Reflections on diaspora and soft power: community building among female US expats in Southern Europe

Abstract

Illuminated by life-stories of American women in Italy and Greece, our work examines a complex relationship between expatriate collectivity and soft power agency. The data were collected from in-depth interviews with 60 US-nationals who live in Italy and Greece. Our findings show that these women view shape as a strong diasporic collectivity through activities of ecological civic engagement, which, however, do not result in a successful exercise of soft power. The isolationist nature of their collectivity causes a number of diasporic mistakes and turns their chosen community project into a weak resource for soft power, a translation of which remains highly problematic.