Suchergebnisse

The Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 sent shockwaves across the globe, mobilizing diaspora communities to organize forcefully against authoritarian regimes. Despite the important role that diasporas can play in influencing affairs in their countries of origin, little is known about when diaspora actors mobilize, how they intervene, or what makes them effective. This book addresses these questions, drawing on over 230 original interviews, fieldwork, and comparative analysis. Examining Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni mobilization from the US and Great Britain before and during the revolutions, Dana M. Moss presents a new framework for understanding the transnational dynamics of contention and the social forces that either enable or suppress transnational activism.

In 2011, the Arab Spring revolutionary movements that erupted across the Middle East galvanized supporters in the diaspora to work collectively for regime change and relief at home. Existing theories argue that diasporas residing in democratic states possess the requisite political opportunities and resources to mobilize on behalf of their home-countries and intervene in significant ways. However, this explanation cannot account for why diaspora movements only emerge and play a role in home-country crises under certain conditions. This dissertation therefore investigates 1) how members of the Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni diasporas in the US and Great Britain mobilized to support the 2011 uprisings, and asks 2) why the pace of their public emergence as regime opponents, their degree of intra-movement solidarity, the strength of their roles in the revolutions, and the short-term outcomes of their efforts varied significantly by national group. In order to explain this variation, this study analyzes three sets of data using grounded and process-tracing methods: 240 original interviews; ethnographic participant observations of Syrian-American pro-revolution events; and secondary sources on the diasporas and the revolutions. The findings demonstrate that diaspora mobilization dynamics are shaped by multi-level and relational factors that not only include political opportunities in the host-country, but also conditions in and diasporas' relations with relevant actors in the home-country—including sending-state regimes and opposition movements—and relevant third-parties, such as journalists and international institutions. I find that quotidian disruptions to any one of these conditions and relations produce corresponding changes in the strength and longevity of diasporas' collective actions. This study also demonstrates that activists overcome obstacles to transnational mobilization posed by hostile external conditions when they divert resources to establish full-time formal advocacy organizations. Though this strategic adaptation constrains their tactics, movements that do not make this adaptation are likely to die off. The establishment of a transnational organizational field also improves the capacity of diasporas to pursue rights and recognition in both the home- and host-countries over time. I conclude by discussing the theoretical implications of these findings for the study of social movements, diasporas, and conflict.

Studies of repression's effects on mobilization overwhelmingly focus on how severe repression affects the volume of protest, overlooking how activists perceive and experience a range of repressive tactics and how their tactical adaptations to this repertoire produce broader patterns of contention. This study therefore identifies repression's variegated forms and movements' corresponding responses using fifty-seven interviews with reform-oriented activists in Jordan, a 'liberalized' authoritarian state, obtained in 2011. The findings demonstrate that activists (1) transformed softer repression into valued opportunities for communication with officials, and (2) responded to harder forms by publicizing repression through protests and their alliance networks, which persuaded the image-conscious regime to temper its tactics and prompted both sides to return to bargaining. This dynamic exemplifies a process of contained escalation, which helps to explain why Jordan's Arab Spring remained nonrevolutionary. I conclude by discussing the implications for studies of repression and response in illiberal contexts. Adapted from the source document.

This article reexamines spontaneity as an important, albeit neglected, mechanism in collective action dynamics, and elaborates on its operation and effects in protest events and social movements. We do not presume that spontaneity is routinely at play in all collective actions. Rather, based on our grounded analysis of historical and ethnographic data, we contend that spontaneity is triggered by certain conditions: nonhierarchical organization; uncertain/ambiguous moments and events; behavioral/emotional priming; and certain ecological/spatial factors. We conclude by elaborating why the activation of spontaneous actions matters in shaping the course and character of protest events and movements, and we suggest that spontaneity be resuscitated in the study of collective action and everyday life more generally.

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.