Diaspora mobilisation for conflict and post-conflict reconstruction: contextual and comparative dimensions

ABSTRACT

This special issue seeks to move the scholarly conversation beyond notions of conflict-generated diasporas as simply agents of conflict or peace. The field is ripe to unpack the notion of context for diaspora mobilisation in International Relations, the focus and novelty of this special issue. Theorising in this volume goes beyond current prevalent thinking that contexts are host-states in which diasporas live, and original home-states to which they are transnationally connected. The emphasis here is that diasporas have linkages to different contexts, and that their embeddedness in these contexts – simultaneously or sequentially in time – either shapes their mobilizations or is shaped by them. The volume theorises about spatialities and temporalities of diaspora engagement: it emphasises spatial notions such as multi-sited embeddedness, positionality, and translocalism on the one side, and temporal notions such as critical junctures, transformative events, simultaneity, crises, and durability of conflicts on the other. This collection further adds new thematic areas to current scholarly inquiry, opening the discussion beyond interest in diaspora remittances, economic development, and extraterritorial voting. The authors take little-explored paths to examine diasporas as agents in transitional justice processes, contested sovereignty, and fragile and de facto states, as well as in civic and ethnic-based activism.

KEYWORDS:

• Diaspora mobilisation
• conflict
• peace
• post-conflict reconstruction
• contested sovereignty
• weak states
• transitional justice
• genocide recognition
• nationalism
• spatiality
• temporality
• positionality
• translocality
• multi-sited embeddedness
• transnational social fields
• International Relations
• comparative studies

Introduction

In 2007 a collective volume edited by Hazel Smith and Paul Stares defined a debate among an emerging group of scholars, seeking to understand whether diasporas are ‘peace-makers or peace-wreckers’ when relating to original homelands experiencing conflict and post-conflict reconstruction. The book sought to challenge simplistic notions that diasporas are either moderate or radical actors, and brought empirical evidence that they can be both. In the book’s aftermath, scholarship grew exponentially to emphasise that there is no direct relationship between conflict-generated diasporas and their conflict-prone agency, but that conditions, causal mechanisms, and processes of diaspora mobilisation need to be deeply scrutinised (Mavroudi 2008; Orjuela 2008; Brinkerhoff 2009, 2011, 2016; Koinova 2009, 2011, 2014; Lyons and Mandaville 2010; Carling, Erdal, and Horst 2012; Adamson 2013; Horst 2013; Karabegovic 2014; Cochrane 2015; Abramson 2017). Comparative work began to emerge, primarily in illustrative ways, drawing empirical evidence from the same diaspora in different countries, and theoretically emphasising diaspora agency (Brinkerhoff 2016) and possibilities and limits to diaspora cooperation (Carment and Sadjied 2017).

The field is ripe to unpack the notion of context for diaspora mobilisation in International Relations, the focus and novelty of this special issue. Theorising in this volume goes beyond current prevalent thinking that contexts are host-states in which diasporas live, and original home-states to which they are transnationally connected. The emphasis here is that diasporas have linkages to different contexts beyond home-states and host-states, and that their embeddedness in these contexts – simultaneously or sequentially in time – either shapes their mobilizations is shaped by them. The volume theorises about spatialities and temporalities of diaspora engagement: it emphasises spatial notions such as multi-sited embeddedness, positionality, and translocalism on the one side, and temporal notions such as critical junctures, transformative events, simultaneity, crises, and durability of conflicts on the other.

This special issue also adds new thematic areas to current scholarly inquiry, widening the discussion beyond interest in diaspora remittances, economic development, and extraterritorial voting. The authors take little-explored paths to examine diasporas as agents in transitional justice (TJ) processes, contested sovereignty and fragile and de facto states, and civic and ethnic-based activism. These themes were at the core of the workshop, ‘Diaspora Mobilisation for Conflict and Post-conflict Reconstruction: Comparative and Contextual Dimensions’ at Warwick University in November 2015, where papers were presented as part of the academic activities of the European Research Council Project ‘Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty’.

This introductory article to the special issue offers a brief summary of arguments from the diasporas, conflict and peace literature, and those related to international development, and shows how other thematic areas could benefit from including and mainstreaming diaspora mobilisation research. The following sections introduce emerging scholarship on spatial and temporal dynamics in diaspora mobilisation. Detailed questions, arguments, methods, and comparative empirical cases of each article are followed by brief conclusions about potential avenues for future research.

Novel themes: diasporas and Transitional Justice, contested sovereignty and fragile states, and civic vs. Ethnic activism

Scholarship on the effects of diaspora mobilizations on conflict and post-conflict processes is relatively new, and can be traced back to the early 2000s. On the one side, world politics was transformed after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on 9/11/2001 and subsequent attacks in Madrid (2004) and London (2005), which intensified in 2015–2016 with attacks in Paris (2015), Brussels (2016), Berlin (2016), Nice (2016), Manchester (2017), and London (2017). These brought to the fore the role of individuals of a foreign country background entangled in terrorist activities, and gave a boost to a security-driven and securitisation agenda related to transnational diaspora politics (Byman et al. 2001; Zimmerman and Rosenau 2009). Previously, diaspora transnationalism had primarily been a theoretical domain of sociologists and anthropologists (Safran 1991; Cohen 1997; Anderson 1998). Concurrently with concerns about terrorism, conflict scholars became preoccupied with diasporas having detrimental effects on domestic conflicts by radicalising from abroad (Collier and Hoeffler 2000; Kaldor 2001; Koinova 2011), maintaining conflict networks (Adamson 2005), conflict-prone institutions (Shain 2002), fund-raising for radical factions (Hockenos 2003), and taking arms and joining local warfare from abroad (Perritt 2008). To counterbalance a trend to see diasporas as only conflict-prone actors, other arguments emerged showing that they can be engaged in peace processes (Smith and Stares 2007; Orjuela 2008), international development (Kapur 2004; Newland and Patrick 2004; Brinkerhoff 2008), and post-conflict reconstruction (Kleist 2008; Hall and Kostic 2009; Koinova 2011; Karabegovic 2014; Hall 2016). Driven by particularistic identities, diasporas nevertheless mobilise as transnational social movements, acting on political opportunities and constraints (Wayland 2004; Koinova 2014), and using brokerage, framing, ethnic outbidding, lobbying, coalition-building, diffusion, and scale shift among other causal mechanisms (Koinova 2011, 2014; Adamson 2013; Adamson and Koinova 2013; Koinova and Karabegovic 2017). With the increasing importance of social media, diasporas also engage in both online and offline politics (Brinkerhoff 2009; Moss 2016).

Going beyond the current state of the art, this special issue opens new avenues for the study of diaspora politics in International Relations. It emphasises three new research agendas: on diasporas in TJ processes, contested sovereignty in weak and fragile states, and civil- and ethnic-based diaspora activism. Each of these agendas is well developed in the respective mainstream literatures, but still lacks sensitivity or analytical capacity to make sense of the role of diasporas as nonstate actors. The articles in this volume present some of the initial academic work in these fields. These articles have the capacity to shift the ways in which mainstream literatures view the political world beyond state borders, and incorporate the influence of diasporas into their domestic and international political agendas. I discuss each of these research agendas in turn.

Scholarship on diasporas and TJ is still in inception, primarily empirically driven, and focused on scattered cases. Regarding legal processes, Liberia’s truth commission incorporated the diaspora, even if not always effectively (Wiebelhaus-Brahm 2010). The Montreal-based Haitian diaspora was instrumental in the creation of the 1995 Haiti truth commission (Hoogenboom and Quinn 2011). Refugees in West Timor were interviewed for the East Timor truth commission (Young and Park 2009). Cambodia’s truth commission also considered the displaced (Duthie 2011). The U.S.-based Iraqi diaspora has been engaged in establishing a legal tribunal (Haider 2014). Diaspora members have also been instrumental in filing legal claims in Belgium and France against Cambodian Khmer Rouge leaders (Mey 2008). In Spain they filed a legal case against Chile’s dictator Augusto Pinochet (Roht-Arriaza 2006). In terms of memorialisation, in Sweden diasporas originating from the 1990s wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina have transformed their conflict-generated attitudes and moved towards reconciliation (Kostic 2012; Hall 2016). In contrast, those in the Netherlands retained much of their victim-based approaches (Koinova 2016). We have shown that these differences are largely due to the host-land environments, which are either supportive or conflict-prone regarding the diasporas, and provide opportunities and constraints to mobilise to memorialise past atrocities from local to global levels of engagement (Koinova and Karabegovic 2017).

Four articles in this special issue bring a leap of theoretical sophistication regarding the existing literature on TJ. They consider different aspects of dealing with the past of mass human rights violations in transition from war to peace. Orjuela shows how the field of TJ itself starts to become an international opportunity structure for diasporas to mobilise upon, since it has been growing exponentially in the past decade and opening a plethora of discursive and material opportunities for mobilisation. She moves away from a single thematic focus, and shows how diaspora engagement with commemoration, truth-seeking, and legal justice in relation to atrocities in Rwanda and Sri Lanka is a holistic endeavour. Karabegovic opens the field by emphasising the importance of education in TJ processes, not considered regarding diaspora mobilisation so far. Using ample evidence from activism among the Bosnian diaspora in Europe, she shows that diasporas have the capacity to challenge local policies in the educational realm, and potentially transform post-conflict societies. Godwin’s article concentrates on how diasporas formulate shifting demands during foreign policy lobbying, such as ceasefire, international access to a conflict zone, declaration of an event as genocide, and prosecution of government officials at the International Criminal Court. Genocide recognition and ICC criminal prosecutions constitute an integral part of the conversation on TJ processes. His account introduces role theory to this scholarly inquiry. Godwin uses evidence from the Tamil diaspora in the U.K. and Canada. Also Godin’s work demonstrates how Congolese women in the diaspora are asking the international community to get involved to bring justice and end impunity to criminals involved in rape and atrocities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Scholarship on contested sovereignty, and weak and fragile states, proliferated after the end of the Cold War. Intrastate conflicts such as those in Abkhasia, Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burundi, Chechnya, Kosovo, Iraq, Nagorno-Karabakh, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Rwanda, and others have become a new security concern. Weak and failing state institutions have been shown to be a breeding ground for terrorist and secessionist activities, lacking capacities to provide public goods and order, and often plagued by insurgencies that seek to carve out territories for themselves (Carment and James 1997; Rotberg 2003; Fearon and Laitin 2004; Newman 2009; Coggins 2014). In such places, statehood has been contested through challenges to its internal and external sovereignty (Krasner 1999), where international actors have developed ‘shared sovereignty’ (Krasner 2004) with local actors in order to govern and provide peace, security, and governance. In the past decade, prominent indices have been developed to measure degrees in which institutions are weak (such as those published by Foreign Policy 2005–2016; USAID 2005; Brookings Institution (Rice and Patrick 2008); Index on African Governance (Rotberg and Gisselquist 2009), and World Bank (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi 2009). Challenges to state sovereignty, domestic and international, have not merely involved external actors such as major states and international organisations. It has remained little understood that they also involve diasporas that are ‘outside the state’ but ‘inside the people’ (Shain and Barth 2003) in specific ways.

The ERC ‘Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty’ project, under whose auspices the November 2015 workshop was held, has provided intellectual leadership to show that diasporas relate not simply to conflict processes and conflict spirals, as discussed by Bercovitch 2007 and Smith and Stares 2007, but to specific challenges to statehood. Diasporas can be linked to de facto states, such as Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Palestine, which enjoy a certain degree of governance and domestic autonomy; and to weak states such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq, which enjoy domestic and international sovereignty: they are members of the United Nations, but their domestic institutions are weak and divided respectively on ethnonationalist and sectarian lines. A stateless diaspora, such as the Kurdish, can be linked to multiple states and territories in the Middle East, with no state of its own. Hence, how diasporas relate to different types of states and deeper statehood dynamics is crucial to understanding diaspora mobilizations.

Four articles in this special issue provide novel thematic approaches by integrating diaspora mobilizations into theorising about contested sovereignty and weak and fragile states. Koinova’s article takes a long-term perspective to show that critical junctures and transformative events that take place when states collapse, secessionist movements ensue, and local governance is endorsed by international actors, provide different incentives for diasporas to mobilise abroad. She focuses on diaspora mobilizations for Palestinian and Kosovo statehood (2018). The article by Carment and Calleja shows that different types of state fragility provide different linkages between home and host-state. Authority, legitimacy, and capacity are related not simply to domestic actors within a certain state, but to diasporas engaging from abroad with fragile state dynamics as well. The authors use empirical evidence from both states, which have experienced recent violent conflicts (Afghanistan, Ukraine, Somalia) and those where intrastate violence has not been prevalent (Ghana, Haiti, and India) (2018). Karabegovic’s article shows that education is entrenched in fragmented state institutions and school systems, which leave youth rooted in dominant conflict-based ideologies. Using examples from the Bosnian diaspora in comparative perspective, she shows how diaspora mobilizations have sought to provide ideational and practical alternatives (2018). Mavroudi’s paper demonstrates how crises in weak states do not necessarily create diaspora mobilizations, as durable and long-term instabilities of institutions and processes in the original homeland make diasporas jaded and uninterested to actively participate. Her evidence is derived from diasporas linked to Greece and Palestine (2018).

The third novel line of research, deepening the discussion about statehood, is to consider whether diasporas mobilise for civic or ethnic purposes. In states divided alongside ethnic and sectarian lines, the international norm is to seek to bridge divided societies through common citizenship to a common state, and to make diasporas less prone to perpetuate what Anderson (1998) calls ‘long-distance nationalism’. Ignatieff (1994) made by now a classic distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism: Civic nationalism is associated with belonging to common citizenship, regardless of ethnic or religious creed, where citizens carry equal rights and share a set of political values and practices, and is considered democratic as the sovereignty is vested within all citizens; ethnic nationalism, by contrast, is particularistic in nature, emphasises common blood as a basis for communal belonging, ethnic majority rule, and unity by ascription by an identity-based community. As Breuilly argues, by contrast to the civic nationalisms on the basis of which statehood was developed in Western Europe, where allegiances to state institutions were dominant – to the Parliament in the U.K., or to the Constitution in France – the relationship between nationalism and the state has been of different nature in the European periphery and other parts of the developing world. Cleavages have been strong in ethnic, linguistic, and cultural terms in Eastern Europe and the post-communist space, in sectarian and pan-Arab sentiments turned against British and French colonialism in the Middle East, and in ethnic and tribal cleavages mixed up with post-colonial dynamics in Africa (Breuilly 1994).

Despite the importance of diaspora engagement from abroad for civic or ethnic purposes, this dimension is not theorised upon yet systematically. It is important to keep in mind the distinction between civic and ethnic practices from abroad, as development processes are not neutral about diaspora engagement with remittances, foreign direct investment, small enterprises, or institution-building. While working on development initiatives, diasporas, states, and international organisations need to look deeper into questions such as: For whom do diasporas mobilise from abroad? Whom do they endorse as part of the ‘people’ that constitute the demos of a state transnationally? If they become engaged in institution-building, do they openly or tacitly endorse members of their own ethnic or sectarian group, or are they open to engage with a variety of other members of the polity? If they become engaged in business, do they deliberately hire only people from their ethnic or sectarian group, or are they open to others? So far, a few works have engaged with this subject. Diasporas linked to states with full domestic and international sovereignty are more likely to endorse civic democratisation practices than those linked to states experiencing contested sovereignty (Koinova 2009). De facto states, seeking international state recognition, could be pressured by international organisations to make statements to incorporate diasporas abroad on a civic principle, but they are more prone actually to engage only diasporas of their dominant nationality, since state sovereignty processes have not been completed, as in the Kosovo case (Koinova 2014). Diaspora individuals can also become engaged in civic activism when natural- and human-caused disasters take place in countries of origin and temporarily unite different ethnic and sectarian groups abroad, and upon altruistic or utilitarian interests of certain diaspora entrepreneurs to advance a civic creed (Koinova, Karabegovic, and Kadhum 2016).

Three papers in this special issue advance the ethnic versus civic diaspora mobilisation discussion. Emphasising the effects of the host-states on diaspora civic participation, Horst shows how members of the Somali diaspora, who have spent time in the U.S. and Norway, have developed hybrid identities and engaged in multi-sited civic activism (2018). Godin’s paper shows that diaspora members in Europe, socialised with ideas about gender rights and the criminality of rape, have not shied away from opening a dark chapter in the recent history of the Democratic Republic of Congo. They have been mobilising at different levels to consider the lack of appropriate response by the international community to address gender and human rights violations in the DRC, particularly the application of women’s rights as universal rights (2018). Karabegovic shows how diaspora members, acknowledging the ethnic divisions in the fragmented state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, have sought to develop transnational practices, opening opportunities for civic engagement (2018). In all those accounts, having what I called elsewhere ‘autonomy’ from domestic political processes (Koinova 2012) has been crucial to develop a sense of civic identity and initiatives, which would not be able to grow or develop in the polarised spaces of ethnic or sectarian domestic politics.

Focus on context: spatial and temporal dimensions

This special issue is at the forefront of theoretical thinking about context regarding diaspora mobilisation for conflict and post-conflict reconstruction in original homelands. In the long-term debate in political science about the primacy of either structure or agency in mobilisation processes, this special issue focuses more on the element of structure, while agency is seen as shaped by structures or eventually shaping them. This collection provides a complementary view to another recent account in the study of diaspora politics, Jennifer Brinkerhoff’s (2016) book Institutional Reform and Diaspora Entrepreneurs, emphasising individual agency and the role of diaspora entrepreneurs as born or made leaders. In the accounts of this special issue, diaspora activism is also present, but it is embedded in context. Several authors engage with scholarship on transnational social movements and its theoretical leverage to analyse contexts by way of attention to political opportunities and constraints, be they material, institutional, or discursive (Tilly 1978; Snow and Benford 1992; Tarrow 1998, 2005; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001; Della Porta and Tarrow 2005; Koopmans et al. 2005). In this sense, the authors speak to already existing accounts applying the transnational social movements’ literature to diaspora politics, showing that diasporas are affected by domestic or international structures (Wayland 2004; Adamson 2005; Koinova 2009; Bauböck and Faist 2010). Diasporas frame their mobilisation claims in ways that resonate with actors and networks embedded in their environments (Haney and Vanderbush 1999, Koinova 2011; Adamson 2013; Brkanic 2016). Nevertheless, this special issue goes beyond engaging transnational social movement scholarship to account for context in diaspora mobilisation processes.

This special issue is original in its interdisciplinary endeavour to bring together a variety of literatures in discussion with diaspora and migration studies. These literatures are either more recently seeking to incorporate diaspora politics – such as TJ, education, and youth, gender-based mobilizations, and geography – or traditional but focused in a different way on ethnicity and diversity. The weak states literature has been traditionally preoccupied with territorial demands by autonomist or secessionist elites challenging central authority, which has little capacity to control challengers within their borders. Foreign policy scholarship has been engaged with ethnic lobbying, but primarily from domestic sources. What binds these literatures together is the theoretical focus on context, and issues of spatiality and temporality related to diaspora mobilisation, as well as a methodological focus on comparison.

Issues of spatiality started being incorporated into mainstream conflict processes in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when quantitative methods scholars became increasingly interested in using GPS technology and developing data sets to include geospatial data into conflict analysis. Pioneering among them was the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. As valuable as such studies have been to understand clustering of conflicts in specific geographic regions, analysing them by using only distances measured by longitude and latitude have not been sufficient to understand the ways diasporas mobilise (Koinova 2017b). More recently, an innovative edited volume by Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel (2016) has shown interesting ways in which peace and conflict can be ‘spatialised’ in qualitative accounts as well. This book provides ample evidence as to how in conflict regions border areas, hotels, and camps can provide spaces where peace and conflict take place.

In diaspora politics I made an early endeavour to theorise about diaspora positionality and the power diasporas derive from relationship to different contexts (2012), and continued theorising later in more detail (2014, 2017b, 2018). Adamson and Koinova (2013) have also shown that London as a global city provides a specific space for diasporas to mobilise with the clustering of institutions, networks, and resources conducive for diaspora mobilisation. More recently scholarship has started growing from different directions and scholarly networks to show that diasporas mobilize beyond a classic triangular relationship model considering interactions between host-states, home-states, and diasporas, but do so in a variety of spaces, such as cities, online, refugee camps, supranational organizations, sites of global visibility, and spaces contiguous or distant from the homeland (Brinkerhoff 2009; Adamson 2016; Brkanic 2016; Gabiam and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2016; Kok and Rogers 2016; Van Hear and Cohen 2017; Koinova and Karabegovic 2017; Koinova 2018). Some of these scholars have built on works emphasising the effects of space, place, scale, and positionality (Johnston 1973; Lefebvre 1974; Sheppard 2002; Brenner 2004; Sassen 2007; Herod 2011), which have preoccupied geography scholars for several decades.

The authors of this collection take the issue of context in diaspora mobilisations further. Spatial contexts could be territorial states, in line with Weber (1919) classic definition of the state, providing the legitimate use of force within a given territory (Carment and Calleja 2018). They can be also sub-state contexts, such as cities or regions (Horst and Nur 2016; Karabegovic 2018; Koinova 2017b) or multi-sited contexts (Godin 2018; Horst 2018; Karabegovic 2018; Koinova 2017b, 2018; Mavroudi 2018). Contexts can also be sociospatial, as diaspora entrepreneurs are embedded in relationships with others, and often function in transnational social spaces (Faist 1998; Pries 2001) or transnational social fields (Levitt and Glick-Schiller 2004). Their positionality in these contexts endows them with certain powers relative to others when exposed to critical events in the original homeland (Koinova 2018). Contexts can also be nontangible arenas, spaces in which clusters of debates, international requirements, and programmes durably take place, as in the case of TJ processes (Orjuela 2018). In these arenas, diaspora entrepreneurs agree, contest, and negotiate with others (Godin 2018; Mavroudi 2018; Orjuela 2018), and what happens ‘there’ becomes negotiated ‘here’ directly and indirectly (Godwin 2018; Horst 2018; Mavroudi 2018; Koinova 2018).

This special issue is also concerned with linkages between diasporas embedded in different contexts. Durable linkages across borders provide structural constraints and opportunities for diasporas to mobilise upon, beyond the structures established within states or by state-to-state interactions in the international system. A novel discussion on linkages in transnational diaspora politics connects to an important debate in International Relations about the structuring effects of social networks and durable interactions across borders in conflict and peace processes (Hafner-Burton and Montgomery 2006; Goddard 2009; Koinova 2013; Staniland 2014), and ‘linkage vs. leverage’ debates related to European Union enlargement, democratisation, and competitive authoritarianism (Vachudova 2005; Levitsky and Way 2010). In these debates, linkages across borders are seen as the structural factors that influence or determine mobilizations, whereas agency and its ability to exercise power over other actors in the form of leverage politics are part of the analysis, but are deemphasized. In the accounts of this special issue, translocal networks, in which diasporas often mobilise extensively, link one territorial location in the homeland to many others abroad (Godin 2018; Karabegovic 2018; Koinova and Karabegovic 2017). Depending on other linkages between diasporas and ethnic brethren in the homeland, events and processes in one part of the world affect diaspora entrepreneurs in another unevenly (Carment and Calleja 2018; Godwin 2018; Koinova 2017b, 2018), not least due to different positionalities derived from a variety of contexts and their interstitial spaces (Koinova 2017b). Linkages across borders can also require different framings (Godin 2018; Mavroudi 2018) to make feasible claims and lobby for homeland-oriented goals.

In contrast to some scarce but still existing accounts considering spatiality in diaspora mobilisations, issues of temporality have been even less theorised upon. Hence, this special issue puts forward the explicit theorising about aspects of time related to diaspora mobilisations for conflict and post-conflict processes. The authors bring complementarity to some studies on migrant mobility, and further introduce novel aspects of timing characteristic for diaspora mobilisations. In migrant mobility studies, ample scholarly accounts have shown that it is too simplistic to think of migration in linear terms, starting with migrants leaving a sending state, going through their arriving in a host-state, and ending with their integration or assimilation in a host-state (Meeus 2012; Robertson 2014). By now it has been acknowledged that migrants can spend years in transit without having their temporary status resolved (Collyer, Düvell, and de Haas 2012). Their lives can evolve around single or multiple loops of circular migration, considered bringing a ‘triple win solution’ of benefits to sending, host-states, and migrants themselves (Wickramasekara 2011; Triandafyllidou 2013). Migrants can become returnees, after recent experience with migration or after long-term settlement in the diaspora (King and Christou 2011). Physical mobility can entail different ‘place attachments’ at different times, and form temporal identities considered rooted, suspended, or footloose (McHugh and Mings 1996).

While mobility studies have been theorising about time related to migration, diaspora studies have been concerned with the durable settlement of migrants and their descendants in host-states over generations. Some scholars have nevertheless emphasised that diaspora identities are oriented towards the past and can become ‘frozen’ in time, reflecting visions of a homeland, nation-state, or version of a language tied to a specific point of time in history, when refugees or migrants departed from the homeland (Cohen 1997; Tölölyan 2000; Shain 2002; Sheffer 2003). Such past-oriented identities, especially if entrenched in diaspora institutions (Shain 2002), can turn detrimental to peace-building in original homelands. This is so because in the meantime, multiple processes may have taken place in the homeland to advance the country’s economic, political, and social development. Others have shown that periods of violence in original homelands can have diaspora-formation (Sökefeld 2006) or radicalising effects (Demmers 2007; Koinova 2011) in mobilisations abroad. Yet the field has not been specifically concerned with theorising about other aspects of time so far.

The authors in this special issue make an important contribution by highlighting different temporal contexts and dynamics. Horst shows how Somali diaspora members, who had left Somalia as children, have been strongly affected by their long-term experience in the diaspora, when engaging with civic activism during longer or shorter return visits to the original homeland (2018). Orjuela uses the concept of past presencing to demonstrate how the past is experienced through present-day TJ claims and practices and in ways that are both personal and political for Tamil diaspora members. Three authors bring more lucidity regarding crises and how such crises shape differently diaspora mobilisations (2018). Koinova theorises about critical junctures and their capacities to transform state and societal structures by shifting the ‘center of gravity’ (Hannafi 2005) of diaspora engagement from outside the state into specific territories, and about transformative events and their capacities to transform the trajectory of already existing diaspora mobilisations (2018). Godin shows that mobilisation can increase in time of crisis, and can be reiterative and performed in cycles (2018). To the contrary, Mavroudi shows how the durability of crises in other parts of the world can have the opposite effect on diaspora mobilisations compared to short concentrated crises periods, and be conducive to diaspora fatigue and disengagement with homeland politics (2018). Godwin points to how factors usually associated with different contexts can simultaneously affect diaspora members who lobby in foreign policy processes (2018).

The authors pursue the comparative dimension vigorously. Each paper discusses diaspora mobilisation in at least two different contexts. While some comparisons are analysed in terms of multi-sitedness (Horst 2018; Karabegovic 2018; Mavroudi 2018; Koinova 2018), others use the comparative method or illustrative cases studies (Carment and Calleja 2018; Godin 2018; Godwin 2018), to arrive at middle-ranged generalisations. This volume is rich because of its empirical evidence from various parts of the globe. The individual abstracts discuss in more detail a plethora of cases from Africa, Asia, Balkans, Caucasus, Western and Eastern Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Most of the researchers have immersed themselves in multi-sited research, and conducted open-ended or semi-structured interviews with diasporas, policy-makers, NGOs, and international organisations. It is important to bear in mind that such empirics are difficult to obtain in conflict and post-conflict zones, or among guarded conflict-generated diasporas. In line with the central contextual dimensions of this volume, cases are analysed across space and time.

Individual contributions to the special issue

The following synopsis outlines the individual articles of the 10 established and promising early career scholars contributing to this special issue, listed in the order of their appearance.

In their article, ‘Diasporas and Fragile States – Beyond Remittances. Assessing the Theoretical and Policy Linkages’, David Carment and Rachel Calleja focus on fragile states and seek to refine the complex relationship between them and diaspora communities and their transnational social networks. While diasporas could mobilise to support homeland causes of fragile states, their interventions could still perpetuate or create unevenness in outcomes and inequalities in access to resources. The authors argue that the conversation needs to go beyond remittances, as diasporas could play other important roles to address shortcomings of weak states. A broader definition of state fragility is necessary to improve ways in which scholars analyse the relationship between diaspora and state, and to highlight linkages between home and host-states. They also identify additional factors that can contribute to a reduction of state fragility and evaluate these against six cases of fragile states: Afghanistan, Ghana, Haiti, India, Ukraine, and Somalia (2018).

In her article, ‘Critical Junctures and Transformative Events in Diaspora Mobilization for Kosovo and Palestinian Statehood’, Maria Koinova puts on the scholarly map the study of critical junctures and transformative events in diaspora politics, and how they take place in one part of the globe and affect diaspora mobilisation in another. Critical junctures have the capacity to transform international and state structures and institutions, and change the position of a strategic centre pursuing a homeland-oriented goal from ‘outside’ a homeland territory to ‘inside’ that territory, and vice versa. Transformative events are less powerful and have the capacity primarily to change diaspora mobilisation trajectories. Diaspora positionality in transnational social fields serves in the transmission of such effects from one global location to another. Koinova also argues that a classic triangular relationship between diasporas, home-states, and host-states is increasingly considered no longer valid: critical junctures and transformative events can emanate from different points of the transnational social field, not only from home-states and host-states, as she demonstrates empirically on the diaspora mobilisation for Kosovo and Palestinian statehood (Koinova 2018).

In her article, ‘Deconstructing Diasporic Mobilization at a Time of Crisis: Perspectives from the Palestinian and Greek Diasporas’, Elizabeth Mavroudi focuses on the difficulties that diasporas face when seeking to help the homeland at a time of political and economic crisis. Using qualitative research on the Greek and Palestinian diasporas, she argues that it is wrong to assume that long-distance nationalism and diasporic obligation will galvanise diasporic populations into supporting the state in times of crisis. Diasporas cannot be necessarily relied upon to help, even if they have strong sociocultural connections to a homeland. Feelings are heightened in times of crisis, but they do not necessarily translate into direct action. This is especially the case at times of prolonged crisis, when earlier efforts to help have been futile. Diasporas find it difficult to be motivated and mobilise in meaningful ways. Many question the impact of their efforts, if they do not see positive outcomes over time, have no ways to voice their political views in the homeland, or are opposed to or challenging government policies and practices (2018).

In his article, ‘Winning Westminster-Style: Tamil Diaspora Interest Group Mobilization in Canada and the UK’, Matthew Godwin argues that the convergence of foreign policy lobbying studies, diaspora studies in host-states and to a certain degree of TJ processes, offers fertile ground to theorise about the transnational dimensions of diaspora interest groups lobby activities. Using a comparative study of mobilizations of the Tamil diaspora in the U.K. and Canada, his article relies on role theory for theoretical leverage to account for diaspora mobilizations. He also shows how factors associated with different contexts could affect success in foreign policy lobbying, defined through a variety of outcomes. The paper argues that the Tamil diaspora in both countries impacted on host country foreign policy, but the effects were more powerful in the U.K. than in Canada (2018).

In her article, ‘Mobilizing Diasporas for Justice: Opportunity Structures and the Presencing of a Violent Past’, Camilla Orjuela investigates how the global TJ discourse and practice – and the related controversies and conflicts – make up an important context for diaspora mobilisation, and how diaspora groups engage with it and attempt to shape it. The central idea of this article is that there are increasingly globalised mechanisms and norms of TJ, which can be viewed as opportunity structures – political, legal, and discursive – shaping diaspora mobilisation. The article explores diaspora engagement in commemoration, truth-seeking, and legal justice in relation to atrocities in Rwanda and Sri Lanka. It considers how divides within the diaspora and their political projects are played out and pursued through TJ mechanisms and debates. The article makes use of the concept ‘past presencing’ to reveal how the past is experienced and performed in the present through TJ and attributed both personal and political meanings (2018).

In her article, ‘Diaspora and Transitional Justice: Mobilization Towards Youth and Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, Dzeneta Karabegovic brings to the fore the importance of education for diaspora mobilisation in TJ processes. It seeks to problematise that local and international actors neglect to launch complicated educational reforms, where programmes directed at youth in post-conflict societies are limited. This article connects the academic literature on diaspora engagement and TJ on the one hand, and education and TJ on the other. Findings are based on multi-sited fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, Sweden, the U.K., and France. The article shows how diaspora mobilisation initiatives can challenge existing ethnic policies in civic ways and find intermediate solutions through attempts to transform post-conflict environments. This mobilisation can be based on collaboration or competition. Most important, it needs support from local actors and homeland institutions in order to succeed a TJ agenda in post-conflict societies (2018).

In her article, ‘Making a Difference in Mogadishu? Multi-sited Embeddedness Among Young Norwegian-Somalis and Somali-Americans’, Cindy Horst argues that civic participation today is increasingly multi-sited and engaged in, between and across specific locations. Growing numbers of people experience multi-sited embeddedness, understood as a sense of belonging to and engaging with multiple communities. The article focuses on those who left Somalia as young children or were born to Somali parents abroad, and asks what motivates these youth to (re)turn to Somalia for short-term or long visits to their original homeland and participate in civic terms. Horst identifies how a hybrid, multi-sited, or embedded sense of identity impacts civic engagement in several locations. She advocates for the study of diaspora mobilizations in nonbinary ways, as young people’s civic engagement impacts their sense of belonging as much as it influences their civic actions. Empirical data are derived from a wealth of in-depth interviews and focus groups with individuals of Somali background in Garowe, Hargeisa, Mogadishu, Oslo, and the Twin Cities in the U.S. (2018).

In her article, ‘Breaking the Silences, Breaking the Frames: A Gendered Diasporic Analysis of Sexual Violence in the DR Congo’, Marie Godin puts at the forefront of her analysis of women’s diaspora activism and their contribution to post-conflict processes. Her article demonstrates political activism by Congolese women in the diaspora in both the U.K. and Belgium. Their activities are assessed analytically from the perspective of the mechanism of ‘framing’, used traditionally in the social movement literature and more recently integrated into the study of diaspora mobilisations. The paper discusses diagnostic, motivational, and prognostic frames, used against sexual- and gender-based violence (SGBV) perpetrated towards Congolese women in the protracted conflict in the DRC. Framing strategies vary among Congolese diaspora women’s groups depending on the national context in which they are embedded. Different narratives are also discerned, which transcend specific groups and are common among Congolese women beyond national borders.

Concluding remarks and recommendations for future research

This special edited issue, Diaspora Mobilisation for Conflict and Post-conflict Reconstruction: Contextual and Comparative Dimensions, presents a qualitative shift in advancing the field of diaspora mobilisation in International Relations in three major ways. First, moving beyond dichotomous thinking about diasporas as ‘peace-makers’ and ‘peace-wreckers’ (Smith and Stares 2007), the special issue opens conversations and consolidates early discussions in the fields of diaspora mobilisations for TJ, contested sovereignty and weak and fragile states, and civic and ethnic nationalism. While established in the scholarly literature, these three fields have been surprisingly cautious about the agency of diasporas as nonstate actors and their embeddedness in different contexts. It is important not to compartmentalise the study of diaspora mobilisation, but to mainstream it in relevant literatures. Such mainstreaming could bring important expansion of disciplines such as International Relations and Comparative Politics, where a focus on the state and state-related processes is still predominant. Even if the state continues to play an important role in shaping domestic and international institutions with which diaspora members interact, as well as the available material resources and incentives, in a world of increasingly networked populations, diasporas will have an agency of its own, and affect the state from within or without, so it would not be possible to omit or discard them. Similar to gender studies, which decades ago was a small and self-sustained field, which over time became mainstreamed in scholarship and policy processes, attention to diaspora mobilisation could become an integral part of political, economic, and social analyses, which at present have a blind spot for diasporas as agents and their contextual embeddedness.

Second, this special issue makes a major contribution by theorising about spatial and temporal contexts in which diasporas are embedded, as well as about the linkages between diasporas in different contexts that shape their activism. In this sense, this collection presents a leap of theoretical sophistication by delving deeper into spatial concepts such as multi-sited embeddedness, positionality, translocality, and the structuring power of durable diaspora linkages across different contexts, and temporal concepts such as critical junctures, transformative events, crises, durability, simultaneity, and past presencing that impact diaspora mobilisation and its effects on domestic and international politics. Beyond considering diaspora agency as an actor in world politics, mainstream literatures need to be further aware that diasporas are not free-floating individuals, groups, or networks, but are embedded in contexts – local, national, supranational, and global – that shape their activism and are eventually shaped by it.

Third, this collection pays special attention to comparison. Each of the articles brings empirical evidence from at least two cases, whether of the same diaspora embedded in different contexts or different diasporas embedded in a variety of contexts. Such comparisons make it feasible to highlight contextual differences, and to arrive more rigorously at mid-ranged generalisations, to apply across space and to a certain degree across time. Mid-range generalisations have traditionally been in the remit of Comparative Politics as a discipline using the comparative method. Yet in recent years they are becoming an important level of analysis in International Relations, plagued by the inability of grand theories (realism, liberalism, constructivism, Marxism) to account for the decentralised aspects of international affairs (Mearsheimer and Walt 2013). I have also argued elsewhere that mid-range generalisations are best suited when studying diasporas in context, especially when considering sociospatial dynamics in International Relations (Koinova 2017b). Hence, comparisons of empirical evidence derived from different parts of the world, as in this volume, provide valuable conclusions about the not-yet-theorised aspects of the world we live in.

Attention to context invites further scholarly investigations into multiple contexts over time. Future studies would benefit from bringing further examination of context through quantitative methods. There have been only a few accounts using quantitative analyses related to diaspora mobilizations so far (Collier and Hoeffler 2000; Gamlen et al. 2013; Ragazzi 2014). These have been based on data sets derived from secondary sources. Hall’s (2016) survey on conflict-generated diasporas in Sweden and Bosnia-Herzegovina is the most advanced so far to capture attitudes of diaspora individuals towards post-conflict processes. Further survey-based or transactional analysis data sets would expand the validity of current qualitative findings, especially if focusing on nonelite individuals to capture larger variations of diaspora behaviours. In this context, the ERC Project ‘Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty’ used qualitative comparative studies derived from diaspora elites (entrepreneurs) who organise and mobilise others. The project is currently conducting a survey of nonelite individuals among nine country groups of conflict-generated diasporas in the U.K., Germany, and Sweden, randomly selected through the polling process. In this way, findings can be triangulated and also assessed depending on the types of diaspora agents.

There is also more room for further studies with qualitative methodology. The study of causal mechanisms has been put on the map of scholarship, but needs more theoretical rigour. Causal mechanisms – such as brokerage, framing, ethnic outbidding, lobbying, coalition-building, diffusion, and scale shift – have been primarily applied from social movement theories to diaspora mobilisation studies (Koinova 2011, 2014; Adamson 2013; Adamson and Koinova 2013; Godin 2018; Godwin 2018; Koinova and Karabegovic 2017). It would be further beneficial to scholarship to trace the exact causal pathways in which those causal mechanisms concatenate to develop processes. In this sense, the Godin's work in this volume presents an advanced discussion of the mechanism of ‘framing’ and its implications on diaspora politics (2018). Also, in forthcoming multi-methods research, using both qualitative and quantitative dimensions, statistically significant relationships established between variables of interest and diaspora mobilisation as an explanatory variable could be complemented with case studies, used to rigorously trace the causal mechanisms linking those variables with concrete empirical evidence.

Finally, this special issue, even if not directly considering the rapidly changing world politics in 2016 and early 2017 due to a growth of populist and nationalist movements in liberal democracies on the one side, and refugee movements on the other, alerts future scholarship of the need to analyse diasporas in contexts – spatial and temporal – and factor in linkages across borders. In a political world currently mainstreaming nationalism in the public sphere, it remains to be seen to what degree transnational diaspora politics will remain an autonomous activity across borders or will change.

Acknowledgments

This research has been conducted within the framework of the ERC Project ‘Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty’, grant no. 284198. I would like to express gratitude for helpful comments on this piece to Stuart Elden, Camilla Orjuela, Dzeneta Karabegovic, Marie Godin, and Alison Anderson.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Maria Koinova is a Reader in International Relations at Warwick University, Politics and International Studies Department, and Principal Investigator for the ERC Starting Grant "Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty”.