Making or Breaking Peace : Understanding Diaspora Attitudes Towards Homeland Conflicts

Sammanfattning: Conflicts today aren’t just between two opposing parties but are delocalized for many reasons. One of those reasons is the migration of groups affected by conflict to other countries. These groups are known as Conflict-generated diaspora and even though they move across the border, they never really cease to be involved in the conflict back home. Because of this continued attachment, diasporas can play the role of a peace-maker or a peace-breaker in the homeland conflict. The literature on diasporas is still trying to understand the factors that lead to this behavior. In this context, this study attempts to answer the question - How does migration affect attitudes towards peace deals for homeland conflicts?I conduct a Structured Focused Comparison of Palestinian communities in Palestine and Sweden to test the diasporas as peace-breakers framework, which links conflict-generated migration to negative attitudes towards peace deals for homeland conflicts. The empirical findings do not find support for the hypothesis tested; since the Palestinian diaspora in Sweden showed a more positive attitude towards the Two-state solution as compared to the local Palestinian community. This is an important finding because it makes a strong case for not labeling all conflict-generated diasporas as peace-breakers.