Diaspora Activism Research Articles

Radical care in displacement: Rohingya women’s activism amidst neoliberal humanitarianism and repression

ABSTRACT This paper examines the activism and care work of Rohingya women in displacement settings, focusing on grassroots efforts in Cox’s Bazar refugee camps and transnational advocacy by diaspora activists. Drawing on 43 in-depth interviews and applying a feminist ethics of care framework, we argue that these women's activism constitutes a form of radical care that challenges both neoliberal humanitarian practices and repressive state policies. Rohingya women activists forge networks of solidarity and empowerment that extend beyond conventional humanitarian interventions, providing emotional support and shared experiences that contribute to the social ecology of care for refugee women. Their grassroots work contests the neoliberal emphasis on individual self-reliance, instead highlighting the vital role of relational care in fostering collective resilience. However, these activists face significant risks from multiple sources, including state repression, community backlash, and online harassment. They employ strategies such as ‘strategic invisibility’ and digital activism to navigate these dangers. Despite the transformative potential of their work, it remains systematically undervalued, leaving activists vulnerable to burnout and depletion. By centering the experiences and agency of Rohingya women, this study reveals a complex landscape of resistance, care, and empowerment, offering insights into how refugee women create change amidst intersecting forms of oppression.

Changing Land: Diaspora Activism and the Irish Land War

Changing Land: Diaspora Activism and the Irish Land War

Literatura na łamach prasy polonijnej w Brazylii 1892–1920

Literature in the press of Polish diaspora in Brazil 1892–1920 Literature was published extensively in the nineteenth century Polish diaspora press in Brazil. Even the entire page of a four-page issue could be taken up by a piece of belles lettres. The use of literature, contrary to what has been suggested in the source literature, was not simply an effortless way to fill journals with interesting, popular content. Belles lettres were carefully chosen, for instance based on the author’s worldview preferences. In addition to fulfilling the cultural and ludic functions of the Polish diaspora press, which are of primary importance in this context, literature also served important edu- cational, informative, and religious functions. Publishing literary works was a way to maintain boundaries with the language and culture of the country of origin, and Polish diaspora activists used satire to conduct debates.

Digital Diaspora Activism at the Margins: Unfolding Rohingya Diaspora Interactions on Facebook (2017–2022)

This study maps the Rohingya diaspora’s digital engagement on Facebook and explores how their participation has transformed over the years. Using the CrowdTangle analytics platform, this mixed-methods study presents the Rohingya community’s collective engagement on Facebook across six years, from January 2017 to December 2022. It comprises 47 Rohingya diaspora FB pages that published 34,905 posts and received nearly 8 million user interactions. Revealing their yearly transformation in interactions on Facebook, this study uncovers their contextual embodiment—within the increasingly complex and ever-changing regional and global socio-political landscape. Three key insights emerged from our findings. First, memories of loss, suffering, and longing for home intertwine in Rohingya transnational digital connectivity. In this remembrance process, Arakan (Rakhine) remains the place of reference and the center of gravity in their multi-layered identity formation and political mobilization. Second, as a gateway to seek global attention and articulate their political grievances, Rohingyas compose a coherent, unified, and human rights-based discourse on Facebook. Through such framing, they create an oppositional consciousness, drawing positive attention to their plight and the injustice they have endured for decades. Third, Islam, Muslim solidarity, and the narrative of Muslim victimhood emerge as indisputable markers in their identity (re)construction and manifesting political resistance. Anchoring on Islam, they build bridges between the scattered diaspora members and transcend their local struggle to the global audience, cementing the nexus between their Muslim identity and discrimination by the Buddhist-majority Myanmar government.

Diaspora Mobilization and Identity Construction of Ukrainian Immigrants in Turkey: “Ukrainians Started to Become More Ukrainian”

Abstract The article analyzes the role of Ukrainian associations on construction of immigrant identity in Turkey at the intersection of diaspora politics and diaspora-lived experiences. Ukrainian immigrant associations – whose numbers and members rapidly increased after Russia’s annexation of Crimea – became critical players in immigrants’ ethno-national identity construction. This aligned with the Ukrainian government’s changing diaspora policy and shaped immigrants’ relationship with the homeland. The associations, therefore, facilitated diaspora activism from above and below. These associations are mainly engaged in activities related to the teaching of Ukrainian language, history, and culture so that immigrants can distinguish themselves from Russians and discover their own uniqueness. They also consider the migrant status of Ukrainians in Turkey and develop an awareness of ethno-national identity by negotiating transnational identities.

Diaspora activism in a non-traditional country of destination: the Gülen Movement in Czechia

ABSTRACT Diaspora groups have increasingly become active and influential transnational actors, whose mobilization strategies react to strategic opportunities and constraints. The article explores how the GM diaspora embeddedness in specific contexts affected the trajectory of its transnational mobilization. It argues that the Turkish EU candidacy status, the rise of the AKP-GM alliance and the Czech accession to the EU created new opportunity structures for the GM in Czechia but they could not maintain the momentum the critical juncture opened in the Czech public debate due to the closing opportunity structures in Czechia. Their political activism has also been undermined by the strategically selective state-led transnationalism and heavy transnational repression, which intensified the interdependency between transnationalization and localization of the GM activities. The article contributes to the study of state-led transnationalism in deeply polarized societies and its impact on diaspora activism before and after a critical juncture.

Changing Land: Diaspora Activism and the Irish Land War, by Niall Whelehan

<i>Changing Land: Diaspora Activism and the Irish Land War</i>, by Niall Whelehan

:The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism against Authoritarian Regimes

:<i>The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism against Authoritarian Regimes</i>

Pathways to Conflict Transportation and Autonomisation: The Armenian Diaspora and the Conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh

ABSTRACT Since its inception the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has generated multiple narratives in the region itself, in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and in the concerned diasporas. The war that occurred in 2020 engendered high levels of diasporic mobilisation, but interestingly the discourses of Armenian diaspora activists largely differed from those of Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh. Drawing from theories of conflict transportation and autonomisation in diaspora settings, this contribution explores Armenian diaspora mobilisation in the USA, France and Russia, and argues that diverging narratives and positionalities in diasporic spaces, as compared to home countries, explain the (re)shaping of homeland conflict dynamics in diaspora settings.

Imagining, Conceiving and Implementing Development: Diaspora Philanthropic Interventions in Post-War Sri Lanka

In the field of migration and development, the role of diasporas has been examined critically because of the political consequences and culturally informed moral norms often attached to their engagement with their country of origin. These shape the nature of their interactions. Drawing on two case studies of diaspora philanthropic interventions in post-war Sri Lanka, this article applies a post-development framework to study the complexities of transnationalism. These cases highlight the complex and uneven relationships between local and diaspora actors, and in doing so illustrate the various kinds of diaspora organizations and their ‘constituencies’. The cases also show that diasporas can have a facilitative effect on local development, but that the process of change is rife with institutional complexities, competing agendas and shifting priorities over time. The article speaks to the need to conceive development as a process, even more so in a post-war context. This requires much time to understand the exact impact of diaspora interventions in any local situation.

Changing land: diaspora activism and the Irish Land War. By Niall Whelehan. Pp 216. New York: NYU Press. 2021. US$30.

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In search of a Rohingya digital diaspora: virtual togetherness, collective identities and political mobilisation

Frequently called the most persecuted minority in the world, the Rohingyas have suffered systematic violence and oppression in Myanmar since the 1970s. Today, the vast majority of the nearly three million Rohingyas are in exile, escaping state-sponsored human rights violations and persecution in the Rakhine state of Myanmar—a place they call “home”. Neighbouring Bangladesh, which currently hosts over a million displaced Rohingya, has been a ‘sanctuary’ for at least the last four decades. A sizable community has also emerged successively in other South-East Asian countries and pockets of Australia, Europe and North America. In this context, bringing together issues at the crossroads of (im)mobilities, online connectivity and the quest for identity, this study examines the role of social media platforms in forming and shaping new types of diaspora activism among the exiled Rohingyas. Drawing on yearlong online ethnographic findings, it unpacks how digital platforms constitute a space for togetherness, where diasporic Rohingya identities are constructed, contested and mediated. Analysing recurring themes and patterns of engagement on these web-based platforms, the paper looks at how diasporic civic and political e-activisms are transforming the very contours of Rohingya identity formation and their pursuit of recognition. Finally, focusing on such a creative constellation of socio-cultural and political issues in virtual space, we demonstrate how Rohingyas practice a politics of resistance and recognition when confronting the policy pretensions of Myanmar’s government.

Hongkongers’ International Front: Diaspora Activism During and After the 2019 Anti-Extradition Protest

The flare-up of protests over Hong Kong’s anti-extradition bill amendment in 2019 gave rise to a global wave of organising among the city’s overseas diaspora of students and migrants, persisting after the city’s protest movement declined due to COVID-19 and repression. Based on 85 in-depth interviews with overseas activists as well as journalistic and social media data on events in six cities, this article examines the diaspora’s pro-democracy campaign. Easily surpassing the previous mobilisational waves of 1989 and 2014, the newer diaspora activism gave rise to more numerous and widespread organisations, which were mostly decentralised and loosely connected. Responding to the rise and fall of protests in the home city, campaigners shifted from supplying protest-related gear to sheltering fleeing refugees, with the diaspora activism evolving into a global resistance against China’s authoritarian expansion. Counter-protests by pro-China supporters increased publicity for the campaign, but also brought threats to personal safety. With the exception of Taiwan, Hongkongers found it difficult to localise their agenda in host countries, and their efforts were frustrated by growing political polarisation in Western democracies.

Supposing the moral state: Japan and historical justice under liberal internationalism

Abstract Diplomatic spats over history between two of the United States' allies, Japan and the Republic of Korea, continue to simmer under the post-1945 liberal international order. The antagonism between the former colonizer and its colony has become a detriment not only for US security interests in the region, but also a challenge to the US claims to stand for human rights, as the issue of military sexual slavery has become tethered to the global human rights discourse by Korean American diaspora activists. Yet, when the US attempts to mediate between the two, it is rebuffed by its two allies because the US often acts as a neutral third party, rather than the major actor responsible for the making of post-1945 order in east Asia and the current impasse over history. This article asks how the entangled relation between order and justice in the making of the hub-and-spokes system in east Asia, mainly engineered by the United States, casts a long shadow over how to deal with history in Japan. This matters because questions of moral possibility in world politics always suppose a sovereign agentic state, and for Japan this creates a gap between the ideal moral state and the reality of being a semi-sovereign state. Thus, the persistence of Japan's ‘history problem’ must be understood not solely in terms of whether the empirical facts are accepted or not, but also in the sense of how being a sovereign matters when it comes to moral possibility in global politics.

Contributors

Previous article FreeContributorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreWei Chen (陈玮) is assistant professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her research interests include comparative political economy, political economy of contemporary China, especially government-business relations in China.Emile Dirks is a postdoctoral fellow at The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School, University of Toronto. His research on policing and biometric surveillance in China has been published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and The Citizen Lab, and he is a frequent contributor to international media on these subjects.Yuefang Duan is a professor of resettlement economics at China Three Gorges University in the School of Economics and Management and the director of the Research Center for Reservoir Resettlement. His research interests mainly focus on involuntary resettlement that is caused by development projects. He has been involved in numerous research projects and published more than 80 papers on Chinese resettlement policies and practice.Diana Fu is an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto and nonresident fellow at Brookings Institution. Her research portfolio includes civil society, repression, authoritarian citizenship, diaspora activism, and labor politics. She is the author of the award-winning book Mobilizing without the Masses: Control and Contention in China (Cambridge, 2018). She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College.Jiying Jiang (蒋佶颖) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. Her research interests include Chinese politics and policymaking, legislative process, and bureaucratic politics. Her dissertation examines the political logic of ambiguity in Chinese national statutes.Shu Keng (耿曙) is a university research fellow at the School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University. His research interests include comparative political economy, Chinese local governments, and cross-Strait relations. His recent publications include a book, Making Governments Work in China (in Chinese, 2022), a co-edited textbook, Comparative Politics (in Chinese, 2021), and several articles in China Journal, China Quarterly, and Journal of Contemporary China.Sarah Rogers is a senior lecturer in contemporary Chinese studies at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne. She is a geographer who studies social, political, and environmental change in China. Her research interests include hydropolitics, poverty alleviation, resettlement, agrarian change, and climate adaptation. She is a chief investigator on two Australian Research Council Discovery Projects: one on the technopolitics of China’s South-North Water Transfer project (2017–22) and one on the restructuring of China’s agricultural sector (2018–22).Ju-Han Zoe Wang is a lecturer in environment and development at James Cook University. Her research expertise includes environmental governance, agrarian change, rural development, indigenous knowledge, and migration. She has been conducting research looking at the influence of various environmental, development, and agrarian interventions (e.g., NGO projects, government policy, and commodity markets) on natural resource uses in China.Brooke Wilmsen is a senior lecturer in development studies in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University, Australia. A former Australia Research Council DECRA holder and current Australian Research Council Discovery Project Chief Investigator on restructuring of China’s agricultural sector (2018–22), her research interests include forced displacement, involuntary resettlement, climate adaptation, social protection, and agrarian change.Siyi Zhang (张思意) is a PhD student at the Department of Sociology, Zhejiang University. Her research interests include personnel management in the public sector and local government behavior in China. She has recently published an article in China Quarterly.Tan Zhao (赵檀) is assistant professor at the School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China. His research focuses on rural governance in contemporary China. Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 89January 2023 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/722961 © 2023 The Australian National University. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Policing Copts: Sadat, Shenouda, and the Transnational Diaspora Politics of Cold War Egypt

When Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat had the head of the Coptic Church, Pope Shenouda III, interned in a desert monastery for "sectarian sedition" in 1981, Copts in the diaspora mobilized. The Egyptian state subsequently demonized Coptic activists and enmeshed itself into the Church's transnational affairs, revealing how the Sadat regime circumscribed Egyptian citizenship, even for those abroad. Examining American court documents, Church records, and Coptic diaspora publications juxtaposed with Egyptian state media, this article surveys the role of diaspora activists in Cold War Egypt.

(Re)imagining the idea of India: Contestations about Hindutva among the Indian American diaspora

AbstractThis paper explores the motivations and actions of Indian Americans who actively oppose Hindutva, that is, a Hindu nationalist vision for India. Diaspora activists who advocate in favour of progressive values for India tend to be underreported in the media and underanalysed in scholarship. The following study addresses this gap. Based on public records, interviews with activist leaders, and participant‐observation, the paper demonstrates how anti‐Hindutva diaspora actors identify and leverage political opportunities in order to engage in moral signalling in local, national and global spaces. By shining a light on ongoing counternarratives to Hindutva, this study highlights contestations within Indian‐origin communities and challenges monolithic portrayals of diaspora politics.

Revolting from Abroad: The Formation of a Lebanese Transnational Public

Nowadays social movements are driven by networks of people who resort to social media platforms to rally, self-organise and coordinate action around a shared cause, which can be referred to as the formation of publics. Due to years of political instability, conflicts, corruption, sectarianism, economic collapse and declining living conditions, in October 2019 Lebanon witnessed uprisings which transcended into a wider social movement. As the movement unfolded, Lebanese diaspora members living across the world formed their own publics in support of the Lebanese revolution that interfaced with the local Lebanon-based publics. As such, a broader transnational public emerged as a result of the coordinated online and offline efforts between diaspora actors and local actors, which had a crucial role in mitigating the aftermath of the compounded crises that hit Lebanon. In this paper, through observation and interviews with Lebanese diaspora members, we contribute a socio-technical understanding of the formation of a transnational public, with a particular focus on the underlying infrastructures that enabled its creation. Furthermore, we surface the challenges in relation to sustaining such a diaspora public and its interfacing with local publics in Lebanon. We contribute empirical insights that highlight how different technological tools and platforms, coupled with social processes built within diaspora groups and with local actors, led to the formation of such a multilayered transnational public.

Book Review: The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism Against Authoritarian Regimes

Book Review: The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism Against Authoritarian Regimes

Going after the family: Transnational repression and the proxy punishment of Middle Eastern diasporas

AbstractDiasporas 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.