Transnational Political Activism Research Articles

København - Cairo tur/retur: Om transnational politisk aktivisme under karikaturkrisen og det ‘arabiske forår’

Recent scholarly work on political protest has often highlighted the potential of new social media in gathering transnational support and driving political reforms, not least in authoritarian regimes. This idea seems to have won even more credence after the ‘online revolutions’ of the ‘Arab spring’ in early 2011. However, as this article demonstrates, attempts at creating transnational exposure of national political issues through various forms of transnational political activism may also, under certain circumstances, be linked to significant costs. The article delivers an empirical analysis of the effects of Danish Muslims’ transnational activities during the Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005/06 on subsequent Muslim claims-making. The article argues that the envisioned ‘boomerang effect’ of the transnational activities – the attempt to put pressure on Danish authorities by contacting political and religious authorities in the Middle East – backfired on Danish Muslims. The transnational move was successfully ‘securitized’ by elements of the media and the political elite, inviting soft forms of repression against especially the Muslim actors involved in the delegations of primarily religious authorities that travelled to Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria in December 2005. These actors were forced into a more defensive mode of claims-making soon after their return to Denmark through processes of name-calling and stigmatization. Building on this case study, the article concludes by suggesting some theoretical modifications/specifications of the boomerang model of transnational activism.

Established and emergent political subjectivities in circular human geographies: transnational Arab activists

In this paper, we argue that Arab transnational citizenship mobilization can be configured through ‘geographies of circularity’ (e.g. bridging multiple locales, encircling the state, transversally stirring political subjectivities, and in the full-circle return of identity). Circularity helps ground and highlight the character and significance of transnational political and social activism, and the transfer of communications, skills, behaviors, organizational forms, tools, and projects (political technologies’) for citizenship. Based on the networks initiated by the Arab revolts, we argue that Arab émigrés, workers, and students – framed here as Arab transnationals – traverse and embody these geographies of circularity and leverage connectivity to mobilize citizenship claims and remit/ bridge/diffuse/export/import important progressive ideas and values locally in the western world and into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Examining the struggles for domestic workers: Hong Kong and the Philippines as interacting sites of activism

Drawing on transnational activism literature, this article presents a nuanced understanding of political action and the link between two contexts of struggles – the Philippines and Hong Kong – in order to explain the emergence and development of transnational political action. It presents a narrative of the emergence of transnational activism that spans Hong Kong and the Philippines by examining the political opportunities and organizing activities undertaken by two major transnational non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to establish and sustain political action for and among foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong. The article shows that those who pioneered the activism in Hong Kong were products of the contentious Philippine politics and worked on social justice issues in their homeland prior to their stint in the territory. While the activists advocate for workers’ rights in Hong Kong, they continue to link their activism to their home country. This linkage is promoted by the discourse of “forced migra...

El Sistema Interamericano de Derechos Humanos y las relaciones Estados Unidos-América Latina.

El Sistema Interamericano de Derechos Humanos (sidh) es parte integral del paisaje institucional regional de América Latina desde mediados del siglo xx. Un desarrollo progresivo de la jurisprudencia de los derechos humanos regionales se refleja en su progreso desde la Guerra Fría y en un nuevo empuje con la vuelta al orden democrático en la región. Con todo, el orden democrático no es garantía de respeto de los derechos humanos. El Sistema Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, de esa manera, se ha ido convirtiendo en un régimen transnacionalizado conforme se ha abierto a la actividad política transnacional.

The Inter-American Human Rights System and U.S.-Latin America Relations

The Inter-American Human Rights System and U.S.-Latin America Relations

Watching the International Crimes Tribunal from London

This paper analyses responses in London to the International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh and protests associated with it in 2013. Based on analysis of websites, social media and interview material, it examines interpretations of contemporary events in Bangladesh. The article makes no claims to any privileged information or ‘truth’ about these events. Instead, it argues that interpretations of events in Bangladesh by Bangladeshis in London differ from those in Bangladesh. Recent events in Bangladesh have led to an increase in transnational political activism among some British Bangladeshis. In London there have been concerted attempts to challenge dominant discourses about Bangladesh’s Liberation War and contemporary politics. In many cases these are related to or inspired by Islamic political movements that have become influential among British Bangladeshis.

The Failure of Categories: Haitians in the United Nations Organization in the Congo, 1960–64

The Failure of Categories: Haitians in the United Nations Organization in the Congo, 1960–64 Regine O. Jackson The 1960s was a tumultuous decade in world history, especially across the continent of Africa where almost thirty European colonies were dismantled. Although experiences and obstacles varied by country, colonial withdrawal opened up new opportunities for African nationalists as well as black expatriates.1 Activists and radicals from the United States and the Caribbean flocked to postcolonial Africa, along with businessmen and investors seeking to capitalize on promises of development. Kevin Gaines, whose work has become indispensable to the history of black internationalism, documents the experiences of African Americans in Ghana: Professionals, and technicians seeking refuge from constrained opportunities . . . were welcomed by Nkrumah, who, perhaps more than any other African head of state of his time, encouraged blacks from the Western world to emigrate and lend their skills to building the new nation.2 While Ghana stands out, according to Gaines, because Kwame Nkrumah made it a “destination of radical hope” for black expatriates,3 the Congo was also a significant site for different reasons. In what became known as the “Congo Crisis,” former colonial governments and international organizations played decisive roles in the transition to independence as well as in the experiences of the individuals whose diasporic subjectivities led them to Africa. The United Nations and its specialized agencies began recruitment efforts to replace European administrators of African bureaucracies as early as 1958. After the Democratic Republic of Congo achieved independence from Belgium in June 1960, the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld launched the most extensive and prominent among these efforts: the United Nations Organization in the Congo or ONUC (Organisation des National Unies au Congo).4 For four years, the Civilian Operations Program recruited [End Page 34] French-speaking professionals and technicians from all over the world to help establish the country’s infrastructure and to supplement the small Congolese leadership class. Hundreds of Haitians—teachers, professors, engineers, and doctors—went to Africa as part of the ONUC program. By 1962, Haitian émigrés constituted the second largest contingent of UN staff experts working in the Congo.5 Maurice Dartigue was Chief of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Africa Division. Dr. Athemas Bellerive directed the World Health Organization (WHO) medical team that included several Haitian doctors (see Figure 1). And in 1963, ONUC’s military force was commanded by Max H. Dorsinville.6 A relatively large number of Haitians participated in the UN programs in Benin and Cameroon, as well as in the Congo. Some Haitians spent career lifetimes with their families there. Yet what is known about the experiences of the estimated 7,500 Haitians in African countries amounts to undocumented fragments that have accumulated over time and are repeated in literature and various commentaries. The historiography of post–World War II pan-Africanism focuses primarily on Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa as sites of resistance and black internationalist activism. As Martin and West note, referring to Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic and The Practice of Diaspora by Brent Hayes Edwards, “That literature, even in its more recent diasporic and Black Atlantic variations, displays a consistent Afro-Saxon bias.”7 When Haiti is mentioned at all, it is frozen in time in 1804; in popular and scholarly perception, Haiti’s impact on the world is effectively limited to the Haitian Revolution. The connections between Haiti and Africa—and the relationships between Haitian and African peoples—are imagined as largely symbolic, with no attention to the ways Haitian émigrés took tangible, self-determined action on behalf of African sovereignty.8 Equally troubling, Africa only enters the scholarship on Haitian migration in the work of epidemiologists. Here, the “Haitian hypothesis” proliferates, alleging that Haitian people brought AIDS to the United States in the 1970s after returning from Africa.9 The overall effect of these accounts is that Africa is written out of the Haitian diaspora and vice versa. More familiar narratives of migration to North America, Western Europe, and the nearby Caribbean dominate the scholarship, which naturalizes certain sites as destinations for Haitian migrants and for transnational political activity.10 The gaps in the...

Transnational Modes and Media: The Syrian Press in the Mahjar and Emigrant Activism during World War I

This article argues that during World War I, the Syrian and Lebanese periodical press in the American mahjar created new space for transnational political activism. In Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, and New York City, diasporic journalists and political activists nurtured a new nationalist narrative and political culture in the press. In a public sphere linking mahjar to mashriq, what began with discussions about Ottoman political reform transformed into nationalist debate during the war. Intellectuals constructed and defined the “Syrian” and “Lebanese” national communities in the diaspora's newspapers, but the press also played an important practical role in promoting and shaping patterns of charity, remittances, and political activism towards the homeland. Using materials from this press, the article concludes that the newspaper industry's infrastructure enabled new patterns of political activism across the mahjar, but also channeled Syrian efforts into a complex alliance with France by the eve of the Mandate.

Truly Transnational: The Political Practices of Middle-Class Migrants

Recently, scholars have argued that transnational political involvement among migrants is a rather marginal phenomenon. This conclusion is based on the fact that migrants' political activities are much more often directed to their country of settlement than to their country of origin. However, by solely focusing on migrants' bi-national political ties, the relevance of political involvement beyond the borders of the nation-state is ignored. Focusing on the geographical scale of different types of political action, this article moves beyond a bi-national approach. Research on middle-class immigrants in the Netherlands shows that, although involvement in homeland politics is indeed quite rare, ‘truly’ transnational political activities—i.e. activities which transcend the borders of the sending and receiving countries—prove to be very common. Taking consumer boycotts as an example, the article further scrutinises the nature of this transnational involvement. It appears that, although the migrants' activities in part resemble the ‘universalistic’ activism of non-migrants as studied in the literature on environmental and human-rights movements, many of their actions are more ‘particularistic’ in character and related to ethnic and religious issues.

‘Gaza in Oslo’: Social imaginaries in the political engagement of Norwegian minority youth

In the winter of 2008/09 thousands of people took to the streets of Oslo to demonstrate against the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Young people of visible minority and Muslim background were central actors in these demonstrations. The public expression of Muslim identities and symbols during the demonstrations along with clashes between some of the young demonstrators and the police fuelled the already polarized debate concerning the integration of immigrant youth and Islamic radicalism existing in the Norwegian public realm. Using data gathered through ethnographic fieldwork and web-ethnography we follow the engagement of youth from a multi-ethnic Oslo mosque both online and offline. In critical dialogue with perspectives on political contention and transnational political activism, we analyse this transnational mobilization in terms of the ‘social imaginaries’ that mediated engagement with the Gaza question: ‘the global Muslim imaginary’, ‘secular leftist internationalism’ and ‘integration nations’.

Neglected middle men? Gatekeepers in homeland politics. Case: Flemish nationalists' receptivity to the plight of Turkey's Kurds

Studies of transnational political activism or diaspora politics have tended to disregard the importance of political gatekeepers in the pursuit of immigrants' and refugees' political change back home Furthermore, when attention has been given to the crucial role of gatekeepers for politically engaged migrants to negotiate their ways into host-country politics, it has often been confined just to resumés of those involved and the activities undertaken. Rarely has research engaged with questioning political gatekeepers themselves about their personal beliefs underlying their commitments to the cause. Nor has research often looked into how certain alignments and cooperative relationships between transnational political actors and their gatekeepers in receiving countries came into being, and how such genealogies might lend insight into the transnational advocacy networks and the particular types of activities that transnational political actors have developed. This paper aims to help fill this lacuna, by providing original and unique insights into the genealogy of Flemish nationalists' support for Turkey's Kurdish nationalist movement, and thus also to testify to how investigations into political gatekeepers can improve our understanding of the ways in which transnationalism materializes.

The Transnational Political Practices of “Latin American Italians”

AbstractThe article analyses the political institutional patterns between Italy and Latin America through a study of South American dual nationals who retain full political rights in Italy. It adopts a socio‐historical approach to study the genesis, evolution and consequences of Italy’s external citizenship policies, assessing their impact on the transnational political activities of “Latin American Italians”. It identifies the outputs and outcomes from the transnational political practices of “Latin American Italians”, both in Italy and the countries of residence, if and how these have created overlapping polities, affected the conception of membership, and challenged the definition of “home” and “host” country. The findings are based on over one year of field research, including interviews with key actors in Argentina, Uruguay, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom; in‐depth interviews with seventy‐four Latin Americans who had recently obtained their Italian citizenship by descent; and a statistical analysis.The article concludes that the current rise of transnational institutions linking sending and receiving countries does not totally break with the past. The strategic use of European nationality laws influences political participation of Latin American Italians in a limited way, and when a transnational political engagement does occur, it produces a disjunction between politics and territory more in terms of a re‐territorialization than of a de‐territorialization of political practices. Thus, this article supports the hypothesis of strengths and weaknesses of the transnational approach to analyse migrant’s political activities.

The “Diaspora Politics” of Colombian Migrants in the UK and Spain

AbstractWithin the broader theme of Latin American migration to Europe, this article looks at the less explored case of Colombian migrants in the United Kingdom and Spain. More specifically, it focuses on the transnational political activities of these migrants in connection with the armed conflict and search for peace in Colombia, a case of “diaspora politics” that has not received much attention. It is based on research into the wider transnational political linkages of Colombians in these two countries conducted during 2004–2007. This research involved nearly 100 semi‐structured interviews with Colombian men and women who had migrated for political, security, labour and other reasons, as well as interviews with experts, participant observation and analysis of online community forums and other materials. As such, this study went beyond the dominant focus on economic migration. This approach helped to shed light on an aspect of Colombian migrant transnational politics hardly taken into account before, that is, the individual and collective activities that deal with the violence, human rights situation, and search for peace in Colombia. The first part of the article offers a summary of the conceptual and methodological issues underpinning this research and a description of the most relevant characteristics of the two migrant communities studied. In the second part, the article analyses the evidence gathered on Colombian migrant transnational activism in relation to the armed conflict and search for peace in Colombia and the potential and limitations of this work. The aim of the article is two‐fold: to enrich the pool of knowledge on Latin American migration to Europe and to engage with recent literature on the role that diasporas and transnational communities play in relation to conflict in their home countries as part of diasporic or transnational civil society.

Transnational Resistance: Global Justice Networks and Spaces of Convergence

AbstractThis study will consider how the reconfiguration of political life in relation to globalising economic and social processes has seen renewed efforts by social movements to extend their reach beyond local or national boundaries. To achieve this, social movements are constructing multiscalar networks of support and solidarity for their particular struggles, and participating with other movements in broad networks to resist neoliberal globalisation. Much of the recent literature on transnational activism has neglected the spatial practices of transnational political activity, and presents a singular notion of what constitutes transnational resistance networks. This study will discuss how, within such networks, diverse interests and identities are constituted within geographically complex set of relations, reconfiguring politics at all scales.

Transnational political action and ‘global civil society’ in practice: the case of Oxfam

AbstractThe term ‘global civil society’ has taken on increasing significance within scholarly debate over the past decade. In this article we seek to understand transnational political agency via the study of a particular transnational actor, Oxfam. We argue that various schools of thought surrounding the global civil society concept, in particular the prevailing liberal‐cosmopolitan approach, are unable to conceptualize transnational political action in practice – due largely, in the case of liberal‐cosmopolitanism, to a shared normative agenda. We also assess what contribution literature on development and civil society has made to the analysis of groups such as Oxfam. In investigating Oxfam's own perceptions of its context and the meanings of its agency, we discover an anti‐political perspective derived from an encounter between Oxfam's longstanding commitment to liberal internationalism and globalization discourse. Existing scholarship has insufficiently identified the local or parochial nature of the identities of global civil society actors.

The “Other Campaign:” The EZLN and New Forms of Politics in Mexico and the United States

This article examines the relationship between the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and US based immigrant social movements in their newest political initiative, “the Other Campaign.” Based on in-depth interviews with activists from four immigrant based social movements, this article explores how the political discourse of the EZLN's “Other Campaign” has created a space for immigrants to participate in the transnational political action. It explores how the EZLN's discourse of “autonomy” has been appropriated in diverse ways by immigrant based community organizations in the US.

Towards a transatlantic dialogue in the study of immigrant political transnationalism

The purpose of this special issue is to establish to what extent the place in which immigrants settle (namely the region or country) might determine the types of political activity in which they engage. More precisely, we aim to ascertain whether and for what reasons different forms of transnational political activity develop in the United States and Europe. To achieve this rather ambitious goal, through looking at a series of case studies from Europe and the USA we try to identify the full range of such activities, while at the same time noting various similarities in the actions undertaken by communities based in the same area.

The Sangh Parivar and the Hindu Diaspora in the West: What Kind of "Long-Distance Nationalism"?

“Long-distance nationalism,” an expression coined by Benedict Anderson, is often used to refer to transnational political activities, but the dynamics of this expatriate nationalism tend to be neglected. Mere nostalgia or even spontaneous mobilizations are invoked to explain this phenomenon, but fail to explain the mechanisms that lie behind it. Using the example of Hindu nationalist movements, this paper seeks to highlight the implications of political entrepreneurs in the country of origin and the instrumental dimension of long-distance nationalism. The Sangh Parivar, a network of nationalist Hindu organizations, was replicated among the Hindu diaspora and its structure was literally exported by a centralized body located in India itself. The spread of the Sangh Parivar and of its Hindutva ideology abroad was greatly facilitated by local policies like multiculturalism and by the rise of racism in the countries of emigration. A comparison of Hindu nationalist outlets in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada brings to light two main factors instilling long-distance nationalism: a favorable local context for ethnic mobilization among migrants and a centralized organization in the country of origin. The engineering of long-distance Hindu nationalism from India questions the changing nature of nationalism in a globalized world.

Conceptualising the Emergence of Immigrants' Transnational Communities

Under which circumstances do immigrant transnational political activities emerge into a sustainable transnational community? First, this depends on the transnational political opportunity structure (TPOS) including both immigrant’s country of settlement and the (ancestral) country of origin. Governments’ integration and emigration models – that politically incorporate or exclude immigrants or emigrants – may invite or discourage transnational political action. Second, different models of citizenship of both countries, used to define a migrant’s membership in society, strongly influence the type of transnational activities. At the same time citizenship contains the norms, values, and loyalties immigrants have in their notion of acting as a good (transnational) citizen.

Migrant Membership as an Instituted Process: Transnationalization, the State and the Extra-Territorial Conduct of Mexican Politics

How should we conceptualize membership, citizenship and political community in a world where migrants and their home states increasingly maintain and cultivate their formal and informal ties? This study analyzes the extra-territorial conduct of Mexican politics and the emergence of new migrant membership practices and relations between migrants and home states. Standard globalist, transnationalist or citizenship theories cannot properly contextualize and analyze such practices. I propose that we rethink the concept of membership in a political community not only as a Marshallian status granted by states, but also as an instituted process embedded within four other institutions and processes: home state domestic politics; the home state's relationship to the world system; a semi-autonomous transnational civil society created in part by migration; and the context of reception of migrants in the United States. A main conclusion is that the state itself plays a key role in creating transnational political action by migrants and new migrant membership practices. The article draws on printed sources and interviews and ethnography done since 1990.