Protest emigration (also called hijrat or deshatyaga in South Asia) is the use of emigration as an activist tactic when it is felt political change is not currently possible inside a jurisdiction. Gene Sharp in The Politics of Nonviolent Action describes this as a form of social noncooperation.[1]

In some traditions, such emigrations have been symbolically analogized to the Hijrah or to the Exodus.

Pre-modern class conflict

This was a method used against local lords by peasants and lower classes in the secessio plebis of Ancient Rome and in Japan[2][1] as well as Southeast Asia.[3] Fugitive peasants were a recurring phenomenon under European serfdom. This tactic has also been noted as important to the formation of various pre-colonial African states, as well as a template for later eras.[4]

Anticolonial resistance

This featured in several anticolonial and decolonization movements,[5] including in British India, as in the Hijrat of 1920 from North-West Frontier Province to independent Afghanistan associated with Abul Kalam Azad of the Khilafat Movement,[6] and in the 1928 Bardoli Satyagraha and 1930 Salt March operations which included some migrations from Gujarat to the princely Baroda State.[1] Hijrat was a tactic commended several times by Gandhi as appropriate to certain circumstances.[7] This tactic was also proposed but not pursued as a form of resistance to concessions in China.[1] And it was also significant in emigration from French West Africa to the Gold Coast and other colonies of British West Africa.[8]

Radical federalism

In a country under strong federalism such as the United States, protest can take the form of an internal migration through foot voting to better individual lives, or in a more utopian mode, to alter the political character of a sub-national state through a directed partisan sorting.

References

  1. ^ a b c d Sharp, Gene (1973). The Politics of Nonviolent Action. P. Sargent Publisher. ISBN 978-0-87558-068-5.
  2. ^ Bowen, Roger W. (1984). Rebellion and Democracy in Meiji Japan: A Study of Commoners in the Popular Rights Movement. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05230-7.
  3. ^ Adas, Michael (2018-10-29). State, Market and Peasant in Colonial South and Southeast Asia. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-86630-2.
  4. ^ Herbst, Jeffrey (1990). "Migration, the Politics of Protest, and State Consolidation in Africa". African Affairs. 89 (355): 183–203. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a098284. ISSN 0001-9909. JSTOR 722241.
  5. ^ Scott, James C.; Kerkvliet, Benedict J. Tria (2013-12-19). Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance in South-East Asia. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-84532-4.
  6. ^ Clements, Frank; Adamec, Ludwig W. (2003). Conflict in Afghanistan: A Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-85109-402-8.
  7. ^ Jolly, Surjit Kaur (2006). Reading Gandhi. Concept Publishing Company. ISBN 978-81-8069-356-4.
  8. ^ Asiwaju, A. I. (1976). "Migrations as Revolt: The Example of the Ivory Coast and the Upper Volta before 1945". The Journal of African History. 17 (4): 577–594. doi:10.1017/S0021853700015073. ISSN 0021-8537. JSTOR 180740. S2CID 161799322.
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