REVOLUTION FROM AFAR: MOBILIZATIONS FOR HOMELAND REGIME CHANGE AND\ud THE MAKING OF THE FILIPINO DIASPORA, 1965-1992

From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, Filipinos in the U.S. and the Netherlands became key players in international efforts to overthrow an oppressive regime and institute democracy in the Philippines. When Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972, Filipino student and political organizations in the U.S. immediately convened in San Francisco and launched a national campaign to oppose authoritarian rule. In less than a year, the movement spread as new organizations of diverse political orientations emerged and took root in long-established Filipino communities in the U.S. Activists focused on lobbying Congress for the withdrawal of military and economic support to Marcos. In the Netherlands, Filipino exile and solidarity organizations in Europe organized the Permanent People’s Tribunal on the Philippines in 1980 to expose and isolate the Marcos dictatorship and recognize the national liberation movements as the genuine representatives of the Filipino people. \ud \ud While much is known about why migrants maintain homeland ties, information on how they become engaged in organizations involved in political struggles remains scant. Through a comparative case study of homeland-directed activism among Filipinos in the U.S. and the Netherlands from the period of authoritarian rule (1965-1986) to the early years of democratic transition (1986-1992) in the Philippines, the project analyzes how political structures in both the host and home societies, resources in the migrant communities, and formation of oppositional consciousness interact and influence mobilization. \ud \ud Research findings show that variations in the emergence, growth, and outcomes of the movement in the two countries were due to dissimilar host-country conditions and the manner by which the interaction of economic, political, and social structures in the homeland and hostland provided opportunities and disincentives for mobilization. However, similar mechanisms and processes occurred in both the U.S. and Netherlands, although these differed with regard to actors and outcomes, depending on the historical context. Overall, the formation of diasporas is a consequence of strategic social construction by political entrepreneurs in periods of heightened contention in the homeland such as during dictatorship and regime change. Thus, diasporas are outcomes, rather than causes or agents, of transnational mobilization