Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Diasporas and the Nation-States
• Traditionally victim diasporas, as victimized
and challenged by the nation-states with an
emphasis on diasporas’ dual loyalty.
• Contested loyalties even when they have
citizenship of their host countries
E.g.: Jews of France in the 19th Century
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Vicious circle: The diasporic identity under the
challenge of the nation states breeds an in-group
mentality and isolation of themselves as a
separate group.
• And this in turn breeds the distance, suspicion.
hostility towards them by the host nation-state
and ethnic core.
• he system is complete when manifestations of
such hostilities loop back to engender new
sources of apprehension and further inclinations
to clannishness and endogamy.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Diaspora as a Challenge to Nation-States in a
Transnational World
• The changed meanings of the contemporary
concept, a new and exciting way of
understanding cultural differences, identity
politics and some even proclaimed the
dissolution of the nation-state.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• The expression 'diaspora' is now widely used in
interesting and suggestive contexts.
• Now the word is deployed as a metaphoric designation
to describe different categories of people: expatriates,
expellees, political refugees, alien residents,
immigrants and ethnic and racial minorities.
• Cubans and Mexicans in the US, Maghrebis in France,
Turks in Germany, the Chinese in South-East Asia,
Greeks, Poles, Palestinians and blacks in North America
even French-speaking Belgians living in communal
enclaves in Wallonia.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Traditionally nation-States coped with ethnic diversity
by demanding exclusive citizenship, border control,
linguistic conformity and political obedience.
• Moreover the nation-state was offered as an object of
devotion. Its citizens were enjoined to love their
country, to revere its institutions, to salute its flag, to
support its sporting teams, to fight and die for it in war.
• But there are crucial differences , between the periods
loosely known as 'modernity' and 'the age of
globalization. The world has changed; the space for
multiple affiliations and associations became the norm
in the age of globalization.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• National identities are under challenge from deterritorialized social and cultural I identities. In
the age of globalization, the world is being
organized by nation-states and regions, but also
beyond the nation-states by overlapping,
permeable multiple system of interactions.
• This system creates communities not of place but
of interest, based on shared opinions and beliefs,
tastes, ethnicities,religions, cuisine, the lifestyles
etc.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• In the face of powerfully defended nationalist
sentiments it has until recently, been difficult for
diasporic groups to express their true attitudes to
the nation-states in which they have found
themselves.
• Now Diasporas want not only the security and
opportunity available in their countries of
settlement, but also a continuing relationship,
with their country of origin and ethnic members
in other countries.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• An problem becoming acute in the contemporary,
interdependent international system: the lack of
congruence between ethnic nations and the
geographical and political boundaries of states.
• Nineteenth century European nationalism: sense
of belonging, peoplehood forms the basis of
ethnicity. Ethnicity is a subjective, primordial
identity that clearly distinguishes between group
members and outsiders
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Increasing salience of ethnicity: the ethnic group is a
significant basis for group cleavage in many advanced
industrial societies because ethnic identity is an effective
means of group mobilization.
• The ethnic group becomes an efficient vehicle for
expressing demands for group advantage, power, status,
and wealth in the political systems.
• ln the face of increasingly technocratic and bureaucratic
industrial societies, the ethnic group combines utilitarian
interests with affective power bases .
• Other means of group mobilization- ideological and class
ties- have declined in recent years.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Ethnic groups surely do not rival states in
military capabilities or, in the coercive state
power, BUT they can weaken or divert them.
• Ethnic groups do challenge the legitimacy
reserved for states in a great many countries
throughout the world.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Analysis of the transnational dimensions of ethnicity
• The intra-societal level alerts us to interactions between societies without
the direct intervention of state decision-making elites. This level
investigates the impact of global communication processes on the
intensification of ethnicity within a state.
• The state level conceptualizes ethnic groups as direct participants in world
politics, particularly the ways in which ethnic groups interact with states
and other international actors.
• The global level of analysis studies ethnicity as all independent
transnational force. It is most concerned with how increasing Ievels of
worldwide interdependence and dependence affect the prospects for the
intensification or attenuation of ethnicity throughout the world.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Increasing salience of ethnicity effective in
two respects:
(I) through the politicization of global
communication and transportation networks;
(2) in accelerating patterns of political and
cultural fragmentation.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Dramatic increases in the scope and intensity of
intergroup contacts via technological advancements
help to transform contemporary world politics by
facilitating the creation of networks of transnational
ties among ethnic groups around the world.
• Vastly expanded com ties among ethnic groups around
the world reduce the control a state exercises over its
internal environment. The extent of global penetration
in domestic politics provides ethnic groups with
greatest ties for transnational interactions.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Not only the nature or density of. the communications but
the message –through such communications-reveals much
about way that accelerating patterns of worldwide political
and cultural fragmentation have resulted in rising ethnic
consciousness.
• Perhaps the most powerful rationale for political
fragmentation lies in the ideological arena. The principle of
self-determination serves as a justification for
fragmentation based on ethnic diversity.
• This is a particularly acute problem in Third World nations
that are multiethnic by definition since: political borders
were established by colonial administrators rather than by
indigenous ethnic groups .
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Ethnic conflicts are not confined to states
undergoing the strains of modernization.
• Neither the modernization of the nation-state
nor the modernization of the international
order is a guarantee of ethnic conflict.
• Historically well-integrated nations and
regions have witnessed the re-intensification
of ethnic attachments and witnessed the
outbursts of ethnic conflicts.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• The salience of ethnicity in advanced industrial states
results from the steady expansion of "political
boundaries and areas.
• There has been a progressive expansion of the political
arena in advanced societies, particularly since World
War II.
• Economics, social-welfare policy, and religious issues
assume an intensely politicized dimension. When the
political arena becomes the central point of life in
industrialized countries, the ethnic group becomes an
essential vehicle for placing group demands on the
political process.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• The state system legitimates ethnicity as a key social
and political variable in world politics.
• The progressive blurring of lines between a state's
foreign policy and its domestic facilitates the
prominence of ethnic groups as transnational actors.
• Distinctions between high politics (intensely politicized
issue areas: such as national defense, political stability,
and economic autonomy) and low politics (primarily
technical and bureaucratic concerns) are no longer
valid. Increased interdependence also makes states
more vulnerable to outside manipulation.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Two trends in world politics, perhaps not fully
developed at this time, promote ethnicity on a
global level:
• (I) the proliferation of transnational actors, for
example, multinational corporations; and
• (2) evolving patterns of interdependence,
dependency, and global dominance
throughout the world system.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Multinational corporations are not restrained
by the traditional attributes of state
sovereignty, such as territoriality and
nationalism. In contrast to states, MNCs are
free -wheeling entities that directly interact
with ethnic groups throughout the global
system.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• The world system is increasingly
interconnected, thus providing transnational
actors with the potential for unprecedented
influence if they mobilize effectively.
• This is not to suggest that. transnational
actors operate without constraints, but rather
to emphasize the fluidity of global political
relations under conditions of
interdependence.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Keohane and Nye argue that the patterns of "complex"
interdependence alter traditional interstate interaction in
three areas:
• (l) multiple channels of communications by all types of actorsstates, bureaucracies, nongovernmental actors, international
organizations, and individuals;
• (2) the absence of a hierarchy of issues-specifically, the
decline of military security issues and the increased
importance of economic, technical, and social concerns;
• (3) The governments experience a loss of control and reduced
effectiveness in the formulation of public policy. Thus,
complex networks of functional tasks restricts state
sovereignty in economic, social, political and foreign policy
areas.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Dynamics of Disintegration: Diaspora, Secession, and
the Paradox of Nation states
• Focuses on the processes of diaspora formation and
secession motivation as a dynamic, ongoing process.
• At the center of the national ideal is the belief that
people with a distinct character should possess their
own territory.
• Both diasporic existence and secessionist claims are
what, might-be termed counter theoretical concepts,
inconsistent with the structural rationale of the global
system.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Two distinct independent variables: nation type
and regime type.
• Nation type deals with the nature of the intranational bonds that forge the unity in the sense
of national identity, defining its limits and the
span of the heterogeneity of its membership.
• Regime type deals with the manner in which the
nation is governed, particularly in terms of the
pluralism and accountability that prevail in its
polity.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• The mutual interaction between respective
nation and regime types
• not only determines which variant of secession
motivation and diaspora formation will be
dominant,
• but it also generates a source for the
rejuvenation of old identities and the awakening
of new ones
• This process of identity creation and re-creation
is a persistent challenge to the prevailing state
system.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• The effect of nation type
• The ethnofocal variant sees nation as an
organic division of humanity decreed by some
divine or natural edict; in contrast,
• the ideofocal variant perceives the nation as a
community formed by the will of individual
members to be ; and not dependent upon
race or descent, but upon a common thought
and a common goal.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• The ethnic-civic paradigm focuses more on
the end results of political processes (the kind
of states and/or nations that reflect the
culmination of a process of nation- building),
• Whereas ethnofocal-ideofocal places a greater
emphasis on the causal origins of political
processes (the nature of the nuclei around
which national collectivities coalesce and that
seed the nation-building process).
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• The major failures that produce processes of
diaspora formation and secession motivation:
• In an ethnofocal setting , diaspora formation
and/or secessionist drives may be the result of
either of the failure to create (or impose) a
monoethnic national identity or the failure to
maintain one.
• By contrast, in an ideofocal setting, diaspora
formation and/or secessionist drives likely the
result of failure to impose a supraethnic national
identity or failure to maintain one.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Ethofocal failure in the creation of an ethnofocal identity for all
• Certain nation-states implement an ethnofocal principle by
imposing the identity of a dominant ethnic group as the national
identity of the state, even though the boundaries of geopolitical
sovereignty do not coincide with the boundaries of ethnopolitical
allegiance .
• Resistance to this imposition may lead to migration (forced or
voluntary) of the ethnic minority, and the creation of diasporas
outside its indigenous homeland.
• Rebellion by an ethnic minority to extricate itself from foreign
domination by secession or irredentism that is to either establish a
seperate ethnofocal sovereignty or to unite with a contagious
neigboring state of compatible ethnic make-up.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Ethofocal failure in maintaining an ethnofocal identity
for all
• Even in states in which the implementation of the
ethnofocal principle has largely been successful (with
or without the use of force) they are not immune to
divisions either.
• Such rifts have also produced large flows of exiles and
refugees turned diasporas.
• Such exilic groups, however, should be distinguished
from stateless diasporic communities, that aspire to
create a new (additional) state, rather than displace an
incumbent regime in an existing state.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Another variant of failure to maintain ethnofocal national unity may come from incomingmigratory pressures resulting in expatriate
ethnic communities that may develop into
incipient diasporas.
• E.g.: Turks in Germany
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• The failure to create an ideofocal national
identity
• The failure to force a hybrid multi-ethnic
national identity onto an ethnically diverse
distinct society, either by administrative or
legalistic means in libertarian regimes (i.e.,
civic nationalism) or by authoritarian coercion,
is liable to incite secessionist demands and
produce a refugee-based diaspora.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Failure to Maintain a Supraethnic Identity
• The principal causal impetus is likely to be the
obsolescence or loss of relevance of a former
unifying ideal.
• A supra ethnic ideal may be accepted and even
internalized in authoritarian settings as well as
libertarian ones, the failure to maintain such
internalization (after it has been achieved).
• E.g.: Conflicts in in the former Yugoslavia
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• The effect of regime type
• Authoritative/Libertarian Regimes
• Autocratic regimes' limited plurality and
accountability affords them with greater freedom
of action in dealing coercively with challenges to
their sovereign authority relative to libertarian
regimes
• The regime type has also an important effect on
certain diaspora formation and secession related
processes.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Libertarian Ethnofocal States
• Very few libertarian states with ethnofocal
aspiration have heen able to maintain a mono
ethnically homogeneous community.
• More frequently ethnofocal libertarian states
were established by a dominant group that
incorporated indigenous minorities who were
reluctant to forgo the perception of congruence
between their ethnic affiliation and their own
national identity.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• In ethnofocal libertarian states, especially those
uncomplicated by ethnically disparate minorities, a
high value is placed preserving the uniformity of the
community.
• Despite their basic reluctance to admit non-national
immigrants refugees, many homogenous libertarian
states have opened their gates to aliens for economic
or humane reasons. Though Though such immigrant
communities are not likely to become secessionists as
they have no generic ties to a defined region in their
new country rather they tend to cultivate minority
consciousness.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• By juxtaposing the liberal ethos of their host
state against the ethnofocal definition of the
community, immigrant groups may pose a
challenge to the ethnofocal identity of their
host countries.
• E.g.: France and Germany
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Arend Lijphart points out the imposition of dominant
national identity tends to spur claims for autonomy or
self-governance and to breed tensions of dual loyalties.
• Ethno-focal liberal states may choose to abandon the
option of assimilation in favor of convocational
solutions which accept plural divisions as basic building
blocks for a stable democratic regime.
• If such arrangements are implausible or were tried and
failed the remaining logical alternative is to reduce
pluralism by dividing the state into two or more
separate and more homogenous states.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Ideofocal Libertarian States
• The rejection focuses on inclusion into a larger
ethnically heterogeneous entity under the banner
of alleged civil "homogenization."
• In an ideofocal setting the rejection is of
perceived ethnic egalitarianism, according to
which socio-cultural diversity must be
subordinated to civic-legal equality in the
dispensation of governmental authority.
• E.g.: The US
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• Ideofocal authoritarian state
• A pan-ethnic vision is invoked to erase previous ethnonational loyalties of indigenous peoples in the
geopoitical boundaries of the state.
• E.g.: Soviet state, Titoist Yugoslavia (failure to maintain)
• Attempts to blur the ethno-distinctiveness of regions
may lead to a large-scale relocation of population. As
regions secede, often because of radical ethnonationalists gaining the upper hand against the
sentiment of the general public, attempts to rebuild
lost national identities may result in transformation of
settler communities into ethnic diasporas.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• A world order of nation-states is seemingly
incapable of preventing either the dispersion
of stateless minorities or the continuing
rebellion of ever-emerging ethnicities.
• These ethnicities perpetually demand new
vehicles to express their own distinct national
aspiration as independent political entities,
separate from the existing array of nationstates.
Diaspora as a Transnational Actor
• The static perspective fails to capture the
dynamics of a reality in which political loyalties
and national identities are constantly changing
even after stable nation-states have formed.
• These dynamics, which may include processes
such as ideofocal disintegration and ethnofocal
rupture suggest that diaspora formations and
secession claims are in fact endemic to a world
order of nation states rather than anomalous
anachronisms doomed to extinction.