Description
What role can diasporas play in responding to crises and what can international studies learn from these experiences? What kinds of initiatives and solidarity emerge when public health, social or economic crises impact migrant communities in a context where they have limited space or resources? Focusing on the Covid pandemic, this article draws on Castles’ concept of social transformation to understand how diasporas might be enabled, or prevented, in supporting their communities and wider impacts their crisis responses might have on structural processes of economic and social change. Drawing on interviews with charitable organizations led by the Algerian community in the UK, it enquires about a wide range of ambitious initiatives they created to support vulnerable communities, predominantly in London during the pandemic. Motivations and facilitating factors of this solidarity include emerging trust in local elites and leaders, Islamic faith, effective engagement in online spaces and pride in a transnational Algerian identity. Equally, factors that might prevent such engagement included the lack of physical space and lack of trust or communication. Seemingly apolitical towards the homeland, as locally focused, this diaspora philanthropy is challenging the negative social transformations in the host country, by rebuilding communities and creating new social identities.
