Diaspora mobilization and the politics of loyalty in the time of Ebola: evidence from the Sierra Leonean diaspora in the UK

Following the recent involvement of overseas diasporas and citizen groups in humanitarian crises, scholars are reconsidering how these groups mobilize and what distinguishes them from formal humanitarian organizations. In this article, I document the individual and collective mobilization of a section of the Sierra Leonean diaspora during the 2014/15 Ebola outbreak. I focus on the individual health‐related communications of Sierra Leoneans living in London, on a specific UK‐based diaspora association called the Kono District Development Association‐UK, and on efforts to coordinate the diaspora. Bolten (2012), and Van Hear and Cohen (2017), show that diasporic mobilization operates through ‘nested scales’ of loyalty to kin, association and nation, and that these different loyalties overlap and conflict. I argue that such overlapping engagements challenge policy orientations to ‘national’ diasporas and offer an alternative model of international humanitarianism.