Diasporas and Transitional Justice: Local, National and Global Dimensions
Event date
3 April 2017
Event time
09:00
Oxford week
Venue
University of Warwick
Speaker(s)
Notes & Changes
This is an external event
Academic Workshop organized by the European Research Council Starting Grant “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty” in two parts: prior to the International Studies Association Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD February 21, 2017 and at Warwick University on April 3, 2017.
Transitional justice is an expanding field, yet the role of diasporas as non-state actors in transitional justice processes is still under-researched and under-theorized. Existing studies are primarily focused on single case studies, or feature illustrative comparative research, but have not developed systematic generalizations about the conditions and mechanisms, which drive such diaspora mobilizations. Especially conflict-generated diasporas have been formed on the basis of traumatic experiences, and so remain connected to their homelands by seeking to redress the harm inflicted on them or earlier generations. How to engage productively conflict-generated diasporas from abroad becomes a scholarly and policy-relevant imperative.
Some of the questions we seek to address are: Why do some diasporas cooperate, are in conflict or ambivalent about international criminal tribunals and local courts? Why do some diasporas participate in truth commissions while others do not? How do diasporas seek to memorialize their traumatic experiences and mobilize for genocide recognition? How do they connect their activism transnationally, by which means, and to what ends? Why do some original homelands reach out to their diasporas to aid their transitional justice endeavors, while others do not? How do different host-states influence diaspora participation and interaction with their homelands? What is the role of international organizations in such processes?
This workshop has two major scholarly aims: to explore in depth the comparative dimension of diaspora mobilizations for a wide range of transitional justice processes; and to analyze how diasporas’ embeddedness in different global locations impacts on such mobilizations in local, national, and global politics.
The workshop will feature papers from different world regions and emphasize comparative and contextual dimensions of transnational and global diaspora engagement with transitional justice.