Exporting factionalism: Transnational reconfigurations of Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict and contested diaspora authority

This article examines scholarly portrayals of diaspora authority in Cameroon’s Anglophone Conflict. Existing literature emphasizes the diaspora’s meddling, depicting them as using their wealth and distance from potential retaliation to influence armed fighters. Such framings obscure the complex transnational interactions and negotiations that shape diasporic interventions and authority. Applying a dialectical conceptualization of agency and vulnerability, this article analyzes intra-diaspora and combatant-facing interactions within the context of the conflict’s circulation between homeland and diaspora. The findings reveal that factional antagonisms are exported from conflict zones, socialized within diaspora spaces, and re-enter separatist combatant ranks, instigating internal divisions and violence. Within this recursive conflict loop, armed fighters renegotiate the terms of diaspora authority by delegitimizing financial remittances and distance from reprisals as bases for control, instead prioritizing in-person vulnerability. By framing diaspora authority as relational, negotiated, and vulnerability-dependent, this article contributes to debates on conflict transportation, the transnational social processes of conflict, and the resource bases of political actors in conflict settings.