ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a selective, historical overview of episodes of reactive conflict spillover in the Western world and develops a conceptual and theoretical framework. It develops a typology of spillovers, reviews a broad array of social science scholarship, and develops a theoretical framework outlining factors that influence reactive transnational mobilization and spillovers. Reactive conflict spillovers happen when violence in domestic migrant-background communities occurs in response to conflicts abroad. Such conflicts can be national or international, but they must generate much reactive political activism in diasporic communities. The contributions of this study include a theoretically and methodologically sophisticated framework for understanding reactive conflict spillover, and an analysis of how homeland and international conflicts resonate in certain migrant-background communities. The scarce literature addressing conflict spillover and contagion tends to discuss the importation of former-homeland conflicts to diasporic communities in predominately developing countries. Overall, reactive conflict spillover can occur as a response to a national or an international conflict.
