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Diaspora Activism and the Dynamics of Voice
practices help activists overcome domestic political constraints. In this way,
besieged movements can gain life-saving forms of attention and build crossnational alliances that address local problems (Bob 2001, 2005; Keck and
Sikkink 1998).
Movements also become transnational by forming networks and coalitions
with other grassroots actors dedicated to addressing a common cause (Ayoub
2013, 2016; Kay 2011; von Bülow 2010). Social movement groups sharing
feminist, LGBTQ+, labor, environmental, and religious values and missions, to
name just a few examples, join forces to increase their numbers and commitment (Tilly 2004). They also form coalitions to contest harmful practices, such
as austerity policies imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary
Fund, the use of sweatshops by Google and Nike, imperialistic wars waged by
the United States in Vietnam and Iraq, and the corporate and state-fueled
practices driving climate change (Meyer and Corrigall-Brown 2005; J. Smith
2008). So too do activists join forces at international conferences, from those
sponsored by the United Nations to the World Social Forum, in order to
exchange stories and tactics. By building cross-border alliances, activists demonstrate the moral imperative of working collectively on the basis of human
beings’ shared fate (Russo 2018; C. Smith 1996). Studies of movement diffusion and spillover demonstrate that the spread of social movement campaigns
can grant vulnerable allies attention and leverage in a highly stratified world
system (J. Smith 2008; Soule 2004, 2013).
Diaspora movements who mobilize transnationally in order to induce
changes in their places of origin play an important role in this internationalized
civic realm (Adamson 2002; Al-Ali and Koser 2002; Fadlalla 2019; Rudolph
and Piscatori 1997; Wald 2009). They pose formidable challenges to homecountry regimes by naming and shaming immoral and illegal practices, remitting cash to freedom fights, lobbying for intervention, and disrupting regimes’
monopolies on information and public goods. They also articulate alternative
loyalties to the homeland in ways that challenge regimes’ monopolies over the
meaning of loyalty to the nation.3 When operating “in the relatively free
environment of democratic host states with much better forms of communication and international recognition,” Shain argues that diasporas do not just
3
As Shain (2005[1989]: 164) writes,
Political exiles often find themselves in a uniquely difficult posture, because they are removed
from the domestic political order from which they must draw their loyalists, and also because they
are vulnerable to charges of disloyalty. An important part of the exiles’ struggle is therefore to
challenge the home regime’s attempts to impose its own interpretation of national loyalty both at
home and abroad. In Albert Hirschman’s schema, the home regime maintains that “exit” from
the national soil, especially when followed by “voice” against the existing authorities in the state,
is an expression of national “disloyalty.” Exiles contest this view, maintaining that their “exit”
was not an alternative to internal “voice” (opposition) against the regime, but indeed a sine qua
non for the exercise of “voice.”
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press
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