Diasporas as Autonomous Political Actors: the Case of the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora

Guyot, Lola

doi:10.1163/9789004388048_009

Cited by 4 publications

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“…One trend visible among the Tamil diasporic transnational political activists is increasingly to aim to occupy significant political spaces within the host countries, where most are likely to remain for the foreseeable future (Guyot, 2018). By making increasing reference to the 'international human rights framework' in host country political activities, one emerging goal may be to target and mobilize host country citizens as well as other members of the Tamil diaspora (Hess & Korf, 2014, p. 421).…”

Section: Post-war Diaspora Politics and Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tamil diaspora activism in the post-liberal international order: navigating politics and norms

Jayasundara-Smits

2020

Globalizations

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Diasporas play a key role in universal norm transfer processes, mainly through transnational political activism. For decades, Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora activists have been drawing attention to injustices in the home country by and applying liberal, cosmopolitan normative frameworks. The use of these frameworks helps these actors to advance their transnational political goals and to cultivate transnational political networks that aid in advancing their struggles to influence positive change in Sri Lanka. In the current post-liberal phase of international politics, the main architects of the liberal, cosmopolitan international norms, who previously supported their implementation, have started to abandon them. This turnaround has tragically coincided with an increasingly hostile reception to these norms in Sri Lanka, home of the Tamil diaspora. This article examines how the recent retraction of and reaction to international norms in international and national politics is reshaping Tamil diasporic transnational political activism and transnational-national political relationships.

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Section: Post-war Diaspora Politics and Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tamil diaspora activism in the post-liberal international order: navigating politics and norms

Jayasundara-Smits

2020

Globalizations

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Constraining Tamil Transnational Political Action: Security Governance Practices beyond the Sending State

Craven

2022

Journal of Global Security Studies

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This paper examines the security governance of the Tamil diaspora through a practice lens. It takes as its starting point the observation that the Tamil diaspora community has historically been subjected to complex and multi-scalar security governance. How this continues after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war period remains empirically and theoretically underexamined, with studies focusing instead on Tamil diaspora organizing. This paper addresses this gap by mapping and theorizing contemporary constraints to Tamil transnational political action (TPA), building on the growing literature on the transnational repression of diaspora. Further, it proposes to move beyond the state-centrism and liberal bias inherent in this literature, by centering security governance practices. Based on a review of existing literature and historical and ethnographic data collected through mixed-method fieldwork among the Tamil diaspora community between 2015 and 2018, this paper concludes that key security governance practices that constrain Tamil TPA, such as proscription, counterterrorism policing, and formal diplomatic practices, have continued since the end of the civil war, each revealing complex global security entanglements beyond the diaspora sending state.

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A contextual understanding of diaspora entrepreneurship: identity, opportunity and resources in the Sri Lankan Tamil and Kurdish diasporas

Syrett

Keles

2022

IJEBR

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PurposeWithin the growing study of transnational entrepreneurial practice, existing conceptualisation of diaspora entrepreneurship has often lacked engagement with the particularities of the diaspora condition. This paper seeks to advance theoretical understanding and empirical study of diaspora entrepreneurship through identifying the processes that generate diaspora entrepreneurship across economic, social and political spheres.Design/methodology/approachTo analyse the relationship between the development of venture activity and diaspora (re)production, in depth, qualitative biographical analysis was undertaken with UK-based diaspora entrepreneurs embedded within the particular contexts of the Sri Lankan Tamil and Kurdish diasporas. Skilled and active diaspora entrepreneurs were purposively selected from these extreme case contexts to explore their entrepreneurial agency within and across the business, social and political realms.FindingsResults identified key dimensions shaping the development of diaspora entrepreneurship. These comprised the role of diaspora context in shaping opportunity frameworks and the mobilisation of available resources, and how venture activity served to sustain collective diaspora identity and address diaspora interests. These findings are used to produce an analytical model of the generation of diaspora entrepreneurship to serve as a basis for discussing how heterogeneous and hybrid entrepreneurial strategies emerge from and shape the evolving diaspora context.Originality/valueBy placing the reproduction of social collectivity centre-stage, this paper identifies the particularities of diaspora entrepreneurship as a form of transnational entrepreneurship. This recognizes the significance of a contextualised understanding of entrepreneurial diversity within wider processes of diaspora development, which has important implications for policy and practice development in homeland and settlement areas.

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Diasporas as Autonomous Political Actors: the Case of the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Tamil diaspora activism in the post-liberal international order: navigating politics and norms

Tamil diaspora activism in the post-liberal international order: navigating politics and norms

Constraining Tamil Transnational Political Action: Security Governance Practices beyond the Sending State

A contextual understanding of diaspora entrepreneurship: identity, opportunity and resources in the Sri Lankan Tamil and Kurdish diasporas

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