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INTRODUCTION
In this article I wish to reflect on some theoretical issues that arise from a study related to the role of the maternal in diasporic identification. The focus of this study, which was carried out over a number of years, was the daughters of post- World War Two Greek emigrants. The aim was to explore how these women understood their cultural identities and how these understandings influenced their lives and those of their own children. The daughters of immigrants are sometimes referred to as the "sandwich" generation-living between their parents' nostalgia for a land left behind and their own children's increasing distance from this culture. Such women sift and mediate their parents' past and their children's future through their own experiences. The women in this study grew up in countries like Australia, the USA and Canada in the 1960s and 1970s as the children of immigrants and in most cases their memories of growing up are punctuated by experiences of racism. In this article, the aim is to consider how their parents' memories of 'home' are transferred to their daughters and in turn influence how these women rear their children. Rather than assume this transference of cultural artifacts between generations is lingering nostalgia, the aim is to explore it as an act of cultural labour carried out by women whose efforts contribute to the diasporic identification that characterizes globalization. While the empirical work is drawn on here to a limited extent, this is presented as a means of illustrating the theoretical discussion rather than a basis for the exploration.
BACKGROUND
The research on which this article is based, was carried out using open-ended interviews with women who were identified using a snowball technique. Women of Greek descent were interviewed in Melbourne, Australia and Toronto, Canada. A group of women who were reared in Australia, Canada and the USA but had chosen to live in Greece, were also interviewed. Most of the women in this group were resident in Athens. Eight women were interviewed in each country.
The participants were in their 30s, 40s and early 50s at the time öf the interviews. All of these women were either born outside Greece or left Greece when very young (before the age of ten). All the...