The Conditions Shaping Voice After Exit
27
including between revolutionaries, the media, and policymakers. Fourth, they
remitted resources homeward, from their expertise and skills to cash and
medical supplies. Fifth, they volunteered on the ground, venturing home to
deliver aid, perform surgeries, become interpreters, assist refugees, and even
fight with groups known as the Free Libya Army.
In contrast, the responses of the Syrian anti-regime diaspora varied by hostcountry and over time. While Syrian American movements initially played a
full-spectrum role along with their Libyan counterparts, activists in Britain were
significantly constrained in attempting to broker for and represent the revolution. Eventually, both movements were muted by the time I conducted interviews in 2014. Yemenis in both the United States and Britain, on the other
hand, played a far more selective role in the Arab Spring than either the Libyan
or Syrian groups, focusing primarily on broadcasting the aims of the independent youth-led movement and representing the cause to policymakers. Activists
recognized that the anti-regime diaspora needed to do more to help their
compatriots; yet, most felt blocked from doing more than expressing their
solidarity in symbolic ways, such as by holding demonstrations.
The final chapters explain this variation, arguing how two mechanisms
shown in the remaining columns of Table 1.3 – resource conversion and
geopolitical support – transformed some, but not all, diaspora movements into
auxiliaries for the Arab Spring. Chapter 6 demonstrates how the varied conversion of diaspora resources to the cause – their home-country network ties,
social capital, and fungible resources – mitigated their movements’ interventions. Libyans’ resources in the United States and Britain were sufficient to
address their allies’ needs over time, and Syrians initially had sufficient
resources to do the same. However, overwhelming regime repression and
growing unease with a fractious rebellion damaged activist-beneficiary networks as the revolution wore on. Furthermore, as Syria’s humanitarian
crisis escalated, diaspora resources were drained or diverted from the antiregime cause. As a result, Syrians’ collective roles in the Arab Spring were
drastically reduced.
While Yemen’s largely peaceful revolution did not require the full range of
resources needed by Libyans and Syrians entangled in zero-sum wars, activists’
abilities to channel support homeward were hindered by insufficient network
ties to protest encampments. This made resource transfers dependent on the
existence of personal connections, which were sparse across their movements.
Yemenis’ abilities to launch and sustain protest movements also suffered over
time as participants’ resources were exhausted. Yemenis in the diaspora poured
an exhaustive amount of labor and resources into the effort, but their resources
were insufficient to turn them into transnational auxiliaries for the Arab Spring.
Chapter 7 shows how diaspora activists’ interventions were also shaped
by the degree of geopolitical support that their allies at home received from
their host-country governments and influential third parties, including states
bordering the home-country, international institutions, and the media. Support
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press
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