Concept: Community

Definition: 

(noun) 
1. a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. 
2. a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

Related Terms: diasporic community; communities of practice; communities of interest; virtual or online communities

Description: Migrants have long been identified in terms of their community: country of origin, religious affiliation, location, or circumstances such as war, persecution, or famine that may have driven a group to escape their place of residence. Since migrants also tend to settle in specific areas, these may take on the epithet or the characteristics of an ‘ethnic neighborhood.’ Studies of migration also document the close ties that migrants maintain with their communities of origin, sending back money to relatives and family, and if successful in the host country, able to support the development of infrastructure or education ‘back home.’ Immigrant community organizations are often the first to represent themselves as a group through newsletters, newspapers, television channels, and other media outlets aimed at reaching the community and beyond. They also maintain their ethnic identity through the establishment of language schools for their children, the celebration of festivals, and the reinforcement of cultural values.

A tension can be created when an immigrant community comes into conflict with the host society in terms of its religious observances or social customs. In recent years, such conflicts have erupted in several countries: France, Norway, Denmark, the United States, China, Myanmar, Indonesia, and others. But what of tensions among communities that were formerly cohesive and neighborly? The breakup of the former Yugoslavia is one example (and there are many others) from the recent past of a withdrawal into ethnic enclaves by the three major ethnocultural groups: Serbs, Bosnians, and Croatians. The murderous turn that these tensions took in the 1990s and continues to simmer below the surface even today is allegorized in the film, Beyond the Rain (1994).

It is instructive to know that the term “community,” which originated in the 14th century, originally referred to the common people or commons, but by the 19th century it had taken on a strong sense of locality, in the context of industrial society. At that time, community and commune described experiments in group living. In the United States, industrial development drew huge numbers of European immigrants and since then, it has become customary to refer to these by their countries of origin. In the twenty-first century, with mobility as a key feature of life for many people across the globe, and with the spread of the Internet as the common platform for work, communication, and entertainment, online communities that may or may not be ethnically defined have mushroomed. Scholars and thinkers are taking renewed interest in this concept, and the idea of communitas.

S.C. 2016