Scholarship on transitional justice, transnational social movements, and transnational diaspora mobilization has offered little understanding about how memorialization initiatives with substantial diaspora involvement emerge transnationally and are embedded and sustained in different contexts. We argue that diasporas play a galvanizing role in transnational interest-based and symbolic politics, expanding claim-making from the local to national, supranational, and global levels of engagement. Using initiatives to memorialize atrocities committed at the former Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we identify a four-stage mobilization process. First, initiatives emerged and diffused across transnational networks after a local political opportunity opened in the homeland. Second, attempts at coordination of activities took place transnationally through an NGO. Third, initiatives were contextualized on the nation-state level in different host-states, depending on the political opportunities and constraints available there. Fourth, memorialization claims were eventually shifted from the national to the supranational and global levels. The article concludes by demonstrating the potential to apply the analysis to similar global movements in which diasporas are directly involved.

Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a published version is known of, the repository item page linked to above, will contain details on accessing it.

No abstract

No abstract

Diaspora actors demonstrate their ability to play a role in a variety of political and social processes in their homelands, including transitional justice. Transnational diaspora memorialization initiatives have become embedded and sustained within different contexts. This paper examines how the causal mechanism of coordination affects memorialization initiatives. It compares memorialization efforts in two localities in Bosnia and Herzegovina with different levels of coordination between diaspora, returnees, and local institutional actors. Centralized coordination with the help of a homeland institution enriches existing memory narratives and aims to forward transitional justice. Memorialization and commemorative practices initiated by diaspora without homeland institutional backing can lead to coordination among a more diverse set of actors, ultimately fostering new, alternative, and more inclusive memory narratives.