Diaspora Engagement Policies as Global Nation-Building: The Karta Polaka in the Global Political Order
Diaspora Engagement Policies as Global Nation-Building: The Karta Polaka in the Global Political Order

Summary/Abstract: This article conceptualises diaspora engagement policies as a form of global nation-building. While existing research has produced numerous typologies explaining why states engage their diasporas, it has paid limited attention to how such policies relate to the structural principles of the global political order. Addressing 3 analytical blind spots – the neglect of structural commonalities among policy types, the lack of attention to their relationship with the nation-state form and the omission of accidental diasporas – the article advances a theoretical framework that links diaspora engagement to the global principle of organising political communities. Using Poland’s Karta Polaka as a heuristic device, the article demonstrates how states seek to re-establish the ideal-type congruence between citizenship, territory and national belonging beyond their territorial and citizenship boundaries. Rather than eroding sovereignty, these policies illustrate the adaptive resilience of the nation-state form under conditions of globalisation. Framing diaspora engagement as global nation-building thus reveals how nation-states continue to reproduce and legitimise themselves as central actors of world politics through transborder practices of inclusion and belonging.

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