Diasporic Social Mobilization and Political Participation during the Arab Uprisings


Book Description

The Arab protest movements of 2010-2011 gave momentum and inspiration to unprecedented political mobilisations of migrants of Arab origin, whether first generation, second generation, or more, in Europe, North and South-America. This book analyses the essential yet understudied role of Arab diasporas during the Arab revolutions, dissecting the new forms of diasporic mobilisations that emerged during the ‘Arab Spring’ and that were borrowed as much from the home countries’ repertoire of innovations as from global movements’ tactics from Wall Street to Sao Paulo. This collection is a very timely and much-welcome contribution to our understanding of the nexus between immigration and integration. At a time when the engagement of European youth in faraway violent conflicts is hitting the headlines all over Europe, this book offers balanced and renewed academic perspectives on migrants belonging, analysing how migrants use political engagement to assert their belonging in newly-imagined home countries and, conversely, how they get involved in the politics of their origin countries to bolster their identity in host nations. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies.




Egyptian Diaspora Activism During the Arab Uprisings


Book Description

Diaspora politics is often expressed as an emancipating experience and can therefore give agency to migrants. Yet, rather than interpreting transnational political practices as globally liberal or cosmopolitan, Müller-Funk’s findings underline that diaspora politics is a highly diverse political field which can reinforce political fragmentation among migrant collectivities. This volume explores the controversial topic of diaspora politics: the political activities of migrants who aim to influence the domestic or foreign policy of their country of origin. The revolutions in 2010/11 represented a major political upheaval in the Middle East, which politicised Arabs across borders on a grand scale. Müller-Funk explores the links between recent political developments in Egypt between 2011 and 2013 and emigration. More specifically, she examines the question of how the revolution in and its aftermath influenced emigrants’ political perceptions and actions regarding their homeland. The book takes an interdisciplinary macro and micro approach by investigating policies which influence migrants’ political transnational behavior as well as by looking at individual activists’ perspectives. This volume will be of great interest to scholars of international relations, security studies, political theory, politics and middle east studies.




The Arab Spring Abroad


Book Description

The Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 sent shockwaves across the globe, mobilizing diaspora communities to organize forcefully against authoritarian regimes. Despite the important role that diasporas can play in influencing affairs in their countries of origin, little is known about when diaspora actors mobilize, how they intervene, or what makes them effective. This book addresses these questions, drawing on over 230 original interviews, fieldwork, and comparative analysis. Examining Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni mobilization from the US and Great Britain before and during the revolutions, Dana M. Moss presents a new framework for understanding the transnational dynamics of contention and the social forces that either enable or suppress transnational activism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.




Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa


Book Description

Before the 2011 uprisings, the Middle East and North Africa were frequently seen as a uniquely undemocratic region with little civic activism. The first edition of this volume, published at the start of the Arab Spring, challenged these views by revealing a region rich with social and political mobilizations. This fully revised second edition extends the earlier explorations of Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and adds new case studies on the uprisings in Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen. The case studies are inspired by social movement theory, but they also critique and expand the horizons of the theory's classical concepts of political opportunity structures, collective action frames, mobilization structures, and repertoires of contention based on intensive fieldwork. This strong empirical base allows for a nuanced understanding of contexts, culturally conditioned rationality, the strengths and weaknesses of local networks, and innovation in contentious action to give the reader a substantive understanding of events in the Arab world before and since 2011.




Routledge Handbook of Citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa


Book Description

This comprehensive Handbook gives an overview of the political, social, economic and legal dimensions of citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa from the nineteenth century to the present. The terms citizen and citizenship are mostly used by researchers in an off-hand, self-evident manner. A citizen is assumed to have standard rights and duties that everyone enjoys. However, citizenship is a complex legal, social, economic, cultural, ethical and religious concept and practice. Since the rise of the modern bureaucratic state, in each country of the Middle East and North Africa, citizenship has developed differently. In addition, rights are highly differentiated within one country, ranging from privileged, underprivileged and discriminated citizens to non-citizens. Through its dual nature as instrument of state control, as well as a source of citizen rights and entitlements, citizenship provides crucial insights into state-citizen relations and the services the state provides, as well as the way citizens respond to these actions. This volume focuses on five themes that cover the crucial dimensions of citizenship in the region: Historical trajectory of citizenship since the nineteenth century until independence Creation of citizenship from above by the state Different discourses of rights and forms of contestation developed by social movements and society Mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion Politics of citizenship, nationality and migration Covering the main dimensions of citizenship, this multidisciplinary book is a key resource for students and scholars interested in citizenship, politics, economics, history, migration and refugees in the Middle East and North Africa.




The Diaspora's Role in Africa


Book Description

Africans living in the diaspora have a unique position as potential agents of change in helping to address Africa’s political and socioeconomic challenges. In addition to sending financial remittances, their multiple, hybrid identities in and out of geographical and psychocultural spaces allow them to play a role as cultural and political ambassadors to foster social change and sustainable development back in their African homelands. However, this hybrid position is not without challenges, and this book reflects some of the conundrums faced by members of the diaspora as they negotiate their relationships with their home countries. The author uses her lived experiences and empirical research to ask: are members of the diaspora conduits of Western cultural hegemony at the cost of their traditional preservation and meaningful development in Africa? How does the Western media’s portrayal of Africa as the "Dark Continent" in the 21st century influence their decision-making process to invest back home? How could African nations’ governments manage their relationships with citizens abroad to motivate them to invest in their home countries? How do some citizen-residents in Africa and African Diaspora communities perceive each other in the context of Africa’s development? How could the African Diaspora collaborate with citizen-residents across growth sectors to impact Africa’s development? The book hopes to inspire agents of change within the diaspora and features diverse African entrepreneurs’ success stories and their experiences of tackling these challenges. The book will be of interest to aspiring entrepreneurs, researchers across African studies, and the expanding and vibrant field of diaspora research.




Citizens Abroad


Book Description

Despite the fact that the majority of emigration today originates in the global south, most research has focused on the receiving states of Europe and North America, while very little attention has been paid to the policies of the sending states toward emigration or toward their nationals abroad. Taking the country cases of Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan, this work explores the relationship between the government of the sending states, the outmovement of their citizens and the communities of expatriates that have developed. By focusing on the evolution of government institutions charged with various aspects of expatriate affairs, this work breaks new ground in understanding the changing nature of the relationship between expatriates and their home state. Far from suggesting that the state is waning in importance, the conclusions indicate that this relationship provides evidence both of state resilience and of new trends in the practice of sovereignty.




Routledge Handbook on Middle Eastern Diasporas


Book Description

Bringing together different strands of research on Middle Eastern diasporas, the Routledge Handbook on Middle Eastern Diasporas sheds light on diverse approaches to investigating diaspora groups in different national contexts. Asking how diasporans forge connections and means of belonging, the analyses provided turn the reader’s gaze to the multiple forms of belonging to both peoples and places. Rather than seeing diasporans as marginalised groups of people longing to return to a homeland, analyses in this volume demonstrate that Middle East diasporans, like other diasporas and citizens alike, are people who respond to major social change and transformations. Those we count as Middle Eastern diasporans, both in the region and beyond, contribute to transnational social spaces, and new forms of cultural expressions. Chapters included cover how diasporas have been formed, the ways that diasporans make and remake homes, the expressive terrains where diasporas are contested, how class, livelihoods and mobility inflect diasporic practices, the emergence of diasporic sensibilities and, finally, scholarship that draws our attention to the plurilocality of Middle Eastern diasporas. Offering a rich compilation of case studies, this book will appeal to students of Middle Eastern Studies, International Relations, and Sociology, as well as being of interest to policymakers, government departments, and NGOs.




Transitional Justice in Aparadigmatic Contexts


Book Description

This book explores the practical and theoretical opportunities as well as the challenges raised by the expansion of transitional justice into new and ‘aparadigmatic’ cases. The book defines transitional justice as the pursuit of accountability, recognition and/or disruption and applies an actor-centric analysis focusing on justice actors’ intentions of and responses to transitional justice. It offers a typology of different transitional justice contexts ranging from societies experiencing ongoing conflict to consolidated democracies, and includes chapters from all types of aparadigmatic contexts. This covers transitional justice in states with contested political authority, shared political authority, and consolidated political authority. The transitional justice initiatives explored by the wide range of contributors are those of Afghanistan, Belgium, France, Greenland/Denmark, Libya, Syria, Turkey/Kurdistan, UK/Iraq, US, and Yemen. Through these aparadigmatic case studies, the book develops a new framework that, appropriate to its expanding reach, allows us to understand the practice of transitional justice in a more context-sensitive, bottom-up, and actor-oriented way, which leaves room for the complexity and messiness of interventions on the ground. The book will appeal to scholars and practitioners in the broad field of transitional justice, as represented in law, criminology, politics, conflict studies and human rights. The Introduction, Chapter 8 and the Concluding Remarks of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.




Women Rising


Book Description

Groundbreaking essays by female activists and scholars documenting women’s resistance before, during, and after the Arab Spring Images of women protesting in the Arab Spring, from Tahrir Square to the streets of Tunisia and Syria, have become emblematic of the political upheaval sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. In Women Rising, Rita Stephan and Mounira M. Charrad bring together a provocative group of scholars, activists, artists, and more, highlighting the first-hand experiences of these remarkable women. In this relevant and timely volume, Stephan and Charrad paint a picture of women’s political resistance in sixteen countries before, during, and since the Arab Spring protests first began in 2011. Contributors provide insight into a diverse range of perspectives across the entire movement, focusing on often-marginalized voices, including rural women, housewives, students, and artists. Women Rising offers an on-the-ground understanding of an important twenty-first century movement, telling the story of Arab women’s activism.