Description
The COVID-19 pandemic has legitimized diaspora as a transnational actor in its own right. More importantly, diasporas have emerged as disruptors in public diplomacy (Dolea, 2021), challenging their more traditional roles of agents, instruments, and partners in public diplomacy (Brinkerhoff, 2019). This conceptual paper explores the neglected role of emotions in the study of diaspora diplomacy (Ho & McConnell, 2017), linking strands of literature in public diplomacy, migration and diaspora studies and international relations with a focus on emotions. Public diplomacy studies tend to focus on the institutional, social, political, and economic ties of diaspora with home and host state; the dynamics of emotion at play in diaspora communities and how external forces may intensify and instrumentalize emotions have been so far marginally discussed. Emotions are experienced at both an individual and collective level, and they relate to a wide range of social and political contexts. Theoretical understandings of emotions as social processes and constructions have increased in migration studies (Almenara-Niebla, 2020; Alinejad & Olivieri, 2019; Boccagni & Baldassar, 2015), signalling the affective turn in social sciences (Clough & Halley, 2007). Emotion is attached to salient features of experience, it has distinct effects on the ways that we process information, form judgements, and react to situations, people, and circumstances (Marcus, 2003; Brader & Marcus 2013), especially when classified into positive and negative emotional categories (Marcus 2000). Therefore, we aim to propose an agenda for researching emotions in diaspora diplomacy, ultimately advancing the study and policy making in diaspora diplomacy.
