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Turning the tide : mobility and the upstream diffusion of political attitudes and behaviors
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Florence : European University Institute, 2025
EUI; SPS; PhD Thesis
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SAETRE, Juliette, Turning the tide : mobility and the upstream diffusion of political attitudes and behaviors, Florence : European University Institute, 2025, EUI, SPS, PhD Thesis - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/94059
Abstract
This dissertation investigates how political attitudes and behaviors diffuse through human mobility. While influence is often assumed to flow downstream—from institutional centers to peripheries, or from majority populations to minorities—I examine how it can also move upstream: from ordinary individuals who, by virtue of their mobility, carry novel political content into the contexts they move through. It explores when and how such content, once introduced, takes hold within receiving communities, reshaping local attitudes and behaviors. The inquiry unfolds through three empirical papers. The first shows how historical migration patterns can generate latent network infrastructures that enable protest to diffuse transnationally. It traces how a feminist performance, rooted in the Chilean context, gained global traction through the structure of the Chilean diaspora and the ties its members had built with hostcountry residents over time. The second investigates why Chile’s dictatorship (1973–89) prompted widespread solidarity mobilizations in the West, while Argentina’s did not. I argue that Chilean refugees activated host communities by embedding a distant conflict in local settings and transmitting credible, bottom-up information—whereas the relative absence of Argentine refugees, and their weaker integration into host networks, limited such diffusion. The third demonstrates that returning Norwegian peacekeepers from Lebanon introduced counter-narratives about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict into otherwise homogeneous communities. These testimonies, circulating through trusted in-group ties, catalyzed a sharp decline in public support for Israel between 1978 and 1980. Together, the papers show that human mobility can drive upstream political influence—but only when the ideas it carries are reinforced through trusted social ties in receiving communities. While mobility enables the circulation of new political content, its broader impact depends on the networks through which it flows.
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Defence date: 14 November 2025
Examining Board: Prof. Jeffrey Checkel (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Arnout van de Rijt (European University Institute, Co-supervisor); Prof. Andreas Wimmer (Columbia University); Prof. Mirna Safi (Sciences Po)
Examining Board: Prof. Jeffrey Checkel (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Arnout van de Rijt (European University Institute, Co-supervisor); Prof. Andreas Wimmer (Columbia University); Prof. Mirna Safi (Sciences Po)
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Chapter 2 'How Protests Spread: Diasporas, Wide Bridges, and the Transnational Diffusion of Un Violador en tu Camino' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'How protests spread : diasporas, wide bridges, and the transnational diffusion of 'un violador en tu camino'' (2025) in the journal 'American Journal of Sociology'.