Where is my Family? Contemporary Uyghur Activism in the Transnational Diaspora

The notion of diaspora activism has always been complex and contested, with multiple overlapping yet irreducible temporalities and positionalities. This article problematizes both the Western-centric tendencies in diaspora activism scholarship and reductive narratives within Sinophone diaspora studies that predominantly focus on either communities of people who were not born in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or male-dominated PRC diaspora movements, neglecting the crucial gendering and queering of diaspora political mobilization. Drawing on a multi-year autoethnography of transnational social movements, this article highlights the specific positionalities and practices of PRC-born student, feminist, and queer activists in the United States, who confront multiple interlocking marginalities in legal, racial, gender, and economic dimensions. Delineating the ongoing struggles of international graduate student workers and the overseas Chinese feminist network, as well as their organic connections to the White Paper (or A4) Movement, we illustrate the dynamic construction, negotiation, and diffusion of activist subjectivities. We argue that feminist and queer student activism emerges from and expands through liminal movement spaces, reflecting shifting power dynamics and organizational infrastructures within both Sinophone diaspora communities and broader social movement ecologies. Overall, this article envisions a more processual and intersectional interpretation of the Sinophone diaspora, opening up new possibilities for conceptualizing its political potential.

Diasporas play a critical role in home‐country politics by supporting social, political, and economic change therein. Yet, regimes countermobilize against activists abroad by repressing their diasporas. This paper investigates a widespread but overlooked method in the transnational repression toolkit: that of ‘proxy punishment’, that is, the abuse of family members at home as a means to manipulate and subjugate dissidents abroad. Using 246 original interviews with diaspora activists from Syria, Iran, Egypt, and Libya, the analysis demonstrates that regimes deployed five tactics against diaspora members’ non‐activist families at home: harm and confinement, threats and harassment, forced participation in regime propaganda and slander, resource deprivation, and travel bans. We then identify the mechanisms shaping how diaspora members responded to this repertoire. The paper concludes with implications for research on transnational diaspora activism, globalized authoritarianism, and collective dimensions of the repression‐dissent nexus.

Family Ties

Family ties and functional limitation in the elderly: Results from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)

Small and Medium Slaveholdings in the Coffee Economy of the Vale do Paraiíba, Province of Saão Paulo

This Special Issue brings together scholars working on transnational diaspora activism and transnational repression. As diasporas have increasingly become powerful political actors and transnational agents of intervention and change, authoritarian states have continued to expand their mechanism of control and repression across borders. Centring the voices and experiences of those engaged in – and subjected to – these dynamics, the Special Issue focuses on different aspects of the diaspora experience to better understand (1) how diasporas operate as transnational agents of change; (2) the transnational constraints and mechanisms of repression affecting their members. The significance of the Special Issue comes from its global approach – showcasing a variety of experiences, voices and theoretical contributions – ranging from Myanmar to China through Turkey, Sweden, and the UK. It therefore offers an interdisciplinary dialogue and combines perspectives from senior and early career researchers, charting new directions in the research on diaspora activism and transnational repression [The conversations and contributions at the core of this Special Issue started at BISA 2024, where the Editors brought contributors together in a panel titled “Re-focusing transnational connectivities: new conversations on diasporas, activism, and repression”. https://indico.bisa.ac.uk/event/347/contributions/1036/contribution.pdf].

This qualitative study examined how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in rural areas of the poor and multiethnic state of New Mexico access secular (professional and lay) and sacred (indigenous and Christian) mental health care resources. In-depth, semistructured interviews were used to document the help-seeking processes of 38 rural LGBT people. Obtaining assistance was complicated by the ideal of self-reliance and the view of mental illness as a sign of weakness. Financial considerations and a lack of and community-based LGBT social networks also exerted substantial influence on help seeking. Many LGBT people would strategically remain silent about their sexuality or gender status and rely on their family ties to access the range of secular and sacred resources that are most commonly available in medically underserved rural communities. Although persons from sexual and gender minority groups often experience positive outcomes as a result of help seeking, some LGBT people remain vulnerable to anti-LGBT sentiments that persist within secular and sacred sectors of rural health care systems.

How do entrepreneurs fill institutional voids that prevail in emerging markets? By incorporating insights from both the political and family embeddedness perspectives, we argue that both political ties and family ties can compensate for gaps in the institutional infrastructure of emerging markets. Specifically, we propose and examine the partial substitutability of family ties for political ties as a means of filling institutional voids. Our empirical work based on Chinese private enterprises strongly supports this argument. We also find that the effective utilization of family ties is contingent on both family members’ motivation (willingness to use resources for the firm) and entrepreneurs’ mobilization (authority in the family to mobilize family members). This study bridges the literature on political ties and family ties to understand their respective costs and benefits and therefore advances our understanding of entrepreneurs’ networking strategies in emerging markets.

Contemporary theories of justice have only recently begun to pay attention to the international and global contexts, and their implications. In a global framework, it is now also necessary to give a fresh look at the old issue of family and justice. It is first of all the real situation of «transnational» families that has to be taken into consideration. Such families challenge traditional models in order to meet their own, new subsistence needs. Nowadays, as a matter of fact, millions of women travel and migrate alone to find jobs in the ever-expanding market of the personal services and care sector. Thus, it may happen that family members grow up and live in two or more different countries, fragmented, so to speak, and separated from each others most of the time. For these female migrant workers, new and old issues arise, as they move toward new ways of seeking a balance between their old family ties and the obligations of their novel employment forms. Some of these issues are: gender equity, the tension between equality of opportunity, and work, and family ties, the new character of old class, gender and ethnic inequalities, and so on. As the line between «rich» and «poor» countries is being re-drawn, both care labour commodification and its ethnic, gender and class redistribution change accordingly, and take on new, unpredicted forms, which we try to analyse.

Contemporary theories of justice have only recently begun to pay attention to the international and global contexts, and their implications. In a global framework, it is now also necessary to give a fresh look at the old issue of family and justice. It is first of all the real situation of «transnational» families that has to be taken into consideration. Such families challenge traditional models in order to meet their own, new subsistence needs. Nowadays, as a matter of fact, millions of women travel and migrate alone to find jobs in the ever-expanding market of the personal services and care sector. Thus, it may happen that family members grow up and live in two or more different countries, fragmented, so to speak, and separated from each others most of the time. For these female migrant workers, new and old issues arise, as they move toward new ways of seeking a balance between their old family ties and the obligations of their novel employment forms. Some of these issues are: gender equity, the tension between equality of opportunity, and work, and family ties, the new character of old class, gender and ethnic inequalities, and so on. As the line between «rich» and «poor» countries is being re-drawn, both care labour commodification and its ethnic, gender and class redistribution change accordingly, and take on new, unpredicted forms, which we try to analyse.

Research on global authoritarianism and transnational repression has expanded rapidly and deepened our understanding of how non-democratic regimes seek to control or silence parts of their non-resident populations. While we have a good understanding of the underlying operating logics and authoritarian regimes’ strategies and tactics, we know less about the ways in which the intended targets experience these practices. To help fill this gap, this article explores the lived experiences of exiled Uyghur activists in Sweden, and how they perceive, react and adapt to Chinese efforts to silence their voices thousands of miles from home. Through semi-structured interviews with diaspora activists, we find that transnational repressive practices like surveillance, harassment and repression by proxy are widespread. At the same time, we find the deterrent effect of the practices to be somewhat limited in the Swedish context. Thus, we identify the host country context as a key issue for further research.

Education is actually a crucial element of social stratification. While research has often focused on education’s effect on labor market opportunities and intergenerational class mobility, it has seldom been analyzed its association with the structure of family ties. However, as a consequence of unprecedented demographic changes, multigenerational bonds are becoming increasingly important for the solidarity within families and the future sustainability of welfare state.The main argument underlying this study is that individuals’ level of education is likely to affect both the preferences and the structure of restrictions and opportunities. First, higher educated individuals are expected to acquire more individualistic values, and thus to be less oriented toward family issues. Second, the higher educated individuals are more likely to look for job opportunities in specific and selected areas, and thus to loosen family ties because of a greater geographical mobility.Moreover, the association between education and family ties is likely to be affected by the peculiar combination of institutional and cultural features. The country-specific context is, indeed, likely to pattern the structure of costs, opportunities, and individual preferences related to the maintenance of more-or-less strong intergenerational relations. Using data from Share 2004-2007, this paper assesses the effect of education on the relationships between family members in Italy, France and Sweden. In particular, empirical evidence is provided for parent–child geographical proximity and frequency of contacts. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2013.v3n7p379

In a culture with a high degree of sexual freedom, an individual is less likely to know who his male ancestors are, thereby leading to loose family links. We establish an inverse relationship between sexual freedom and family ties using individual survey and minority‐level data from China. By employing traditional minority‐level marriage customs and labour intensity to instrument for contemporary individual attitudes towards sexual freedom, the two‐stage least‐squares estimates confirm the causal relationship between sexual freedom and family ties. Moreover, loose family ties tend to result in limited trust among family members and more reliance on contracts rather than blood relations when engaging in business with relatives. We confirm the hypothesis using individual survey and minority‐level data.

BackgroundFlourishing is a primary dimension of psychological well-being that contributes massively to the development of an active, purposeful, and respectful life, full of meaning, values, and personal interests that nurture social ties.AimsThis study primarily intended to examine the contribution of satisfaction with family relations, resilience, metacognitive efficiency, and crystallized intelligence in predicting a flourishing measure in cognitively healthy older adults. Moreover, the impact of gender was investigated on flourishing, satisfaction with family ties, resilience, and metacognitive efficiency.MethodsOne hundred and eighty 65–94-year-old community dwellers were recruited in Sardinia (Italy). Participants self-rated their flourishing, satisfaction with their family connections, psychological hardness (i.e., a dimension of resilience), and cognitive function, whereas global cognitive efficiency and vocabulary were assessed through two internationally validated objective tests.ResultsA hierarchical regression analysis revealed that 30% of the variance in the flourishing condition was explained by satisfaction with family ties, resilience, and metacognitive efficiency. In addition, males exhibited higher flourishing and satisfaction with family ties than females, and the former group also reported being more autonomous and acting proactively to influence its destiny.ConclusionEmotional support and rewarding relations with family members, the ability to face stressful events, and a good perception of one’s cognitive efficiency play a crucial role in promoting flourishing in late adulthood.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the corporate culture of the US police based on the analysis of its metaphorical representation. The article deals with the features of the functioning of kinship metaphors at the verbal level of American non-institutional police Internet discourse. The analysis of the contexts of the spheres of the specified linguistic culture and the direction of deployment of metaphorical word usage in the period from 2014 to the present is carried out. The author correlates the revealed contexts into groups based on the contiguity of the initial conceptual sphere: “Family as a unit of society”, “Family ties”, “Family members”, “Brotherhood, unity”. Through a series of examples, a variety of interpretations of the relationship between US law enforcement officers in the performance of their duties is illustrated. The established conceptual connections are considered through a broad approach to the selection of research material, which allows to cover a significant and diverse amount of information. The American police are characterized by a respectful, trustworthy attitude towards their colleagues, loyalty and social solidarity, that is most clearly expressed in metaphors with the original conceptual domain "family ties". The attitude of “us against them” is formed among employees, by means of interpretation of a certain approach to the selection of personnel, their training and performance.