Diasporic Awakenings: Mobilizing the Diaspora for Homeland Causes

Diasporas remain understudied, despite the increasing frequency with which the term is being applied to populations once described as immigrants or exiles, or the increasing concern over unassimilated immigrants' potential for violence and illegal activity. The purpose of this dissertation is to determine what motivates diaspora members to mobilize within the "host" country (country of residence), on behalf of the "homeland" (country of origin), to which most diaspora members will never return, and many have never even seen. By understanding the motivations for these actions, I attempt to provide a better understanding of diasporic acculturation with host states and communities. Although disasporic campaigns for homeland causes appear to involve a shifting of loyalties away from the host country, I argue that successful mobilization requires that diasporic organizations frame their appeals in language reflecting the host country's cultural values. What then appears to be a sudden shifting of attention and loyalties from the host country to the homeland, an occurrence scholars refer to as "diasporic awakenings," in reality is more indicative of the diaspora having internalized the host country's values and ideology.;I employ a mixed-method approach of cross-case and within-case comparison, using long-term process tracing and content analyses of the media from the host countries and the diasporas. Specifically, I look at two diasporas---the Chinese population in Vancouver, BC and Irish-Catholic Americans in Boston, Massachusetts. For the former diaspora, I compare one case of mobilization, when the community organized en masse to support the Chinese Revolution of 1911, to two cases of non-mobilization, over the Canadian Government's diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of China in 1970 and the Tiananmen Square Protests in 1989. For the second diaspora, the Irish-Americans, I analyze three campaigns. The first occurred in 1919 when the majority of the community organized to support Irish Independence from the United Kingdom. The subsequent two campaigns occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century, during two peak years of the thirty-year conflict known as the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland.