The Impact of Host-states and Places Within Them on Diaspora Mobilizations

Abstract

Closer focused on host-states in which diaspora entrepreneurs live, Chapter 10 presents a comparative discussion. The empirical chapters (4–9) have demonstrated that analysts cannot make clear-cut comparisons of host-states, unless considering a transnational social field perspective: the UK has been the hub for mobilization for Palestinians, France for Armenians, and Switzerland and Germany for Kosovo Albanians in Europe, apart from the US. The chapter argues that host-states are not to be treated as units of analysis for controlled comparisons but should be considered as contexts of embeddedness that empower diaspora entrepreneurs in specific ways. Such approach is in line with scholarly efforts to analyse beyond methodological nationalism. The chapter argues, while a diaspora entrepreneur’s contextual embeddedness is not powerful enough to explain the contentiousness of diaspora mobilizations, it shapes the socio-spatial positionality of individual diaspora entrepreneurs. The discussion focuses on three dimensions: migration incorporation regimes, systems of interest representation, and decentralization patterns of these host-states. Empirical evidence from the Albanian, Armenian, and Palestinian diasporas shows that diaspora entrepreneurs are shaped in their migrant integration experiences, engagement through federal vs unitary systems of states, with trade unions, host-land political parties, and protest politics. Also, certain places within these host-states, such as London and Sheffield in the UK, Berlin and Stuttgart in Germany, Malmö and Gothenburg in Sweden, The Hague in the Netherlands, Paris in France, and Zurich and Geneva in Switzerland, play an important role for diaspora mobilizations but do not explain their contentiousness.