The idea of dispersion has been central in conceptualising diaspora since its inception as a distinct field in the 1990s. Early focus on etymology and the ‘classical’ diasporas of Jewish, Armenian and Greek exilic communities led to a strict understanding of this dispersion as displacement from an imagined homeland. As Diaspora Studies extended beyond the limited scope of displaced communities to include various kinds of transnational categories, two important suggestions appear to have gained resonance.

First, reference to a homeland or – in Safran's words – an ‘original centre’, is not a prerequisite for the conceptualisation of a group as a diaspora; in this light, diasporas may be viewed as ‘the result from the migration of borders over people and not simply from that of people over borders’, leading to the creation of what Brubaker has dubbed ‘accidental diasporas’.

Second, it has been increasingly suggested that moving beyond an essentialist understanding of diasporas as categories of being may grant us access to a more profound understanding of diaspora as a ‘category of practice’. When studied as ‘an idiom, a stance, a claim’ and a resource, diasporas may tell us a different story, that of loyalties, expectations and sentiments of inclusion/ exclusion into political programmes as they are experienced by minority communities in the Middle East.

This chapter discusses the reception of state secularisation policies by three minority communities that bear the same ethnonyme: the Greek-speaking Romioi of Istanbul, the Arabic-speaking Rum of Syria and the Arabic-speaking Rum of Antakya (Antioch). Since the 1970s, following their migration from their native Antakya to Istanbul, members of this last group have found themselves in a position of mediation between the first two groups. As ‘accidental diasporas’, the Rum of Istanbul, Antakya and Syria may trace their history back to a common Hellenistic, Byzantine and Ottoman past, while maintaining an emphasis on their indigenousness and organic bonds to their respective homeland.

The first part of this chapter sets forth a brief, historical overview of the appellation ‘Rum’ and its diverging connotations in Ottoman and post-Ottoman vocabularies of power as an imperial, confessional, ethno- religious and national category.