Resistance and Identity in Exile Communities

Exile communities—whether formed through forced displacement, political persecution or voluntary migration—develop distinct strategies to preserve collective identity and challenge structures that seek to marginalise them. Resistance can take many forms, from the maintenance of ancestral languages and ritual practices to the deployment of artistic expression and digital media campaigns. These practices serve both to contest narratives imposed by host societies or occupying powers and to reinforce internal cohesion through shared memory and cultural transmission. Research has highlighted the importance of temporal frameworks, showing how communities draw on reimagined pasts and prospective futures to negotiate present uncertainties. The performative dimension of identity is also central: poetry, song and visual art create spaces of enactment that defy erasure, while affective networks of solidarity extend across borders. Interactions with legal systems, international human rights mechanisms and transnational civil society further embed exile communities within broader political arenas, offering avenues for advocacy and the recognition of rights. Understanding this multifaceted resistance elucidates how displaced groups navigate liminality, claim agency and contribute to global debates on belonging, sovereignty and social justice.

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Resistance and Identity in Exile Communities publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in resistance and identity in exile communities across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Exile community: A group of people living away from their homeland, often due to conflict or persecution, who maintain social bonds and cultural practices.

Cultural memory: The collective ways in which communities remember, narrate and pass on past events to sustain identity over time.

Liminality: The transitional state experienced by individuals or groups between defined social or cultural statuses, marked by ambiguity and potential for transformation.

References

1. Inner Mongolian poetry and song as a form of resistance. Political Geography (2024).
2. Standing With Standing Rock: Affective Alignment and Artful Resistance at the Native Nations Rise March. SAGE Open (2018).
3. Communities of Absence: Emotions, Time, and Buddhism in the Creation of Belonging. Numen (2021).
4. Indigenous peoples’ human rights, self-determination and local governance – Part 1. Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance (2021).