Diaspora Reputation Spillovers: How Political Actions Of Home-State Elites Shape The Social Integration Of Immigrants Abroad

Abstract

This study examines how the political actions of home-state elites cause reputational spillovers that influence the social integration of diaspora communities in host societies. Although migration scholarship has examined stigma and discrimination toward immigrants, the mechanism by which state-level political conduct is transferred onto co-ethnic populations abroad remains under-theorized. The article proposes a reputation-spillover framework integrating reputation theory in international relations, stigma and labeling theory, and transnationalism theory, and tests its observable implications through an AI-assisted comparative qualitative design.[1] Using computational discourse analysis, including topic modeling, corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis, and event-anchored sentiment tracing, the study analyzes a structured text corpus across three diaspora contexts: South Asian communities in the United States and United Kingdom, Middle Eastern communities in Europe, and Eastern European communities in Western Europe. Findings suggest that home-state elite actions are reframed through collective-blame, security-threat, and loyalty-questioning repertoires, carrying implications for integration policy and anti-discrimination practice.