Description
As global politics becomes increasingly shaped by financial technologies, sanctions, and digital mobility, the boundary between state and market power is blurring. This paper explores diaspora entrepreneurship, which has arisen as a result of international sanctions imposed on certain countries. Diaspora entrepreneurship refers to economic activities undertaken by individuals or groups living outside their country of origin, who mobilise transnational resources, networks, and identities to establish, manage, or invest in businesses and social ventures. In this context, and building upon previous work by the author, diaspora entrepreneurship offers a glimpse into the future of political agency, where governance, legitimacy, and responsibility are negotiated across borders and outside formal institutions.
Focusing on Iranian, Syrian, and Russian diasporas, the paper shows how sanctions have changed remittance flows and business networks into quasi-governance mechanisms that support daily life where the state is absent or limited. Empirically, the study combines digital ethnography of remittance platforms, interviews with diaspora entrepreneurs, and policy analysis of financial regulation in the UK and EU. Remittances, mobile finance, and informal trade are no longer marginal to politics as they have become new sites of transnational responsibility, where diasporas act as mediators between sanctioned populations and global regulatory regimes. This creates what the paper calls the “sanctioned governance paradox where diasporas compensate for state failure while also at times reproducing global inequalities through compliance.
