475) Diasporas and Homeland Conflict, Terrence Lyons

Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, Presented to the DC Area Workshop on Contentious Politics, March 2004

[This paper is the start of a new project. All comments are most welcome.] Diaspora groups link processes of globalization to conflicts over identity and territory. Globalization has increased cross-border migration and decreased communication and travel costs, thereby making it easier for migrants to build and sustain links between the original homeland and current place of residence. Those forced across borders by war commonly have a specific set of traumatic memories and create specific types of “conflict-generated diasporas” that sustain and sometimes amplify their strong sense of symbolic attachment to the homeland. They build new identities that stress their links to the homeland and often profess an intention to return, once their homeland is “free.” . . . . .


Conflict-generated diasporas – with their origins in conflict, their identity linked to symbolically important territory, and their aspirations to return once the territory is liberated – often play critical roles with regard to homeland conflicts. As many scholars have noted, diaspora remittances are key resources to a conflict. In addition, and the focus of this research, such diasporas frequently have a particularly important role in framing conflict issues. Diaspora groups created by conflict and sustained by memories of the trauma tend to be less willing to compromise and therefore reinforce and exacerbate the protractedness of conflicts. Diaspora groups may be more confrontational and less willing to compromise than those in the homeland because members of the diaspora are less likely to pay the costs for continued fighting while they may benefit from their sense of commitment to the cause. This paper will start with an illustration of a few of the ways that the Ethiopian diaspora in North America link back to homeland conflicts and then sketch out a conceptual framework to analyze such links more systematically. It ends with some notes toward a research agenda on the relationships between diasporas and conflict . .

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