Impact of Covid‐19 pandemic on the transnationalization of LGBT* activism in Japan and beyond

Abstract

The global Covid-19 pandemic has strongly impacted social practices, relocating communications and social networks into the digital space. Contextualized in such impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the local LGBT* activism in Japan achieved a special momentum: both the acceleration of the socio-spatial relocation of LGBT* activism to the digital space and the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics 2020 by 1 year enabled activists to mobilize people domestically and globally. The pandemic was not the actual cause or driver of the local LGBT* activism, yet it has been an important catalyst for the transnationalization of the local movement in Japan, pushing evidently the spatial boundaries to achieve broader public outreach but in turn also receiving stronger support from the global community through transnational networks. This study explores novel dynamics of spatiality and temporality of social transformations through the Covid-19-induced increase in global digital connectedness as well as transnationalization of local actions.

Covid‐19 and Global Networks: Reframing our understanding of globalization and transnationalism

“…The accepted papers offer both significant individual contributions, but also as a collective, a deep understanding of how the challenge of Covid‐19 reconfigures contemporary globalization, international migration, transnationalism, supply‐chains, and ensuing global networks across society. Broadly speaking, the papers covered several inter‐related theoretically and evidence‐based topics from international migration, mobilities, and proximity (Ansar, 2023 ; Hari et al., 2023 ) to transnational immobilities (Kempny, 2023 ; Simola et al., 2023 ; Skovgaard‐Smith, 2023 ) to diasporic and transnational communities (Ceccagno & Thurø, 2023 ; Müller, 2023 ; Yamamura, 2023 ) and forced labour in global value chains (Hughes et al., 2023 ). Collectively, the authors should be highly commended for their resilience and inventiveness in completing original empirical work during a period of unprecedented disruption for themselves, their subjects and their institutions.…”

“…Transnational communities are not only formed along lines of ethnicity and nationality, they can also cohere within activist movements. Sakura Yamamura ( 2023 ) explores the impact of ‘Covid‐19‐induced digitalization’ on LGBT* activists in Japan. Just as in Ceccagno and Thunø’s example of China (2022), in Yamamura's words, the pandemic ‘opened up new potential for social and political activism’.…”