Diaspora Entrepreneurs and Contested States

by Maria Koinova

• ISBN13: 9780192588302
• ISBN10: 0192588303
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780192588319
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2021-03-25
• Publisher: Oxford University Press Academic UK
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Summary

Why do conflict-generated diasporas mobilize in contentious and non-contentious ways or use mixed strategies of contention? Why do they channel their homeland-oriented goals through host-states, transnational networks, and international organizations?

This book develops a theory of socio-spatial positionality and its implications for the individual agency of diaspora entrepreneurs, moving beyond considering diasporas as groups. The book develops a novel typology of four types of diaspora entrepreneurs - Broker, Local, Distant, and Reserved - depending on the relative strength of their socio-spatial linkages to host-land, on the one hand, and original homeland (de facto states) and other global locations, on the other. A two-level typological theory captures nine causal pathways unravelling how the socio-spatial linkages of diaspora entrepreneurs interact with external factors: host-land foreign policies, homeland governments, parties, non-state actors, critical events, or limited global influences to produce varying levels of contention. Non-contentious pathways often take place when host-state foreign policies are convergent with the goals of diaspora entrepreneurs, and when they act autonomously. Dual-pronged contention pathways occur quite often, under the influence of homeland governments, non-state actors, and political parties. The most contentious pathway occurs in response to violent critical events in the homeland or adjacent to it fragile states. The book is informed by long-term fieldwork and 300 interviews, and based on a dataset of 146 interviews with diaspora entrepreneurs among the Albanian, Armenian, and Palestinian diasporas connected to de facto states, Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Palestine respectively. Interviews were conducted in the UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland, as well as Kosovo and Armenia in the European neighbourhood.

Author Biography

Maria Koinova, Professor of International Relations, University of Warwick

BMaria Koinova is Professor in International Relations at the University of Warwick in the UK and Chair of the British International Studies Association working group on the 'International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora'. She is the author of Ethnonationalist Conflict in Postcommunist States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), and she has published in numerous leading journals such as European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Review, and Foreign Policy Analysis.