Khalid Khayati

This project is a comparative exploration of an ongoing process of change from a mono-dimensional, victim-related Kurdish diasporic identity to a more modulated, dynamic and active form of it among Kurds in the Marseille region in France and the Stockholm region in Sweden.
Moreover, the project focus on the relationship between diaspora and tourism where diasporan groups develop various transnational networks, institutions and organizations in order to carry out various forms of journeys not only between their new and old societies but also over many state borders.
Furthermore, the project advance diaspora as a specific context of knowledge which is non-compatible with methodological nationalism; a perspective which privileges the nation-state as a conceptual reference regarding how knowledge is organized and produced by social scientists.

This project focuses those transnational civil society organizations and networks, created by diasporan populations residing in western states that function not only as a substantial means of integration in their residing societies, but also as genuine transnational institutions that aim in, in one way or another, to affect the politics of their former homelands, especially in the direction of democracy, promotion of the human rights, gender equality and peace settlement with non-violent means. In this regard, this study considers diaspora as an instance of transnational governance.

In recent decades, tourism and travelling has increasingly come to be recognized as a highly complex field of research that raises questions that are both local and global, that involves questions about identity and self-understanding, as well as questions relating to human rights, development, global economy and international political relations. Still, there are yet few Swedish textbooks where contemporary tourism and travel is highlighted from a critical perspective, or where issues of global power relations are in focus. Therefore, the purpose of this project has been to produce text books in Swedish, in which international tourism and travel are confronted with new, critical, theoretical perspectives.