Embedded Diasporas: Shaping the Geopolitical Landscape

This research argues that the capitalistic world-economy, advantageous to the core nations of World Systems Theory, is simultaneously rebalancing inequalities for semi-peripheral nations through a diasporic mechanism that builds reciprocal embeddedness. This is a challenge to world systems theorists' predominant view that the state class structure is fixed. This research adds to international networks research, extending World Systems Theory by building on and integrating the concept of reciprocal embeddedness at the interorganizational and international levels. A diaspora, explicated as one that is organized toward political action, becomes embedded in a core host, uses the host's influence to reduce state class differences, builds a status-equalizing intercultural channel, and induces an agenda for its homeland.