Conditional support

Encouraging Chileans in Europe and the USA to organise regular meetings was incentivised through funding opportunities as described earlier. Yet, while sponsorship for meetings, conferences and workshops constitutes a device through which networks in Europe were encouraged to meet and as such remain attached to the ChileGlobal community, there were also conditions attached that led to irritations. In 2012, for instance, the Chilean student society of the University College London (UCL) was planning to host and organise a number of seminars and small scale conferences in London with the aim of hosting Chile-themed seminars and conferences UK-wide. In its funding proposal to ChileGlobal the group of research students suggested to advertise a series of workshops and conference publicly through the use of Facebook sites.

The idea was to create a forum for Chilean and non-Chilean students and researchers, whose research relates to Chile to present and discuss their work. The organising committee sought funding from varies entities and funding bodies, among which were ChileGlobal. While funding from ChileGlobal was eventually secured, there were certain conditions and modalities attached to the conference funding. Laura, one of the coordinators of a series of London conferences and seminars commented that the way the organisers envisaged to coordinate the seminars was not in line with what the directorate of ChileGlobal had planned. For instance, the seminar organisers planned to organise a series of conferences in London in an open and accessible way through a designated Facebook account:

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The problem was that ChileGlobal didn’t want us to have an extra Facebook because ChileGlobal already has a Facebook site. If we had another Facebook on top of the ChileGlobal Facebook and the Chilean student society Facebook to disseminate information, then the ChileGlobal platform would be useless. They preferred us to not use another Facebook cause no one would be using the platform if they already get the information through facebook. So that’s why we’re not using facebook so we can encourage people to use ChileGlobal. That was badly seen for most people here in the organisation [British network]. But obviously, when they say ‘Don’t use Facebook!’ then we won’t use Facebook because they’re giving us the money you know.

Laura, student, 2013

Laura’s quote encapsulates an important point. By advising the British network to plan and organise its London conferences through ChileGlobal’s outlets, the ChileGlobal network sought to steer the British network, at least as its activities pertained to organising public and information disseminating events such as conferences. Attempts to influence the planning process through containment in the confines of the private platform, was in stark contrast to the ideas of the organisers who planned to announce the conference in a more transparent form to a broad and international audience in a more public way by using open and accessible social media outlets.

Yet if the conferences were announced through the digital platform of ChileGlobal, then only those who had subscribed, and were entitled to, would have access to information about the series of meetings and conferences. While the autonomy and governance of localised networks was never truly questioned or endangered, the notion of conditional funding and resulting concession created and fuelled sentiments of apprehension among members of the network. However, a pragmatic approach informed by conciliation and the need for funding led to accepting the suggested conditions as demonstrated by Sergio, a junior scientist in London:

If they’re giving us money then there’s obviously something you have to give as well. We wanted those seminars as open as possible but we couldn’t because if we wanted to have support from ChileGlobal, we must run these seminars online within the platform of ChileGlobal. And their platform is not open.

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The strategic partnership with ChileGlobal has been, and continues to be useful for localised networks such as Red Inveca, the British network, Nexos and others. However, for reasons that are grounded in mistrust over funding decisions as the quote above suggests there are also moments of apprehension and caution. These notions are not singular occurrences, but were voiced across the board of the representatives of regional networks. For example, Miguel who was one of the founding members and co-directors of British network noted the increased efforts of ChileGlobal to enlist overseas groups and cautioned against possible repercussions as a result of funding and sponsorship related dependencies:

In the last ten months or so, ChileGlobal has been more systematically supporting all those networks. So, my concern is about what will happen when ChileGlobal, is extending its arms everywhere in all kinds of networks that it supports and I guess that this will have an impact on our independence for saying what we think about science, or if we want to criticise the government, even ChileGlobal. I mean ChileGlobal is part of Fundación Imagen de Chile and if we want to criticise the Fundación or even ChileGlobal then this could have an impact on the funding. So, having this kind of relationship with ChileGlobal is creating this kind of dependency.

Miguel, student, 2013

Miguel’s quote represents the growing unease about ChileGlobal exercising control over the activities of localised networks and echoes wider concerns about transparency in the context of decision-making processes. Pablo, at the time, one of the directors of the German network of Chileans Red Inveca cautioned that the rapid increase in networks and groups associated with ChileGlobal was somehow curious. In relation to funding practises and sponsorship questions, Pablo noted:

What is practically happening is that we are using public money for these meetings and I think a problem could be that not all the decisions taken are as transparent as they should be. We are not too sure about how decisions are made at ChileGlobal about how they finance or how they decide to finance one project and not other ones.

Pablo, scientist, 2013

Pablo’s comment clearly reflects unease about the motivation for approving funding and lack of transparency around decision-making processes in relation to funding. Yet another

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area of concern revolved around the extent to which nationally focused networks may lose their independence by engaging with ChileGlobal in relationships that are characterised by conditionalities and concession. There were shared concerns across European networks about becoming absorbed into ChileGlobal, thereby losing a sense of purpose, identity and also the ability to work in direct collaboration with institutions in Chile the way Nexos Chile-USA did as seen before. It emerged that within the individual networks there was a sense of apprehension about becoming too immersed in an obstreperously expanding organisation that was initiated for a different group of people. Statements like I won’t become a member of ChileGlobal because this is a platform that first of all was created for entrepreneurs (quoted by Jorge, student, 2013) are reflective of an overall sense of caution about why the ChileGlobal network actively encouraged the formation and institutionalisation of local networks outside the initial core category of entrepreneurs and company owners.

Similarly, the network’s status as a government-funded, yet privately owned entity seemed somewhat opaque and raised suspicion to the extent that people have decided not to participate because this has to do with the government (Jorge, student, 2013). Mistrust about becoming part of a government project was expressed throughout the different occupational groups but was strongest among company executives and students. Silvana, a graphic design doctoral student and network coordinator of a small group of Chileans in Cambridge, UK described her frustration as she tried to build a bigger group of Chileans, but faced rejection because of ChileGlobal’s perceived proximity to the government:

People don’t want to participate because it [ChileGlobal] is part of the government even though I have said the opposite, and some people think that this is part of the government’s strategy to disseminate their ideas, which is not true. Some people are not participating because of that perception because of the funding, which is public some people believe the institution is part of the government.

Silvana, student, 2013

Silvana’s observation highlights a key issue in the traditionally complicated relationship between non-profit organisations and the government in Latin American countries, in general, and Chile, in particular. As can be seen in Figure 6 below, the ChileGlobal

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network is sitting at the intersection of a number of governmental agencies and non-state entities. For instance, operating under the institutional umbrella of the public-private Fundación Imagen de Chile implied that ChileGlobal’s objectives of technology and knowledge transfers were rendered subordinate to that of Chile’s nation branding agency as explained before.

Interestingly, Fundación Imagen de Chile itself is institutionally operated outside Chile’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as illustrated in Figure 6. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ sub-ministerial committee DICOEX is the government’s formal outlet for overseas Chileans in relation to legal and other consular-related matters. The implementation of the Becas Chile scholarship under the Ministry of Education’s commission CONICYT led to the subsequent collaboration of CONICYT and ChileGlobal as seen before. As the result of this collaboration a number of locally focused networks emerged primarily in European countries, but also in Canada, such as RedICEC, the Network of Chilean Researchers in Canada as highlighted in Table 5 earlier.

Other networks, such as Nexos Chile-USA or RedInveca were formed independent of the Becas Chile scholarship programme but were open to, and gradually populated by, Becas Chile students as indicated by using dashes, rather than lines, as illustrated in Figure 6. These localised networks linked into the ChileGlobal network and became the new core constituency. The point to note is that the ChileGlobal network operates as a part of a complex ensemble of state institutions in Chile. Likewise, although the ChileGlobal network was adamant in representing itself as sitting outside government structures, especially after collaborating with Becas Chile, receiving funding from the government blurred the private-public lines significantly and fuelled not only distrust, but ultimately led to hesitation in joining the network.

144 Figure 6: Institutional relations

Source: Compiled by author

The growing distrust added to overall concerns about the network exercising control over nationally focused groups. These concerns resonated deeply across the different groups

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as evidenced by statements from representatives of three different networks. Rodrigo, who works as a Science Group Leader in Germany and acted as one of the three coordinators of the German network Red Inveca, cautioned against the almost beguiling appeal a large network such as ChileGlobal produced:

I am always the person who likes to say ‘Let’s not get absorbed’, because it’s very easy. They have all the platforms, they have a lot of people working there, they have a very nice webpage and so on. It would be really easy if all of us joined ChileGlobal and work in a forum there or as a subgroup of ChileGlobal where we could use all the infrastructure. But we want to keep RedInveca a separate entity just in case we need our independence from ChileGlobal. Sometimes we don’t know the people who are influencing other networks.

Rodrigo, scientist, 2013

Referring to ChileGlobal’s comparatively scintillating website with its inbuilt features that make communication presumably easier for smaller networks, Rodrigo’s statement highlights the ambivalent feelings and concerns that members of local networks had towards engaging in a more formalised relationship with the ChileGlobal network. The reference to maintaining independence signalled a sense of caution against the trade-offs and compromises that came as a consequence of working closer together with a state- sponsored institution that was far more resourceful than Red Inveca. Likewise, Rodrigo’s statement about not knowing who influences other networks highlights a degree of mistrust and conveys a lack of transparency that not only resonated with concerns of members from other local networks as shown below, but also with a more general sense of apprehension in relation to the conditional nature of funding decisions as seen earlier in this section.

In a similar vein, Jimena who was a doctoral student at the University College London, and one of the co-organisers of the seminar series in London mentioned earlier in this chapter, was adamant to position the British network as distinct from ChileGlobal:

We want to keep our network more local at the moment, focusing on our interest and to be able to organise ourselves, to be able to collaborate directly with organisations and institutions in Chile to be able to present ourselves not to go all the time through ChileGlobal to do something. So, from that point of view we try to keep that separate because we also want to have our own

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name and not always be related to ChileGlobal in case we want to do something without their support.

Jimena, student, 2013

Similar to the case of the German network before, this quote clearly conveys a sense of unease about being usurped by the more resourceful ChileGlobal. More importantly, however, Jimena’s quote highlights that the British network of researchers and students sought to position their group as independent from ChileGlobal so as to allow for more direct and unmediated interactions with agencies, organisations and institutions in Chile. This is compelling, as facilitating access to institutions in Chile was one of the main currencies ChileGlobal administration was using to draw Chileans into the network.

So far, ChileGlobal’s story of formation and reshaping has been one that primarily revolved around expansion and consolidation through the incorporation of relatively diverse groups of Chileans. Enrolling larger cohorts of students, researchers and academics led to the production of new sites of activity, forms of encounters and, crucially, a re-imagination of the network’s purpose. Simultaneously, however, the integration of Chileans outside the business and commerce realm into the network involved negotiations, concessions, and at the time, bargaining. Acts of negotiations led to increasing appropriation and reframing of the diasporic space around the ChileGlobal network on one end of the spectrum. On the other end, funding related concessions produced concerns among the newly formed groups about co-optation and the underlying motivation that drove the rapid expansion of the network.

6.5. Summary

This chapter demonstrates that the rise of the new institution Fundación Imagen de Chile, which emerged as a result of translating the concept of nation branding and competitive identity into Chile, led to the partial remaking of the knowledge network ChileGlobal. The inception of Fundación Imagen de Chile has changed what the diaspora knowledge network ChileGlobal existed for as the notion of country ambassadors gained privilege over the previously dominant interpretation of diaspora networks as agents of development. In Chile, the initial concern around improving innovation through members

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of the diaspora became secondary with the arrival and institutionalisation of nation branding as advocated by branding experts who linked national development objectives with the circulation of a particular national identity. Consequently, diaspora groups are increasingly enlisted as intermediating devices to help promulgating a positive country message to foreign and domestic audiences.

The key observation of this chapter suggests that the original formation of the highly elite type ChileGlobal network was gradually made undone by concurrent and competing interpretations of the role of diaspora in the context Chile’s national development objectives. Under the institutional umbrella of Fundación Imagen de Chile and objectives of nation branding, the ChileGlobal network used technologies of seduction and coercion to tie students and researchers to the network. Rather than a network of entrepreneurs, the new occupational groups and members became the core constituency and gradually reshaped the ChileGlobal network. The act of translating concepts across space constantly produces new sets of challenges and responses that continually remake actors such as ChileGlobal, alliances and the diverse accounts and practices that are produced around the initial concern about what was problematised.

The second important theme that has emerged from this chapter is that the local networks that were created as the result of the interplay between the Becas Chile scholarship and Fundación Imagen de Chile’s nation branding objectives soon produced criticism and tensions among network members. Distrust and concerns revolved around the particular ways of engaging and positioning Chilean expatriates as newly forged relationships were based on conditional funding. Conditional funding, lack of transparency and more general concerns about being marginalised, produced alienation and mistrust among members of local networks that were often still in their incipient stage. If diaspora strategies constitute a technology of governing overseas populations (e.g. Kalm, 2013; Larner, 2007), then the Chilean example provides a more nuanced account as to how attempts of non-state actors to enrol members of the diaspora may play out in post-authoritarian countries with historical struggles and tensions between the state and its populace.

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Chapter Seven: Diasporic sites of repoliticisation and

contestation

7.1. Introduction

The previous chapter has described how the ChileGlobal network became populated with multiple groups and localised, nationally focused organisations that partly existed prior to the implementation of the Becas Chile scholarship and partly emerged because of the increased numbers of Chilean scientists and students living overseas. This chapter builds on the previously established insights that the ChileGlobal community has been increasingly translated as a device for representing the newChile as a forward-looking, progressive and modern country as narrated by Chile’s public diplomacy institution Fundación Imagen de Chile. However, as this chapter shows, ChileGlobal’s support for recently formed groups and networks in the context of positioning these groups as country ambassadors led to complex interaction between, and encounters of, groups and events that generated sites of dissent, contestation and, ultimately repoliticisation. The key message of this chapter claims that diasporic expressions of politicisation and contestation gained currency and shaped the ChileGlobal network following the systematic integration and incorporation of a wider breadth of groups and people between 2011 and 2012. Moreover, this chapter argues that the result of multiple interpretations of the purpose of ChileGlobal allowed network members to appropriate and reshape certain diasporic sites.

Inextricably linked to notions of repoliticisation are questions of malleability and