‘We’re coming!’ Danish American identity, fraternity, and political remittances in the era of World War II

Abstract

ABSTRACTRecent research on political transnationalism raises tantalising questions about how people, organisations, and ideologies in both host and homeland countries activate, shape, and constrain political remittances. This article historicises and extends the literature by exploring ways the development of transcultural Danish American identities in fraternal lodges between the wars prepared an institutional conduit for Danish officials to successfully lobby United States policymakers during World War II. In the process it demonstrates that political divisions within the sending state, Denmark, elevated the importance of mutually held values in determining the diaspora’s overwhelming support for a pro-democratic diplomatic corps acting against official government policy. Thus it captures the multi-directionality of political remittances while problematising the role of the state and mapping the transformative potential of ideology and ethnic institutions in shaping their currents.