While tensions within diasporas are common, political divisions among the Yemeni diaspora are compounded by a number of factors. Dana M. Moss explains that Yemeni communities outside of Yemen experience challenges in mobilizing to send humanitarian aid to their home country. This is because of disagreements concerning “who has the right to speak and mobilize for the relief effort and where aid should be directed,” in addition to counterterrorism measures that prevent effective humanitarian mobilization.23 For example, Yemenis who reside in the United States fear that financial remittances to their relatives in Yemen will be “mistaken as support for terrorism,” especially following the Muslim travel ban imposed by President Donald Trump, which includes a ban on Yemenis wishing to enter the United States.24 Moss argues that the curtailment of minority rights in the name of the war against terrorism has directly impacted “Yemenis’ collective abilities and willingness to resource relief efforts across borders.”25 For one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, this presents a significant obstacle to the delivery of much-needed aid. Since the anti-government Arab uprisings of 2011, the literature on Arab diaspora mobilization has grown significantly.26 In addition to analyzing political divisions and tensions among diaspora community members, scholars have identified a number of other challenges that these individuals face in effectively mobilizing to improve the situations in their home countries. For example, “homeland repression” often extends across borders in the form of global surveillance and threats, pushing diaspora members to refrain from engaging in any kind of mobilization or political activity.27 In her discussion of extraterritorial authoritarian practices, Marlies Glasius examines the inclusion of diaspora actors “as subjects,” rather than as “citizens,” of authoritarian states.28 The result is that authoritarian states extend the reach of their repressive practices to such “subjects” transnationally, as a way for governments to assert “authority ‘as if ’ the subject[s] were still on [their] territory.”29As Emma Lundgren Jörum observes in her discussion of the Syrian diaspora in Sweden, one consequence of this transterritorial repression is that “citizens with roots in certain authoritarian states are effectively discouraged from exercising their constitutional rights.”30 This means that diaspora members wishing to influence policies affecting their home countries must first weigh the consequences of doing so, particularly if the home state regimes engage in this sort of transnational repression. Most troubling, however, is that the increasing use of threats, global surveillance, and illicit intelligence gathering to monitor the activities of diaspora members restricts the ability of these individuals to fully engage in political mobilization, no matter how peaceful. Attempts to coordinate and influence policies that affect their home countries thus become exceedingly difficult. Such surveillance also directly threatens the lives of the relatives of diaspora members who still reside in the home country.31 The Yemeni professional diaspora has not been immune to this kind of global surveillance and intimidation.Moreover, intra-diaspora distrust and polarization exacerbate this lack of mobilization.32 Cecilia Baeza and Paulo Pinto’s discussion about the pro-Bashar Assad Syrian diaspora in Argentina and Brazil demonstrates how layers of intimidation, sectarian polarization, and political division complicate prospects for effective mobilization of the anti-Assad diaspora. Pro-Assad Syrians in Argentina and Brazil have, to a certain extent, succeeded in soliciting support from Brazilian and Argentinian government officials for the Syrian regime. This part of the Syrian diaspora, Baeza and Pinto contend, exploited anti-imperialist sentiment in Latin America as a catalyst for pro-Assad mobilization. The “‘anti-imperialist’ struggle of the Syrian regime,” they continue, “found eager interlocutors in the Argentinean and Brazilian political landscapes.”33 This argument was made in the context of the impending U.S. military intervention in Syria in 2013, following the chemical attack in the Ghouta area surrounding the Syrian city of Damascus. By framing Western military intervention as imperial, pro-Assad Syrians won the sympathy of powerful individuals in their host countries’ governments.Baeza and Pinto’s illuminating discussion focuses on the more established Syrian diaspora in Argentina and Brazil, which exerted significant influence over the political views of these countries’ governments. Still, Moss’ empirical study on Syrian diaspora mobilization found that other diaspora members were supportive of Western military intervention. Such intervention (in the form of no-fly zones, as opposed to the ground troops and invasion that characterized the U.S. military intervention in Iraq) was deemed necessary to help address the immediate urgency of saving lives.34 Moss demonstrates that many of those who supported Western military intervention in Syria also professed their anti-imperialist dispositions, with Western intervention perceived “as the best bad option” to help the revolution’s cause.35 Divisions within diasporas, then, emerge on different social and political levels. They can shift depending on the length of time individuals within the diaspora have resided outside their home countries, as well as on the strength of their relationships with host country governments. The media is another factor that influences policymaking. Literature on the relationship between the media’s issue-framing role and policymaking is robust.36Scholars believe that the media can have a powerful impact on the policy process, especially as it “can establish the nature, sources, and consequences of policy issues in ways that fundamentally change not just the attention paid to those issues, but the different types of policy solutions sought.”37 Indeed, as Stuart Soroka et al. argue, “Policymakers are not simply affected by issue framing in the media, but they actively engage in policy framing.”38 Less prevalent is research on how diaspora members engage with the media to influence policies affecting their home countries. The next section aims to address this gap in the literature by outlining how the Yemeni professional diaspora has prioritized the use of media in order to shape its agenda-setting and issue-framing roles regarding the conflict in Yemen.
the Muslim travel ban includes a ban on Yemenis wishing to enter the U S curtailment of minority rights in the name of the war against terrorism has directly impacted “Yemenis’ collective abilities and willingness to resource relief efforts across borders.” homeland repression” often extends across borders in the form of global surveillance and threats, pushing diaspora members to refrain from engaging in any kind of mobilization or political activity. diaspora members wishing to influence policies affecting their home countries must first weigh the consequences of doing so threats, global surveillance, and illicit intelligence gathering restricts the ability of these individuals to fully engage in political mobilization, no matter how peaceful layers of intimidation, sectarian polarization, and political division complicate prospects for effective mobilization of the anti-Assad diaspora exploited anti-imperialist sentiment in Latin America as a catalyst for pro-Assad mobilization By framing Western military intervention as imperial, pro-Assad Syrians won the sympathy of powerful individuals in their host countries’ governments. many of those who supported Western military intervention in Syria also professed their anti-imperialist dispositions, with Western intervention perceived “as the best bad option” to help the revolution’s cause