate -- someone from one country living in another

   Immigrant -- term for a person in a given country who has moved to that country from another country.

   Assimilation -- the process of bringing non-native people into a country's native culture -- making the newcomers be like the natives.

   Identity -- the way in which people identify themselves with one country or ethnic group or another.

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   Posted by pohnpei397 on Tuesday November 3, 2009 at 6:22 AM
   
   

2. 
   jk180 Teacher
   College - Senior

   eNotes Editor

   These are pretty much standard terms in postcolonial theory and some of these terms have very specific meanings in that field of theory. I would encourage you to look for specific resources on postcolonialism for fuller definitions.

   Diaspora, for example, is often used to talk about the mass migration (most often completely involuntary, in the form of chattel slavery) of Africans across the Pacific Ocean.

   Similarly, expatriate often means more than simply someone who lives in a country that she or he wasn't born in; the term is often used for someone who has moved out of a sense of dissatisfaction or protest and who maintains uneasy, conflicted ties to the home country.

   Hybridity is one of my favorite terms because it captures so well the sense of what happens when very different cultures meet and people grow up in the overlapping spaces (such as is especially easy to see in border towns or in multi-generational immigrant families). "Hybrid" was intially a term in biology, I believe, but has expanded its meaning to talk about developments in culture.

   Sources:

   http://www.enotes.com/postcolonialism

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   Posted by jk180 on Tuesday November 3, 2009 at 8:29 AM
   
   

3. 
   krishna-agrawala Teacher
   Graduate School

   eNotes Editor

   The term diaspora originally referred to scattering of the Jews after their captivity in Babylon. However now this term is used to refer to people from a particular nation, or a major group who have migrated to different places. For example, people from India now living in other countries may be described as Indian diaspora. At the same time people originally belonging to a city in India, for example, Lucknow, and living in different parts of India and outside it may be called Lucknow diaspora.

   Immigrants refers to people who come to live in a foreign country or a region. While diaspora is collective term for people from same origin. The term immigrant is used collectively for all those come to live in a common destination country or region. Like all the people who come and settle in USA from other countries constitute immigrant population of USA.

   Strictly speaking, expatriate means a person who has left his country, or has been forced to do so. However this rem is now more commonly used to refer to people posted on jobs in a foreign countries. This is not just employment of person of foreign origin, but actually posting person from one country to work in another country. For example, Toyota plants in USA employ mostly USA citizens. But they may also post some people from their Japanese units to work in USA. Unlike immigrants, expatriates do not come to live in the host country for ever. They are supposed to live there as long as the posting lasts and then return to home country, or may be posted as expatriate in some other country.

   Nationality is more of a legal concept. It refers to the status of being a citizen or national of a country. A person may or may not live in the same country of which he or she is a citizen. Frequently, diaspora or immigrants may acquire the citizenship of the host country, leading to change in their nationality, but their status in terms of being diaspora or immigrant does not change. Expatriates are not expected to acquire nationality of country they work in as expatriate. But I suppose if one did change nationality, he or she would no longer remain an expatriate.

   Assimilation in context of the terms we have been discussing would mean, adopting ways, culture and other attributes of a different nation, region or a group so that they don't stand out as different from them. The term identity would in a sense point in a direction opposite of assimilation. It refers to the characteristics that differentiate one group of people from people of other groups.

   Hybrid is a word used generally for plants and animals. It refers to off spring of  two different variety of plants or animals. It may also refer to people with their two parents from different race or similar groups. Hybridity, I believe refers to the quality of being hybrid.

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   Posted by krishna-agrawala on Tuesday November 3, 2009 at 10:37 AM