The notion of diaspora: conceptual clarification and missionary paradigm

As the diaspora concept has overgrown, so has its meaning spread to host different intellectual, cultural and political agendas. This concept has led to a so-called diaspora’s spillage – a spillage of term’s meanings in the semantic, conceptual and disciplinary space. An attempt was made to summarize the extensively used theoretical approaches with regard to the term’s content. On the basis of these theoretical landmarks, we want to further illustrate an enhanced type of community which is being build based on typical diaspora elements. The scope of the paper is not to approach in a comprehensive way a Romanian orthodox community of diaspora as it is virtually impossible in a single paper, but to illustrate a diaspora structure. The research method is theoretical (fundamental), “the pure research” for theoretical, conceptual development and shall be based on making abstract ideas. We have concluded that: from a categorial point of view, the Italy’s orthodox community embodies defining characteristics for an economical oriented diaspora. This community is going through pressure felt by every diaspora community: adapting to the new conditions, temptation of assimilation and at times the problematic relations with the host society. On the other hand, from an ecclesial perspective, Romanian Orthodox Bishopric from Italia co-exists in the same area along with other parallel Orthodox jurisdictions conducted on ethnic records used to find common ways of societal expression.