Diaspora Politics: Transnationalism from Above and from Below

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel examines migrants’ preferences and contributions to politics in their countries of origin. The session brings together projects examining the ways in which state (government institutions) and non-state actors (political parties, religious communities and organizations, supranational organizations) influence state-diaspora relations, as well as how migrants have asserted themselves as an independent political force in their homelands. Our papers shed light on the ways in which divided nationhood and multiple memberships produce a complicated and sometimes contradictory set of outcomes when it comes to political beliefs (political preferences: democracy versus populism/authoritarianism), behaviors (voting, protest, civic engagement), and belonging (identities, loyalties, connections with sending and receiving countries). Empirically, the session relies on evidence from North and South America (expats from the United States in Canada, Brazilians in Boston, Massachusetts), Europe/the European Union (Poland, Romania, Hungary – and communities of intra-EU migrants in Southern and Western Europe; Turkish diaspora in several receiving countries in Europe), as well as the Middle East (Palestine). Methodologically, papers use quantitative and qualitative methods, including surveys, in-depth interviews, ethnographies, exit polls, focus groups, media and social media analysis, policy and historical analyses. Our projects highlight the importance of transnational networks, political parties, religion and religious communities, migratory form and status, citizenship, as well as structure, history, and cultures of migration in determining the ways in which political entrepreneurs can tap into diaspora potential. The session reveals how the interaction between old and new migratory flows provides opportunities for defining and contesting the meaning of diaspora, through transnational interactions from above (state) and from below (society), against the backdrop of histories of migration and mobility.

Sub Unit

• Division 52: Migration & Citizenship

Individual Presentations

• Expatriate Populism: Religion & the Authoritarian Right among Brazilian Migrants - Taylor C. Boas, Boston University

• Membership and Transnational Campaign Activism in Democrats Abroad Canada - James A. McCann, Purdue University; Ronald B. Rapoport, College of William & Mary

• Free Movement and the Specter of Perpetual Return - Ruxandra Paul, Amherst College

• Cross-Party Voting in the Turkish Diaspora - Gulcan Saglam, University of Georgia; Michael Ahn Paarlberg, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Diaspora Activism and Demobilization in the Middle East - Dana El Kurd, University of Richmond; Alexei Sisulu Abrahams, Harvard Kennedy School; Nasir Almasri, Boston University

Chair

• Katrina Burgess Tufts University

Discussant

• Gerasimos Tsourapas University of Glasgow