Description
This paper is situated in a wider discussion around the role of diaspora groups in political and social change. Since 2018, several social mobilisation movements have taken places in MENA countries such as Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan and Algeria. In the Algerian context, this movement became known as the Hirak. Women were strongly present in these movements as they participated effectively in organising and communicating the demands of protesters. Women’s participation in these widely popular movements is a great testimony challenging the stereotypical ‘victim, oppressed, having little agency’ representation of women in the Muslim and Arab world. Women in the diaspora participated in the Hirak by taking part in the protests and volunteering to organise them. This paper discusses the political agency of Algerian women in the UK diaspora, and how the spaces of the Hirak protests were used to re(create) an imagined Algeria in the UK, I also discuss transnational citizenship for migrant women and questions of belonging and integration in the UK.
