Upcoming Talks
Mobilization in Exile: Comparing Transnational Activism by Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong Activists
Date: January 31, 2025
Time: 11 pm Hong Kong Time ; 9 am Central Time; 10 am Eastern Time; 7 am Pacific Time
Speaker: Diana Fu, University of Toronto
Discussant: Dana Moss, University of Notre Dame
Registration Required
How do differences in pre-migration political socialization and repressive experiences shape exiled activists’ mobilization from abroad? This paper investigates this broader question through comparing activists in exile from Hong Kong and mainland China in the Xi Jinping period (2013-present). Using interview data from these jurisdictions as well as relevant stakeholders including the donor community, this study finds differences in political socialization as well as the speed and breadth of repression impacts subsequent patterns of mobilization from exile. Both sets of activists have access to political opportunities afforded by their new democratic host countries while simultaneously dealing with similar challenges posed by transnational repression and dislocation in exile. However, activists fleeing mainland China who experienced targeted and gradual repression and who were socialized in a fully authoritarian political environment were more likely to be individualistic in their pursuits even while abroad. In contrast, widespread and sudden repression, combined with previous political socialization in a quasi-democratic social movement society, contributes to cohesion and solidarity among activists which facilitates collective action while in exile. This comparative study contributes to literature on transnational activism and repression, political socialization, migration, and authoritarian politics.
Speaker
Diana Fu is associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto and a fellow at Brookings Institution, the Wilson Center, and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Her research examines popular contention, repression, civil society, and authoritarian citizenship in contemporary China. She is currently co-authoring a second book examining how the Chinese state governs the global diaspora (under contract, Cambridge). She is the author of “Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China” (Cambridge, 2018), which won best book awards from the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association, and the International Studies Association. Her research and commentary have appeared BBC, Bloomberg, CBC, CNN, NPR, the Economist, and The New York Times, among others. She was host of the TVO documentary series “China Here and Now” and of POLITICO China Watcher. Prof. Fu received her doctorate in Politics from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She regularly gives public lectures and participates in track 1.5 dialogues on Canada-China and U.S.-China relations.
Discussant
Dana Moss is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Her research and teaching focus on collective resistance against repression and injustice, including the transnational repression of diaspora and refugee communities by authoritarian regimes. Her award-winning book, The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism Against Authoritarian Regimes (Cambridge, 2022) explains how and to what extent anti-regime diaspora members mobilized to support the 2011 uprisings in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Her next book project will examine how and why members of military institutions rebel against participation in state-sanctioned violence. To date, her work has been published in venues such as the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Social Problems, Mobilization: An International Journal, and Comparative Migration Studies. She comes to the University of Notre Dame from the University of Pittsburgh (2016-2020), where she was awarded the 2020 David and Tina Bellet Excellence in Teaching Award. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Irvine in 2016.
More to Come
To Be Announced.