Sharon Quinsaat

Department of Sociology and Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies, Grinnell College

“Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora”

Friday, March 22, noon

Peters Campus Life Building 100 and online

When people migrate and settle in other countries, do they automatically form a diaspora? In Insurgent Communities, Sharon M. Quinsaat explains the dynamic process through which a diaspora is strategically constructed. Quinsaat looks to Filipinos in the United States and the Netherlands—examining their resistance against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, their mobilization for migrants’ rights, and the construction of a collective memory of the Marcos regime—to argue that diasporas emerge through political activism. Social movements provide an essential space for addressing migrants’ diverse experiences and relationships with their homeland and its history. A significant contribution to the interdisciplinary field of migration and social movements studies, Insurgent Communities illuminates how people develop collective identities in times of social upheaval.

Sharon Quinsaat received her PhD in Sociology from University of Pittsburgh. Her research and teaching interests include social movements, migration, Southeast Asia, and Asian Americans from a global and transnational perspective. Sharon’s projects and courses to date reflect her intellectual and personal interest in understanding how foreign workers, immigrants, and refugees engage in collective action to challenge hegemonic power and create new kinds of political spaces. From an empirical investigation of the discursive construction of contemporary immigration to a comparative-historical study of homeland-oriented migrant mobilization, the trajectory of her sociological inquiry focuses on both cultural and structural elements in different levels and units of analysis. Her research has appeared in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies, Mass Communication and Society, Sociology Compass, and Asian Survey. Sharon’s dissertation, entitled “Revolution From Afar: Mobilizations for Regime Change and the Making of the Filipino Diaspora, 1965-1992” argues that diasporas are outcomes, rather than causes or agents, of transnational mobilization. She was awarded the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant to complete data collection for this study.

Hybrid meeting, registration required for zoom participation: https://niu-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIsf-murT0rGtHekPdUMdCUKCryt-VVb0tb

Free and open to the public.