From the 1st to the 3rd of July, the 13th edition of the European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS) took place at Izmir University of Economics. Organised every year by the European International Studies Association (EISA), EWIS brings together the European International Relations, Sociology, and Political Geography communities around a distinctive format, in which participants join a single workshop and stay with it for two full days. The result is the kind of sustained, in-depth conversation that large conferences rarely allow. For the DiaDip team, this year’s EWIS was a special occasion: our workshop, “Diaspora Diplomacy Reconsidered: Mapping Possible Futures”, convened by Jonathan Harris and Fabrizio Leonardo Cuccu, was the first academic event organised by the project since its launch.
The theme of EWIS 2026 was “Navigating a Fractured World: Struggles for Survival and Solidarity”, a very fitting theme for a workshop on diaspora diplomacy. The 13 contributions presented by the 15 workshop participants highlighted how diasporas can build connections between the homeland they belong to and the states they find themselves living in. The starting point for the workshop was that “Diaspora Diplomacy” is a concept in need of a clearer definition. Over the last two decades, diaspora engagement has become increasingly more prominent: states publish diaspora strategies, appoint diaspora ministers, and court their communities abroad as partners in trade, investment and public diplomacy. Scholarship has followed, but the concept of Diaspora Diplomacy is often stretched between very different phenomena, from states engaging their diasporas, to diasporas lobbying host governments, to transnational communities acting independently of any state at all. The workshop set out to map these different understandings and, as the title suggests, to sketch possible futures for both the practice and the study of diaspora diplomacy, with a particular attention to cases where questions of contested statehood and transnational politics are especially acute.
Over two days, we discussed 13 papers from colleagues based in universities and organisations across Europe and beyond. The papers ranged from the diaspora policies of authoritarian states to the activism of diasporas themselves, to a reconsideration of the role of stateless diasporas in processes of self-determination, with case studies spanning the Basque, Hmong and Kurdish diasporas as well as the Egyptian, Indian and Iranian ones. What made the format work was that every paper received extended discussion, every participant read the others’ work in advance, and by the second day the conversation had developed a shared vocabulary and a set of common questions that no ninety-minute panel could have produced.
One was the question of power: who speaks for a diaspora, and who benefits when states and diasporas engage? Diaspora diplomacy is often presented as a win-win relationship, but the papers repeatedly showed how it can also be a site of surveillance, exclusion and contestation, particularly where home states view parts of their diaspora as opponents rather than partners. A second thread concerned territories and homelands beyond the state: what can diaspora diplomacy tell us about the diplomatic work of diasporas that relate to a nation or homeland without a state of their own? A third thread turned to the actors themselves, the diaspora organisations, professional networks and individuals that “do” diaspora diplomacy, often in ways that official strategies struggle to capture. Who are these actors, and what particular qualities allow them to carry out this work? These are exactly the questions DiaDip was set up to explore, and hearing them debated from so many different perspectives was invaluable at this stage of the project.
Beyond our own workshop, EWIS offered plenty to think with. The opening day featured two roundtables one on navigating insecurity and anxiety in the 21st century, the other on reimagining the Middle East and global orders through survival and repair. The list of workshops running alongside ours, from populist diplomacies to minorities in a fractured world, showed how many scholars and researchers are grappling with questions adjacent to ours. Izmir itself was a great location. One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities of the Mediterranean, historically home to many different religious and ethnic communities, the city is a reminder that mobility, displacement and transnational connection are not new features of international politics.
For a first event, we could hardly have asked for more. Organising a workshop is a different experience from presenting at one: the months of reading abstracts, assembling a programme and corresponding with participants give you a stake in every single paper. Watching the group connect over two days, and continue the conversation over coffee breaks and dinner along the Izmir waterfront, was the most rewarding part. Our thanks go to EISA, to the local organising team at Izmir University of Economics for their generous hospitality, and above all to our participants, who brought exactly the mix of rigour and generosity that the format demands.
