Eliana Fonsah

Eliana Fonsah is a PhD candidate in the department of sociology at UC Merced. Her research examines how diasporic movements from the Global South—particularly those from Africa—mobilize to pressure home governments for democracy and social change, with a focus on the within-movement dynamics of the Cameroon anglophone diasporic and transnational movement. She employs semistructured interviews to investigate how this diaspora mobilized to push the authoritarian regime in Cameroon to democratize. Her work also analyzes why and how solidarity—a critical variable in diasporic transnational mobilization—collapsed within the movement and the effect of this collapse on its trajectory. Her research seeks to answer the questions: (1) How has the Cameroon Anglophone diasporic and transnational movement mobilized to pressure the government of Cameroon to democratize? (2) at what point does solidarity break down within these movements, and (3) why is it so challenging for activists in the Cameroon anglophone movement, despite common goals, to collaborate effectively against the common enemy of a home-country dictatorship? Finally, her work aims to identify effective mobilization strategies that can strengthen solidarity within the movement, enabling it to impact democracy in Cameroon and address the social conditions that forced many of them to flee their home country. Eliana holds an MA in sociology from UC Merced, an MPS in labor and global workers’ rights from Penn State University, an MA in history with a specialization in the history of international relations, and BA in history from the University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon.