Ethnic Conflict and Contemporary Social Mobilization: Exploring Motivation and Political Action in the Sri Lankan Diaspora

Abstract

Members of the diaspora are conflict actors with an agency that is important to include in conflict theories and analysis of international relationships. Scholarship suggests its origins, and thereafter changes in the conflict cycle effect decision-making and mobilization in the diaspora, but the conditions and mechanisms that inform these processes are undertherorized. The Sri Lankan conflict and its Toronto based diasporas are used to explore processes of diasporization and mobilization in the context a changed political landscape. A series of semi-structured interviews and a short survey asks respondents to assess their motivations for mobilization. The comparative work is within and between ethnic groups. New Institutionalism underscores this project. Butler’s (2001) epistemology, Brinkerhoff’s (2005) identity-mobilization framework, the political process model and insights from the New Social Movement literature are used to situate politicized identities and political activism directed toward the homeland. Attention is paid to factor processes.