Conclusion
201
Cross-border network ties with allies became crucial for broadcasting, representing, brokering, remitting, and volunteering on the ground. Fungible and
material resources gave activists the means to augment anti-regime efforts
directly and the capacity to build a new transnational organizational infrastructure. Social capital elevated activists’ voice as advisors, interpreters, and participants in the revolutions. At the same time, not all diaspora movements were
equally well-resourced and able to convert resources to the Arab Spring. When
movements lacked or lost these varied forms of resources, as the Syrian and
Yemeni cases across the United States and Britain illustrate, their voices in the
revolutions become less effective and muted.
While resource conversion is a critical process for diaspora interventions, it
is also insufficient to explain diaspora movements’ roles in anti-authoritarian
mobilizations at home. The following chapter demonstrates how the added
factor of geopolitical support is also vital in facilitating diaspora movement
interventions, including the movement of resources across state lines. Without
this support, diaspora activists and their resources become caged inside hostcountry borders, and their voices in homeland struggles are rendered into
merely symbolic displays of support.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press
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