Paper short abstract:

Diaspora members play a central but ambivalent role in the Southern Cameroons Conflict. This role might be influenced by their understanding of their own migrant status and the mixture of marginalisation and privilege it engenders.

Paper long abstract:

The prominence of diaspora members has been a defining feature of the Southern Cameroons conflict so far. While diaspora involvement in civil conflicts is common, it came as a surprise in this particular case, given the lose structures of the Anglophone diaspora before 2017. I am exploring the factors that led to the current conflict dynamic in my ongoing PhD project. Here, I want to focus on a seemingly small observation I made while coding interviews with Southern Cameroonians in Germany that might be pertinent in understanding diaspora involvement in homeland conflict more generally: The local Cameroonian perspective paints emigrates as successful, albeit out-of-touch, cosmopolitans as emigration requires substantial resources and offers vast socioeconomic opportunity. Yet, my interlocutors stress the involuntary nature of their lives abroad, some using the term “refugee” to describe their predicament. These diverging understandings of the diaspora explain some of the current friction over the ethics and legitimacy of a diaspora led Southern Cameroonian independence movement. Further, I argue that arriving at the refugee narrative is a step in my interlocutors’ political radicalisation; realising that, though privileged to be able to travel, they came to Germany for greener pastures when, in a fair world, their homeland’s pastures would have been green to begin with. As a theoretical starting point for this consideration, I suggest adapting the “integration paradox” coined by sociologist Aladdin El-Mafaalani, which posits that members of marginalised groups become more likely to voice criticism and demand betterment the less intensely marginalised they become.