"WE HAD TO DO SOMETHING:" Diaspora Mobilization, Private Life Strategies, and Transnational Political Action in Syria's Transition

Abstract

This thesis explores the transnational political strategies and private life strategies articulated by members of Netherlands-based Syrian diaspora organizations in response to the political transition in Syria following the fall of Assad in December 2024. Drawing on qualitative data from twelve interviews, this research examines how perceptions of the Syrian transitional government influence the strategic actions of diaspora organizations, highlighting the interplay between individual beliefs and collective mobilization efforts. By offering seven distinct types of transnational political strategies, based on extensive literature analysis of transnational political action in the Syrian, Yemeni, Kurdish, Rwandan, Zimbabwean, and Ukrainian diaspora. These types have mapped the form transnational political strategies, including information and communication, strategic framing, resource mobilization, institutional and organizational, advocacy and lobby, protest and demonstrations and transnational engagement. The analysis reveals how certain types of diaspora organizations engage in specific types of transnational strategies based on perceptions of these members, giving an added understanding to the contextual mobilising factors in diaspora mobilization within certain political context. In the light of Syria's political change, transnational political strategies are being developed by diaspora mobilizers, aiming to achieve certain outcomes related to this political shift. The outcomes demonstrate that the perceptions of members in Syrian diaspora organizations in the Netherlands, as well as how they view the Syrian transitional government, are closely related in more direct and indirect ways to the transnational political strategies their organizations maintain; however, this is not universally applicable. On the contrary, this study reveals that in some cases the perceptions of the members in organizations do not align with the strategies the organization articulated. On the individual level, however, I discovered that private life strategies of individuals within these organizations are closely related to these individuals' perceptions regarding the Syrian transitional government.