Diasporic geopolitics, rising powers, and the future of international order

Abstract

This article examines ‘diasporic geopolitics’ as a significant factor in the future of global politics. Whereas discussions of global order in IR have been highly spatialised, we instead highlight the extent to which different regions of the world are entangled via ongoing migration processes, and their legacies in the form of global diasporas. We examine the significance of these interconnections by focusing on rising powers and their relations with the existing international order. Major migration-sending states such as China, India, and Turkey are now aspiring great powers that seek to exert global influence in international affairs. In this context, their diaspora governance policies are also undergoing a transformation, with diasporas increasingly understood as important assets for promoting sending states’ geopolitical agendas and great power ambitions. We examine three mechanisms by which such states exert power transnationally via their diaspora engagement policies. States can treat ‘their’ diasporas as economic assets that facilitate trade and foreign investment; as soft power assets that contribute to the promotion of ‘civilisational’ politics; and as diplomatic assets that can be strategically mobilised or repressed. We conclude by discussing the implications for thinking about the nature of global order and power politics in the coming 50 years.

Introduction

Over the past century, significant international migration flows have led to the formation of global diaspora populations that create enduring connections between and across states.¹ Combined with the rise in power of some major migration-sending countries, this has led to a transformation in how these states engage with diaspora populations outside their territories. What will the impacts of this be for the future of world politics over the next 50 years? We propose that ‘diasporic geopolitics’ is set to play a significant role in the future of international relations as rising powers increasingly seek to exert influence in international affairs via mechanisms of diaspora engagement that harness the power of populations abroad. These transnational forms of power projection, which have been identified by a number of scholars of diaspora politics, have been understudied in mainstream International Relations (IR) yet are of great consequence for thinking about the future of international order.

In this article, we examine global processes of migratory entanglement, how they have developed, and what they may portend for the future of international relations over the next 50 years. We argue that increases in state capacity and geopolitical ambitions have led to a transformation in how rising powers engage with diaspora populations outside their territories. Countries such as China, India, and Turkey have been major migrant-sending states but have now become more economically developed. States which once viewed their diasporas primarily as a source of migrant remittances in order to promote domestic economic development increasingly take a broader foreign policy view of diaspora engagement. As aspiring great powers that seek to exert regional and global influence, these countries’ diaspora governance policies are also undergoing a transformation that has wide-ranging impacts on states within which such populations reside. More and more, diaspora populations are understood to be important assets in promoting rising powers’ geopolitical agendas.²

While recent years have seen a burgeoning literature on rising powers, particularly on a set of countries that have aspirations to great power status, there has not been an overall assessment of how diaspora governance policies in these countries have changed as a result of their changing power capabilities, and what the implications of this are for understanding the future of global order.³ In this context, we argue that diaspora governance policies are also undergoing a transformation in line with the heightened capabilities of states. Such processes are not entirely new in world politics, but they are still understudied and poorly understood in IR, and are of particular significance for understanding how states will exercise power and influence (and experience the exercise of power and influence) over the next 50 years.

This article seeks to fill an important gap in the IR literature by exploring in greater detail ‘diasporic geopolitics’ and its implications for understanding the future of global politics.⁴ In doing so, we seek to answer the following questions. What are the dominant features of rising powers’ diaspora governance policy changes? How might such policies reshape the contours of geopolitical competition in an increasingly entangled global order? In order to do so, we bring together insights from diaspora studies and International Relations theory, focusing on state diaspora engagement dynamics as a central area of inquiry. In addition to identifying an important set of policy issues, answering these questions is of theoretical significance, since it necessitates bringing together insights from both statist and transnational paradigms in order to examine how migration patterns shape and intersect with state power projection strategies.

In the rest of this article, we examine these issues in the following manner. First, we build on the interdisciplinary literature in migration and diaspora studies to develop an ‘entangled’ view of power politics that focuses on diaspora engagement policies as a transnational expression of state power, arguing that the aims and objectives of diaspora engagement policies change over time in relation to a state’s capacity and geopolitical ambitions. We then identify three mechanisms by which rising powers exert power transnationally via their diaspora engagement policies: as economic assets that facilitate trade and foreign investment; as soft power assets that contribute to the promotion of ‘civilisational’ politics; and as diplomatic assets that can be strategically mobilised or repressed as a means of managing and promoting states’ public image abroad. For each of these mechanisms, we provide examples from three rising powers that have also been major migrant-sending states – China, India, and Turkey. We conclude by discussing the implications for thinking about the nature of global order and power politics in the coming 50 years, arguing that the field has relied on an oversimplified view of the spatial aspects of power politics, including the extent to which states are interconnected via global migration processes.

Migration, diaspora engagement, and transnational power politics

Global inequalities, colonial histories, and forms of uneven and combined development have spurred migration flows which have created enduring connections across states in the form of transnational social ties, but also transnational forms of governmentality, such as the diaspora engagement policies of migration-sending states.⁵ For many states outside the Global North, emigration has played a significant factor in their economic development, with states relying on out-migration as a source of remittances and foreign direct investment (FDI).

In the process, states have established institutions and policies to govern ‘their’ diasporas abroad.⁶ State diaspora management policies can vary depending on where diasporas are located and the political interests of the sending state.⁷ State policies can range from providing diaspora members with VIP status and encouraging remittances and investment, to promoting dual citizenship and voting from abroad.⁸ Such state diaspora programmes have often been viewed as a benign form of ‘migration governance’ in which states respond to norms promoted by international organisations to design diaspora policies for the purposes of facilitating more efficient and stable migration management and economic development.⁹ Yet others have noted that the reasons behind state interests in engaging their diasporas can vary, producing different types of diaspora engagement policies – from a focus on harnessing remittances, to building ‘global nations’, to enhancing a state’s soft power and ability to engage in public diplomacy, to a focus on policing and surveillance.¹⁰

The management of emigration by post-colonial and other states as part of their developmental strategies points to the extent to which emigration management has also created incentives for the emergence of transnational state structures – leading to de facto forms of interstate entanglement.¹¹ As Collyer notes: ‘For home governments, emigration creates a mismatch between techniques of governmentality and techniques of territoriality that must be addressed if they are to retain influence on their emigrant populations.’¹² The governance of diasporas abroad thus represents a spatial extension of state power and control that complicates our understandings of how state power operates in international affairs.

Much of contemporary migration management – whether it be diaspora engagement or processes of migration policy externalisation and ‘remote control’ – exhibits a degree of spatial entanglement in the form of transnational state structures – structures that may not always conform with the spatial expectations of the Westphalian model.¹³ Certainly, not all diasporic communities themselves identify with the concerns of their states of origin, and there can be significant variations especially over generations. However, from the point of migration-sending states, gaining the loyalty of the diaspora is exactly the purpose of such forms of migration management. These transnational state practices that embrace ‘co-nationals’ and diasporas beyond the state suggest the need to theorise the state beyond the constraints of a territorially based methodological nationalism in which North and South inhabit separate geographical spheres, but also to better understand the various ways in which states exercise (transnational) forms of power in world politics.¹⁴

It has been well documented in the literature on migration governance that states frequently ‘harness the power of migration’ and use migration flows as forms of leverage in their relations with other states.¹⁵ Yet just as states engage in forms of ‘migration diplomacy’, so too have they been shown to leverage diasporas as a means of engaging in forms of ‘diaspora diplomacy’.¹⁶ Indeed, diaspora engagement policies can be used as a means of state power projection and, as Gamlen has noted, constitute a type of ‘human geopolitics’.¹⁷ Such engagement policies are in effect an extra-territorial extension of state power into the territorial and juridical space of other states.¹⁸ This impacts not just on diaspora and emigrant communities living abroad, but also on the states in which such communities reside.

For example, state diaspora engagement policies can include attempts to actively mobilise constituencies abroad or alternatively to exercise control over them – resulting in what has been termed a ‘contested embrace’ of diasporas.¹⁹ Such practices affect not only the target populations themselves, but also the societies and politics of the states in which they reside, challenging traditional notions of state sovereignty. This has often been understood in the literature as a spill-over effect of policies that are primarily motivated by domestic interests in controlling populations abroad.²⁰ We argue, however, that in many cases diaspora policies can also be seen as forms of ‘diasporic geopolitics’ that states employ as part of broader strategies of exerting geopolitical power and influence beyond the state. In the following section, we discuss this in more detail, suggesting three mechanisms of diasporic geopolitics used by rising powers, with examples from countries that have also traditionally been migration-sending states.

Rising powers and mechanisms of diasporic geopolitics

As many countries outside the Global North have experienced rapid growth over the past decades, some of them have become significant global players with regional and global ambitions. In this context, state diaspora engagement policies need to be understood as having an outward-looking and foreign policy agenda as much as an inward and domestic capacity-building agenda. Although many states have developed diaspora engagement policies, the policies of rising powers are of special significance due to their growing state capacity and geopolitical ambitions.²¹ Increasingly, they are engaging in forms of ‘diasporic geopolitics’ as a means of projecting power and exerting influence abroad, with shifting policy aims, instruments, and audiences that extend beyond the harnessing of remittances or the protection of populations abroad.

Historical migration flows have helped to constitute existing global diaspora communities, and they are evidence of interstate entanglements that often fall under the radar in mainstream IR. Global communities that are the object of contemporary state-led diaspora engagement policies have their origins in earlier periods of forced displacement and imperial conquest, including colonial plantation economies that relied on slavery and indentured labour.²² Others have their origin in mid-20th-century patterns of labour migration, including post-colonial movements from ex-colonies to former metropoles and post–World War II patterns of low-skilled economic migration. An additional layer of diaspora populations includes recent and contemporary migrants, émigrés, and citizens living abroad – in this sense, there is no single definition of what constitutes a diaspora.²³ The term ‘diaspora’ therefore needs to be understood as a category of practice used by states (and other actors) to constitute particular groups as ‘diasporic’.²⁴ In our discussion, we focus specifically on the cases of China, India, and Turkey as a means of providing a focused way of tracing historical trajectories of entangled histories of migration; the emergence of state-led diaspora engagement policies; and the concomitant transformation of such policies in tandem with the growing capacity and geopolitical ambitions of states that are widely considered to be rising powers.

China can be thought of as one of the historically largest migrant-sending states, with tens of millions of overseas Chinese. Starting in the mid-19th century, there was significant outbound migration as a result of European imperial powers opening up Chinese port cities, and Chinese labour was exported to plantations and mines in the Caribbean, North America, Southeast Asia, and beyond.²⁵ Warfare and revolutions in the first half of the 20th century not only sped up the pace of emigration but also set up competing political regimes in Taipei versus Beijing that vied for loyalty among the overseas Chinese community during the Cold War.²⁶ After the opening up of the Chinese mainland in the late 1970s, new waves of emigration occurred, with Chinese students and labour migrating to Western countries. These new migrants, the so-called xinyimin, often have stronger ties with the contemporary Chinese state and society and a more complex diasporic engagement with China.²⁷

A similarly long historical trajectory of emigration characterises India, dating back to religious and merchant trading communities in the pre-colonial era, but then entering a new phase during the colonial period as India became a source of indentured labour, with extensive intra-imperial migration to other colonial territories, such as Ceylon/Sri Lanka, the Caribbean, South and East Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Southwest Pacific. India witnessed a wave of post-colonial migration to the UK, but also increasing migration to North America, first of low-skilled labour with the relaxation of US immigration restrictions in the 1960s, and increasingly including high-skilled labour from the 1990s with a surge in high-tech industry migration from the beginning of the 21st century, with 75 per cent of all US H1-B visas being awarded to Indians by the 2018.²⁸ Estimates suggest that the global Indian diaspora could include 20 million individuals over 110 countries.²⁹

Turkey’s history of emigration similarly dates back to its imperial past, with intra-imperial migration throughout the period of the Ottoman Empire, and then significant emigration during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including both economic migration and forced migrations of minorities.³⁰ During the mid-20th century, there was labour migration from Turkey to European states, as well as to states in the Middle East, as Turkey encouraged the export of labour as part of its overall economic development strategy, sending migrant workers to Germany and other states in Western Europe as part of a managed labour recruitment and ‘guestworker’ policy.³¹ Since the 2010s, there has been a wave of educated middle-class emigration from Turkey to Europe, the United States, and elsewhere that occurred in the context of increasing domestic autocratisation following state suppression of protests in 2013 and additional repressive measures following a 2016 coup attempt.³²

Each of these states has seen a shift in its diaspora policies in line with their growth in capacity, power, and geopolitical position and has increasingly viewed their diasporas as foreign policy assets. We identify and provide examples of the effects of increasing power and global ambitions on three recognised mechanisms by which states can exert power transnationally via their diaspora engagement policies: by treating populations abroad as economic assets that facilitate trade and foreign investment; as soft power assets that contribute to the promotion of ‘civilisational’ politics; and as diplomatic assets that can be strategically mobilised or repressed as a means of managing and promoting states’ public image abroad. While the exact circumstances and strategies of diaspora engagement vary to some extent across cases – in line with their differing histories, migratory trajectories, regime types, and other factors, they nevertheless also demonstrate striking parallels in the growing significance that diaspora engagement policies have taken on as an aspect of their foreign policy and power projection strategies.

Diasporic geopolitics and economic power: Trade and foreign direct investment

Numerous countries strategically engage with their diaspora communities, often adopting an instrumental approach focused on fostering economic growth.³³ This pragmatic approach primarily stems from the recognition of the substantial contributions made by diasporas in the form of economic remittances, with many countries heavily dependent on the financial inflows sent by their diaspora populations residing abroad. A vast body of literature examines the pivotal role diasporas have played in driving economic development within various states, with global remittances from migrants and diasporas estimated at US $529 billion in 2018 – more than the total overseas development aid (ODA) provided globally that year and coming close to total foreign direct investment (FDI).³⁴ By actively managing and nurturing these relationships, countries seek to leverage the economic potential of their diasporas as a means to bolster their own development endeavours.³⁵

For rising powers, however, economic strategies of diaspora engagement are not only directed to internal national economic development agendas, but are also a means of asserting economic influence abroad. Extensive research has delved into the mechanisms through which diaspora individuals and communities foster connections between their countries of origin and settlement, particularly by facilitating transnational business activities and investments.³⁶ Enterprising individuals, often referred to as ‘diaspora entrepreneurs’, possess the unique ability to bridge geographical divides, enabling the flow of capital, expertise, and knowledge between the diaspora’s adopted homes and their countries of origin, thereby promoting economic growth and facilitating mutually beneficial partnerships.³⁷ Many governments recognise and actively encourage the growth of diasporas as agents of transnational economic influence and as actors that are able to forge vital linkages across migratory national boundaries.³⁸

This pattern can be seen in the case of China’s economic development strategy since the late 1970s, which has been heavily reliant on investments by overseas Chinese communities throughout the Asia-Pacific region.³⁹ Beijing has devoted considerable resources to soliciting investments from overseas Chinese and has formulated laws to institutionalise the diaspora’s legal privileges in the areas of social welfare and economic well-being.⁴⁰ In this sense, the Chinese government has given significant credit for the contributions its diaspora has made for the homeland’s economic development during the past few decades.

However, as a result of China’s own economic growth, Chinese diaspora overseas have also become key conduits through which Chinese investments abroad are channelled. China’s transformation into an FDI source-country has led to changes in patterns of diaspora engagement. For example, reorganisation of existing business associations have been carried out to meet new opportunities provided by increasing economic connections with China.⁴¹ Furthermore, the Chinese state has set up new platforms to liaise with and facilitate economic cooperation with diasporic economic entities. At the same time, many countries with large Chinese diaspora populations also promoted such interactions to take advantage of Chinese economic engagement.⁴²

The relationship between Chinese diaspora settlement and economic engagement has been observed empirically, with evidence suggesting that the presence of a large Chinese diaspora in a host country increases the probability of Chinese investment in that country.⁴³ Additionally, a diaspora presence has been found to positively facilitate bilateral trade flows with China.⁴⁴ This is likely due to the intimate kinship ties and greater access to strategic information that diaspora networks have in their host countries, which allow them to contribute to this positive economic effect.⁴⁵ Overall, these findings highlight the importance of diaspora networks in promoting economic ties between China and other countries.⁴⁶

Through diaspora business networks, the Chinese state seeks to advance its economic interests in these countries. For instance, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in many countries can act as a formal business lobby on behalf of the Chinese government and is used to cultivate relationships with high-ranking officials in host countries as well as with business communities at large. Indeed, we can think of this as a form of informal diplomacy carried out through diaspora business communities.⁴⁷

India’s trajectory has been similar in many respects. Migration and remittances have had a significant impact on India’s economy over the past several decades, with India being the largest recipient of remittances in the world, bringing in a total of $76 billion in 2019.⁴⁸ However, the diaspora has also been used as a way of enhancing India’s trade networks, particularly in the IT and diamond-cutting industries. An official emigration and diaspora strategy has gone hand in hand with India’s embrace of neoliberalism and open markets, with a shift in policies over time to what Agarwal refers to now as India’s ‘CEO Migration-Development Regime’.⁴⁹ The government has increasingly treated Indians abroad as ‘India’s greatest export, widely understood to represent the country’s comparative advantage in the global marketplace’.⁵⁰

Diaspora communities provide a means of matching up demand for products or services with potential suppliers and are also key in providing information about local consumer and market preferences. Groups such as the Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a network of high-tech entrepreneurs, have been able to forge transnational connections between high-tech clusters in the United States, such as Silicon Valley, and various bases in India, such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, and Delhi. Additionally, hubs for the global diamond trade, such as Antwerp in Belgium, have become closely linked with diamond-processing hubs in Mumbai and elsewhere due to the diasporic connections that link the mining, processing, and marketing sectors, with the Gujarati Pulanpari Jain diaspora playing a key role.⁵¹

Delhi has encouraged such activities by setting up the Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre (OIFC), which was designed to promote knowledge exchange and links across businesses as a way of encouraging investment.⁵² Even before becoming prime minister, Narendra Modi was skilful at instrumentalising the diaspora as an agent of commercial diplomacy. As chief minister of Gujarat, he drew upon the global Gujarati diaspora for purposes of commercial diplomacy – operating outside of the Ministry of External Affairs through initiatives such as the Protocol of Cooperation between Gujarat and Russia’s Astrakhan region, which ‘built upon the Gujarati diaspora’s two-century long links with that region’.⁵³ With the growth of an elite Indian diaspora in the United States and elsewhere, the diaspora itself has become increasingly organised, setting up institutions to facilitate interaction and networking with Indian business leaders, entrepreneurs, and government officials, thus further increasing the influence of India’s global economic networks.⁵⁴

Turkey is another example of a state that has seen a shift in approach to its diaspora from a source of remittances and economic development to an opportunity for it to extend its influence abroad. Whereas in the 1960s and 1970s, the Turkish state either ignored its diaspora, viewed it as a temporary phenomenon, or treated it as a source of foreign currency, there has been a change over time to the current policies of treating the diaspora abroad as a source of potential foreign policy influence. In 2010, a formal Office for Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB) was established in Turkey. The office combined elements of earlier policies that had been aimed at Turkish citizens abroad in Europe as well as Turkish ‘ethnic kin’ in the Balkans or the Former Soviet Union.⁵⁵

Part of the government’s diaspora strategy has included utilising the diaspora as a means of increasing Turkey’s presence and influence in Europe and elsewhere.⁵⁶ This has included an explicit strategy of leveraging the diaspora as a tool of state economic and lobbying power – to make (in the words of a member of the YTB Advisory Committee) ‘the Turkish diaspora among the most influential diasporas in the world’ and to engage in forms of ‘diaspora diplomacy’.⁵⁷

Starting from the 1960s and 70s, Turkey encouraged the export of labour as part of its overall economic development strategy. Turkey signed a bilateral labour agreement with Germany in 1961, thus making organised labour migration an aspect of its foreign relations. Similar agreements were signed with Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands (1964), followed by agreements with France (1965) and Australia and Sweden (1967).⁵⁸ These arrangements were a common feature of labour migration during the period, and labour remittances came to play a significant role in Turkey’s economy. Between 1973 and 1975, for example, official labour remittances equalled between 93.7 and 99.8% of exports in Turkey.⁵⁹

However, since the early 2000s remittances have been less significant – making up less than 0.2% of Turkey’s GDP, as Turkey’s economy boomed due to an export-oriented policy that made it one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. At the same time, the Turkish diaspora has achieved significant economic success in Europe, with an estimated 140,000 businesses started in Europe by Turkish-origin individuals, with annual revenue of more than $70 billion. Instead of remittances, finances flowed in the opposite direction as Turkey’s economy grew and Turkey placed increased emphasis on making links with its diaspora, with Turkey’s official diaspora organisation spending approximately $17 billion on over 1,000 civil society projects in 70 countries between 2011 and 2020.⁶⁰ The YTB has also been involved in supporting Turkey’s broader strategy of becoming a global economic player through increased aid, trade, and investment. For example, according to the Turkish government, its trade volume in Africa expanded from $5.4 billion in 2003 to $34.5 billion in 2021.⁶¹ Accompanying this growth in trade has been a greater involvement of Turkey’s YTB diaspora agency, which also administers thousands of scholarships for African students for study at Turkish universities.⁶²

Soft power: Cultural promotion and civilisational politics

A second mechanism of diasporic geopolitics is the use of soft power and ‘civilisational’ forms of politics, which have become an increasingly popular strategy in global politics for rising powers seeking to contest the dominant international order, with ‘civilisationalism’ emerging as a form of counter-hegemonic ideology.⁶³ Countries such as China, India, and Turkey have crafted strategies that draw on civilisational and cultural identities as a means of positioning themselves as influential players on the global stage. This strategy can be used to construct, create, and mobilise a global diaspora among long-standing putative ‘diaspora populations’ that are not technically citizens, as well as more generally to enhance their global standing and exercise influence. Cultural and ideational capital not only fuels national pride but also serves as a source of soft power, enabling countries to exert influence, attract tourism, and forge diplomatic ties. Through a deliberate emphasis on their cultural heritage, rising powers can project an image that goes beyond economic or political might, asserting forms of ideational and moral power in ways that often rely on populist tropes as a means of positioning themselves as influential actors shaping the course of global affairs.⁶⁴

In China’s case, its government emphasises its 5,000 years of history, with its language, writing system, philosophy, and art forming the core of its civilisational identity. The Chinese government has prominently featured these cultural attributes in its public diplomacy campaigns overseas. Most recently, the Chinese government proposed a Global Civilisation Initiative, with a vague reference to supposedly Western imposition of values or models on others. Specifically, it argues that ‘the future of all countries are closely and increasingly connected. And tolerance, coexistence, exchanges and mutual learning among different civilizations play an irreplaceable role in advancing humanity’s modernisation process.’⁶⁵

In recent years, China has actively promoted its civilisational politics through various concepts, including Tianxia (all under heaven), and the China Dream of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The concept of Tianxia has been central to China’s political philosophy for centuries. It refers to the idea of a unified world order under the leadership of the Chinese emperor. In modern times, the concept has been reinterpreted to refer to China’s vision of a community of shared destiny, where all nations are interconnected and interdependent.⁶⁶ Emphasising a world of harmony, Tianxia has also been used to promote China’s global ambitions and to counter Western-style democracy and human rights norms.⁶⁷ When this concept is applied to relations with the diaspora, it gives credence and legitimacy to the Chinese government’s claim over the diaspora as part of the effort to reassert China as an empire, with the diaspora as the natural subject of such a renewed world order.⁶⁸

The China Dream, or the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, is another concept that has been heavily promoted by the Chinese government in recent years. It refers to the idea of restoring China’s historical greatness, and to overcoming the country’s past humiliations at the hands of foreign powers, and thus has been used to promote national unity and pride both within the country as well as among its diaspora. The revitalisation of the Chinese nation is closely linked to Beijing’s management of diaspora relations, as overseas Chinese communities are seen as a key source of support and influence for the country. In a speech given by President Xi Jinping in 2014, he specifically appealed to the diaspora for the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation: ‘For Chinese people both at home and abroad, a united Chinese nation is our shared road, the profound Chinese culture is out shared soul, and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is our shared dream.’⁶⁹

However, this emphasis on past glory is also intertwined with a sense of victimhood, with past diasporic persecution and national humiliation by foreign powers being used as rallying cries for the diaspora.⁷⁰ The idea of Chinese victimhood is rooted in the country’s long history of colonialism and imperialism, particularly by Western powers. This history is frequently invoked by the Chinese government to rally domestic support and to shape its foreign policy. For the diaspora, this emphasis on victimhood is used as a rallying cry to build a sense of national pride and to encourage loyalty to the Chinese state, but it also represents Beijing’s new commitment to protect its overseas kin at a time of China’s renewed great power status. As such, these concepts are closely tied to the Chinese government’s management of its diaspora relations. The Chinese diaspora are not only tasked with active promotion of China’s success on the global stage but are also expected to be agents of Chinese civilisation in the rest of the world.⁷¹

Another dimension of China’s self-perception as a civilisational state is its appeal to mutuality in great civilisations, with countries such as Greece, India, Iran, and such.⁷² For example, in Chinese diplomatic language towards Greece, there is an emphasis on the two nations’ shared identity as ancient civilisations, which presumably would transcend contemporary differences in political systems and geopolitical orientation.⁷³ Similarly, the Chinese ambassador to Ethiopia also declared that China would ‘advocate the respect for the diversity of civilisations. Countries need to uphold the principles of equality, mutual learning, dialogue and inclusiveness among civilisations.’ From here, one can also infer that a task for the Chinese diaspora is to promote people-to-people exchanges and cooperation, and to promote mutual understanding and friendship among people.⁷⁴

India has also been using a ‘civilisational’ discourse in its foreign policy and connecting this with its diaspora. On the one hand, India’s cultural exports range ‘from Buddhism to yoga, Bollywood to Bhangra-rap, classical music to cuisine with the diaspora being viewed as an aspect of soft power’. A former external affairs minister noted, ‘people of Indian origin are extremely important sources of support for the Indian Government in the execution of its policies through the influence and respect they command in the countries in which they live’.⁷⁵ The government views the diaspora as part of ‘Brand India’. As the Secretary of the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) put it, ‘as the Indian Diaspora’s Brand increases … India’s brand increases … the global Indian is a tool of “soft power”’.⁷⁶

Since 2014, with the coming to power of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the use of civilisational discourses has increased in line with its mobilisation of Hindu nationalism or Hindutva, which views India as essentially a Hindu nation. Prime Minister Modi presents a counter-narrative to Western liberalism by claiming that democracy is rooted in India’s ancient Hindu past. Hindutva and the broader Hindu nationalist movement already had a strong base in the diaspora prior to 2014.⁷⁷ Under the BJP, the connections have accelerated between the government, the broader Hindu nationalist movement, or Sangh Parivar, and a range of Hindu associations, such as the World Hindu Economic Forum, which is a transnational religio-business forum founded in 2010 that effectively fuses economic and religious power and identity. In so doing, diaspora entrepreneurs simultaneously participate in the global market economy while also assuming a moral stance and critique vis-à-vis its ‘Western’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ excesses. Similarly to the Chinese promotion of ‘harmony’, Hindu nationalists promote concepts of Dharma as a ‘moral philosophy of universal harmony’ and combine knowledge production and community finance with spiritual enrichment.⁷⁸ This fits with the broader civilisationalist discourse which seeks to position India as ‘world teacher’ or vishwaguru.⁷⁹

Turkey also shares many similarities with China and India in its turn to a civilisational discourse as part of its overall foreign policy strategy. Whereas India has positioned itself as vishwaguru or the world’s guru, Turkey, under the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) regime, has positioned itself as the world’s conscience or dünyanin vicdani.⁸⁰ Turkey’s civilisationalist discourse – in this case, rooted in a neo-Ottoman identity and promoting a Turkish brand of Islam (a Turkish-Islamic synthesis) – has expanded hand in hand with an assertive diaspora policy. Turkey has turned to ‘its’ diaspora as a source of soft power – at the same time as it has been drawing on its imperial past and its identity as a majority Muslim country as a means of projecting a more expansive national identity both at home and abroad.⁸¹ Similar to India, as well, it has seen a fusion of its religious soft power with a neoliberal economic ideology and approach that empowered a new class of national and global religiously oriented entrepreneurs.⁸²

Two cultural institutions – the Yunus Emre Institute, which was created in 2007, and the Ministry of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) – have been key players in this regard. Turkey has a long history of promoting cultural and religious identities within emigrant and diaspora communities, including the Diyanet’s placement of imams in the diaspora. In the 1990s, there were at least 470 Turkish state teachers in Germany who were sent by the Turkish Ministry of Education to teach Turkish language and history, and Diyanet imams who served at approximately 775 mosques throughout Germany.⁸³

Since the early 2000s, however, the role of the Diyanet has expanded greatly as a form of soft power and as a foreign policy tool and has been instrumentalised by the AKP to promote its ideology abroad, including via the Turkish diaspora. Indeed, its expansion coincided with the founding of the YTB – the Diyanet is estimated to have grown to 61 branches in 31 countries, and it is active in organising regional religious forums. Imams are treated by Turkey as diplomats, appointed via a foreign placement exam and following orders of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs while abroad.⁸⁴ Turkey has also established an ‘International Theology Programme’ which seeks to recruit diaspora members to study at theological schools in Turkey as a way of ensuring the dominance of Turkish approaches to Islam in Europe.⁸⁵ Thus, Turkey has actively engaged with its diaspora population as part of its overall ‘civilisational’ strategy through which it portrays itself as representing and protecting a global Muslim community extending to its diaspora – and beyond.

Diplomatic power: Lobbying, image management, and political mobilisation/repression

A final mechanism of diasporic geopolitics used by rising power states revolves around political mobilisation, lobbying, and image management. All states seek to manage their image abroad – and use an array of tools to shape public perceptions of their national identity as part of their overall diplomatic strategy. This can range from ‘promotional’ to ‘obstructive’ and can include investing in foreign-facing media or hiring public relations firms that are tasked with image management and promoting positive public perceptions of the state abroad, as well as engaging in direct political activity, such as lobbying foreign governments.⁸⁶ Within this context, rising powers are increasingly utilising diaspora populations as an extension of state campaigns of image management, as they acquire sufficient capacity and geopolitical motivation to engage in forms of diaspora diplomacy.

Especially, but not only, in the case of more centralised or autocratic states of origin, diaspora populations can become the object of official government campaigns that seek to encourage pro-regime mobilisations, propaganda, and lobbying. In extreme cases, governments can also seek to repress dissent in the diaspora as part of their image management strategy – something that has occurred in all three cases of China, India, and Turkey. Transnational repression by states towards populations living abroad can replicate and mirror many of the techniques used by autocratic regimes at home, which rely heavily on ‘legitimation, repression and co-optation’ as the three pillars of stability.⁸⁷ The flip side of repressing opposition movements is for states to encourage loyalty.⁸⁸ Therefore, state repression and loyalty encouragement can also potentially create or enlarge internal divisions within the diaspora, at times producing a climate of fear in segments of the diaspora, or even leading to intra-diasporic conflicts and violence.⁸⁹

China, for example, views its diaspora members as public diplomats for its foreign policy agenda. Beijing not only moulds the Chinese diaspora into having a favourable view of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese state but also promotes desired narratives through the diaspora to the rest of the world.⁹⁰ Particularly, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office has been incorporated into the CCP’s United Front Work Department,⁹¹ which undertakes efforts to co-opt prominent diaspora figures to promote Beijing’s political agenda overseas.⁹²

Through such diasporic public diplomacy, the Chinese government’s goal is to shape public and elite discussions in host countries that are beneficial to China.⁹³ Indeed, one of the main public diplomacy goals during the Xi administration is to ‘Tell China’s Story Well’ abroad.⁹⁴ This is not only a mission that Xi has set for China’s domestic propaganda departments but is also mentioned during his speeches at various diaspora work conferences. With a particular focus on diasporic media, i.e. Chinese-language media overseas, the Chinese government seeks to spread its own messages in the diaspora community. At the same time, the Chinese government also targets educational and cultural exchanges among the overseas Chinese community and facilitates their visit to the ‘motherland’. Through the promotion of diasporic tourism, Beijing hopes that overseas Chinese can witness and appreciate the significant economic progress and social transformation of the country, thereby conveying those ‘real images’ of China to combat the perceived biased Western reports on the country.

Similarly, the Chinese government often seeks to rally support from its patriotic diaspora to push back against perceived Western provocations on core national security issues. This tactic involves leveraging the Chinese diaspora to organise demonstrations and protests against policies or actions seen as detrimental to China’s interests. These efforts have been particularly pronounced in recent years, as China has become more assertive on the global stage and faced increased criticism and pushback from Western powers, such as on issues relating to Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

For example, when a citywide protest movement was ongoing in Hong Kong in 2019,⁹⁵ the Chinese government organised counter-protests in major cities around the world, using social media and other online platforms to coordinate with overseas Chinese communities.⁹⁶ These demonstrations were often marked by a strong pro-China message, with participants waving Chinese flags and singing patriotic songs. Another example of China leveraging its diaspora to support its political agenda is its ongoing campaign to push back against criticism of its treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. Chinese embassies and consulates around the world have organised events and demonstrations aimed at promoting a positive view of China’s policies in the region and have worked to discredit reports of human rights abuses.

In addition to mobilising the diaspora to support its political agenda, Beijing has also been accused of engaging in transnational repression against members of these communities who are critical of the Chinese government. This can take many forms, including harassment, intimidation, and even abduction of individuals who speak out against China’s policies or actions. Chinese embassies often function as ‘important nodes of coordination and communication in the effort to silence critical voices’ but also as part of an externally facing government organisation that promotes China’s image abroad via the nationalist mobilisation of business and student associations.⁹⁷

For example, in recent years, there have been numerous reports of the Chinese government pressuring overseas Chinese communities to censor speech critical of the Chinese government, or to report on the activities of fellow community members. In some cases, Chinese authorities have even used legal or extra-legal means to target individuals and to intimidate and harass them and their relatives.⁹⁸ Beijing has been accused of kidnappings to arrest and deport individuals – for example, in 2015 a number of Chinese-born booksellers in Thailand and Hong Kong were kidnapped and deported to China after they had published material containing information that the Chinese government deemed sensitive.⁹⁹ As one US citizen of Uighur descent argued: ‘I’m exercising my rights under the US Constitution as an American citizen’, but ‘the long arm of the Chinese government’s domestic repression directly impacts the broader Uighur diaspora community, including in the United States’.¹⁰⁰

India has also viewed its diaspora as a significant factor in its image management and public diplomacy strategies, especially under the BJP government, where Modi has explicitly spoken of the Indian diaspora as being an ‘ambassador’ for India.¹⁰¹ Kapur has noted that ‘India’s cultivation of its diaspora has followed a realist logic’ with a focus on the diaspora in wealthy democracies, as opposed to countries such as Myanmar.¹⁰² In the first three years as prime minister, Modi made more than 49 visits to countries, holding numerous large rallies for diaspora members in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. The BJP has also mobilised the diaspora through an extensive network of Hindutva organisations attached to the Rashitriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and has multiple affiliated organisations across at least 80 countries.¹⁰³

The BJP’s extensive use of social media and technology has resonated with the high-tech Indian diaspora in the US and elsewhere.¹⁰⁴ As the Indian American population has grown in both size and stature, it has come to play an important role as a bridge between the United States and India, influencing the development of US–Indian relations, and has developed as a lobbying force with the establishment of the Congressional Caucus for India in 1993 and the subsequent establishment of the US–India Political Action Committee.¹⁰⁵ In the process, there has been a shift away from an Indian foreign policy focused on third world solidarity and the ‘people’ of the Global South, to a focus on the ‘people’ of the global diaspora – especially those located in states in the Global North.¹⁰⁶ Like China, India has also been accused of engaging in transnational repression, with Canada claiming in 2023 that India has carried out assassinations on its soil, and the United States issuing safety warnings to Sikh activists.¹⁰⁷

Turkey has also set about to mobilise its diaspora as a tool of diplomacy. Similar to India, it has engaged in populist forms of mobilisation as a means of enhancing its image abroad, and has treated its diaspora as ‘ambassadors for Turkey’.¹⁰⁸ Like Modi, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has also made it a priority to organise rallies amongst diaspora communities in Europe.¹⁰⁹ Turkey has also engaged in forms of transnational repression of some segments of the diaspora whose voices and demands do not fit with the government’s official narrative.¹¹⁰

Along with the official diaspora engagement agency (the YTB), the Turkish state has established two additional agencies focused on public diplomacy, including the Union of International Democrats (UID), which focuses on the political mobilisation of overseas Turks by organising rallies and supporting lobbying activities, and the Directorate for Communications, which focuses on the management of Turkey’s image abroad.¹¹¹ The UID’s own materials emphasise its role in ‘fulfilling a bridge function between Turkey and host countries’ and in promoting ‘peaceful conditions between nations through cooperation’.¹¹² In addition, Turkey established a ‘Public Diplomacy Coordinatorship’ which focused on emigrants abroad as ‘strategic and social capital’.¹¹³

These agencies target particular segments of the diaspora (namely, supporters of the government) while simultaneously marginalising other segments of the diaspora, such as ethnic and religious minority and opposition groups, including Kurdish and Alevi political actors, as well as Islamic groups, such as the severely repressed Gülen religious movement. Indeed, the latter’s status has changed significantly over time: in the 1990s and 2000s, it was a force of Turkish soft power overseas, working closely with the government in establishing and running schools, universities, and business associations. Following a 2016 coup attempt, however, the government engaged in a campaign of transnational repression against this group and co-opted many of their cultural and soft power activities.

Turkey’s significance as a member of NATO, a candidate for membership in the European Union, and a linchpin in the EU’s migration management strategy has given Turkey substantial leverage in its relationship with Europe, which has at times been exercised via reference to its diaspora. In May 2022, for example, Erdoğan suggested that Turkey would not support Finnish and Swedish membership in NATO, listing a number of conditions they would have to meet, which included taking a harder line towards some Kurdish groups operating within Sweden, further evidence of the extent to which geopolitical interests have become entangled with its diaspora policies.¹¹⁴

Implications for the future of international order

Visions of world order that dominate the study of IR have often been highly spatialised – whether focusing on power distribution across territorial states, global inequalities, or entrenched forms of ‘civilisational politics’.¹¹⁵ Yet other work in IR has pointed to the possibility of an alternative cartography of global politics as entangled and interconnected.¹¹⁶ As we have demonstrated here, one such form of entanglement is that which is produced by larger processes of global migration and global diaspora formation. Migration-sending states that are now emerging as rising powers have increasingly moved from using diaspora engagement as a means of securing remittances and promoting domestic economic development to viewing diaspora engagement policies as a transnational means to exert power and geopolitical influence. By leveraging diasporic geopolitics, rising powers such as China, India, and Turkey have managed to enhance their geopolitical strategies and expand their sphere of influence.

The entangled nature of diasporic geopolitics is significant for comprehending and theorising the future of international order. Geopolitical dynamics and power relations are often thought of in regional and territorial terms. However, diasporic geopolitics challenges this notion, as it reshapes the geography of power relations by increasing connections among countries as well as by influencing the distribution of power in the international system. The physical location of diaspora communities, transnational linkages, and the spatial distribution of power all play important roles in shaping the dynamics of diasporic geopolitics, creating not only opportunities for deeper integration but also vulnerabilities.¹¹⁷

Since rising powers are likely to continue to engage with their diaspora populations, these spatial dynamics will become increasingly significant for understanding the future of international relations across Global North–South divisions. This has a number of policy implications: there is the potential for diaspora groups to come under pressure from both their state of origin and state of residence and/or for heightened concern regarding the loyalty of particular diasporic groups from rising powers that are viewed as posing significant challenges to the dominance of great powers in the Global North. This perception can lead to mistrust and concerns about divided loyalties, potentially feeding into broader domestic polarisation dynamics.

Moreover, the influence wielded by diaspora communities can be viewed as a form of foreign interference in domestic affairs. Host societies may perceive the involvement of diasporas in political activities, lobbying efforts, or cultural initiatives as an intrusion into their sovereignty. This can trigger nationalist sentiments and protectionist attitudes, with a desire to limit the influence of external actors within their borders.¹¹⁸ This is certainly the case within the context of China’s rising power and its relations with diasporic communities in the West, with many ethnic Chinese or Asians in general become targets of suspicion and even racial hatred.

At the same time, however, as states seek to project particular images or civilisational identities abroad via their diasporas, there is also the potential for an increase in the use of transnational repression by states as a means of silencing opposition and image management – a tactic that has been used against groups and individuals in the diaspora by Turkey and China and, to some extent, India.¹¹⁹ This raises broader human rights concerns, as well as posing some fundamental challenges for liberal democratic states.¹²⁰

Finally, there is a tension between top-down and state-led forms of diaspora engagement, and other alternative bottom-up visions of diasporic politics and diasporic imaginaries that may contest and oppose states’ use of diasporic geopolitics, and their instrumentalisation of diaspora communities abroad.¹²¹ In all three cases discussed here, there are internal tensions in the diaspora regarding the aims – or even legitimacy – of the state of origin and its geopolitical ambitions. Thus, the dynamics of diasporic geopolitics go beyond the extension of state power projection strategies into other states but also extend to the effects of such processes on local communities and the domestic politics of differently situated states of immigration.

These changes and dynamics all have theoretical implications for how we think about world politics. They suggest that geographically circumscribed notions of the international system are inadequate for understanding the future of global order, and that scholars will need to find new theories to better understand complex forms of entanglement, including the political effects of states’ use of transnational and diasporic power projection strategies. Existing work on diaspora politics and diaspora engagement policies in the field provides insights and tools that IR scholars can build on in ways that shed light on the entangled nature of international global order. The future of international order is likely to be much more spatially and culturally complex, ‘with Western liberal modernity … only a part of what is on offer’.¹²² Within this context, ‘diasporic geopolitics’ is set to play a significant role as a means for rising powers to exert economic, cultural, and political power and influence. We have suggested here some mechanisms and patterns that characterise the strategies of rising powers such as China, India, and Turkey. Our analysis presents a framework and a direction for future research and analysis. The necessity of better understanding the full range of ways in which diasporic geopolitics is set to shape international order over the next 50 years means that it will continue to be a significant area of IR research in the future.