Summary: The Emergence of a ‘Diasporic Political Field’: A Case for Political Remittances
In the Emergence of a ‘Diasporic Political Field’: A Case for Political Remittances published in 2016, Tabar and Maalouf discuss the recent literature’s approaches on various concepts of political remittances. This discussion, as pointed by the authors, is aimed at locating political remittances within the diasporic fields that will pave the way toward a clear identification of the character of such remittances and their mechanisms of action in terms of formation, content, and impact on homeland politics in addition to shedding light on the factors that play the major roles in the described process.
In the first section of the paper, Tabar and Maalouf pinpoint the current understanding of political remittances according to different scholars. According to the authors, the trend among several researchers, particularly Levitt, Lamba-Nieves, Boccagni and Decimo, still consider political remittances as a subdued issue or, in other words, as a derivative of social and/or economic remittances. Tabar and Maalouf highlight the core definition of social remittances, as structured by Levitt, the flow of different forms of ideas, behavior, and social capitals between sending and receiving countries’ communities. In addition, they also point out the three main types of social remittances identified by Levitt: normative structure, systems of practice, and social capital. Tabar and Maalouf sum up the first part of their article by pointing out that Levitt and Lamba-Nieve’s approach simplifies political remittances and does not include any political character of these remittances in addition to their refraining from including and exploring any possible identification of unique and independent existence of political remittances.
In the second section, the authors present different approaches to study social remittances. They first present Boccagni and Decimo’s analysis of social capital and its connection to social remittances in the sense that social capital would explain both the positive and negative natures of social remittances. By defining social capital, Boccagni and Decimo point out how cross-border relationships between migrants and non-migrants can lead to both positive and negative impacts on the social change in the migrants’ home communities. With all this given, Tabar and Maalouf emphasize that their main critique on Boccagni and Decimo’s argument is that it still revolves on the lack of any political dimensions to social remittances. Moving on to the next point, the authors present the basic idea on a different trend presented by Goldring, which focuses on viewing political remittances as derivatives of economic remittances at the collective level. Yet, the main drawback of this approach is that political remittances, according to the authors, needs to be treated as a separate entity, which, however, might be triggered by economic or social remittances. Moving on to the next subsection, and by highlighting the work of Stefan Rother, the authors shed the light on Rother’s investigations of political remittances as normative values and being completely decoupled from social remittances. Rother’s conclusion can be summed up with that it is normal for labor migrants to choose destinations that provide more advanced economical statuses than their home countries, but this cannot be applied to the case of political systems. Tabar and Maalouf then argued that other forms of political remittances have been ignored by Rother. Some of which include voting from abroad, financial donations for political causes at home, and lobbying, alongside the institutional framework which this process is occurring. A separate approach presented by the authors summarizes Nicola Piper’s idea on presenting a new conceptualizing of the concept of political remittances. Starting from the standpoint of temporary or ‘undocumented’ immigrants, Piper shifts focus from victimizing migrants to their role as catalysts for the democratization of migration processes through political mobilization in the form of collective organizations operating in the transnational sphere. While Tabar and Maalouf strongly enforce Piper’s approach, they argue that a better analysis of political remittances should be situated within diasporic field rather than Piper’s suggestion on transnational sphere.
Restating Levitt’s initial definition of political remittances, the authors move onto calling for the need for a separate treatment of political remittances. Tabar and Maalouf raise a series of arguments that support their claim. First, they argue that treating political remittances merit separate treatment since they are a part of a political process that is in turn operating under specific conditions that might be indirectly influenced by social/economic remittances. Moreover, the authors further support their claim by stating that political remittances are different from social remittances because the former ‘embrace a wide range of concrete and representative activities that relate to relations in the home countries. The two arguments that the authors present here are backed by examples on the Lebanese diaspora activities and their impact on the political status quo of the country.
The authors’ mention that Piper’s statements paved their way to raise the question on transnationalism versus diaspora. Tabar and Maalouf’s main rebuttal in this section focuses on the difference between the usage of transnationalism and diaspora and focus on the separate causes, actions, and impacts of both approaches. They also highlight the critical interchange of the two words and how it essentially collapses all the mentioned differences which makes it hard to provide proper analysis of each case. Further rebuttals provided by the authors argue against Boccagni’s conception of political activities taking place in the transnational social field, in which Tabar and Maalouf state that what Boccagni mentions essentially leads to the collapse of the two different spheres. On the other hand, the article also sheds light on the intersection of the two spheres, where one activity occurring in the homeland is supported by the transnational movement. As the authors transition into their next claim, they highlight that all forms of engagements done by the state on emigrants’ affairs can be seen as variations on the activities of a diasporic state, which paves the way for the authors to discuss locating political remittances within the state-diaspora relations. Tabar and Maalouf argue against the mainstream approach that highlights the central role of the state in state-diaspora relations while diminishing the role of non-state actors. They also point out a crucial point which calls for locating the concepts of political remittances in the field of diasporic political relations. Such relation needs to include both state and non-state actors.
Consequently, in the last section of the article, Tabar and Maalouf, starting from Bourdieu’s approach on the concepts of capital and field, propose the notion of “diasporic field”. A diasporic field, according to Tabar and Maalouf, is a site of struggle with two dimensions. The first dimension consists of struggle between all non-state actors over the accumulation of diasporic capital, while the second is a struggle over symbolic capital between the state of origin and the non-state actors in the field, with a strong influence of those who oppose the political regime controlling the state of origin. They also noted that a diasporic field is rather dynamic and not closed, in which it has the ability to interact with other fields that already exist in countries connected by diasporic relations. From that point, the authors define political diasporic field as a subfield of diasporic field. This newly-defined subfield will be the threshold to understand and analyze political remittances as separately produced within the diasporic field. Such a notion stands opposite to mainstream literature’s view that states that political remittances are part of cultural circulations. Further argument by the authors claims that a political diasporic field paves the way toward a more adequate assessment of the formation, process, and impact of political remittances and the implications of all their power relations. This point surpasses the static and undifferentiated accounts of political remittances previously discussed by Levitt. One final argument presented by the authors in favor of the political diasporic field is that it includes focus on the spectrum of actors involved in state-diaspora relations mentioned previously.
Tabar and Maalouf concluded their work by restating the importance of the need for a new view on political remittances and the urge for its distinction from social and economic remittances. The authors’ final remarks on the concept of political diasporic field is restating its importance in overcoming conceptual limitations in the transnationalist approach to political remittances.
