Citizenship and National Bonds Among Emigrants: An Analysis of French Abroad (original) (raw)

American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting, 2018

Abstract

The intensification of migrant flows in Europe has challenged state institutions but also national identities. Western European countries are usually analysed as immigration countries, but they all have also important communities of emigrants abroad, whether within Europe or outside Europe. The states have had to adapt to immigration, but they have also began to take better into account their emigration. Indeed, during the last decade, the status of emigrants in a majority of countries have changed tremendously, gaining increasingly political rights in their home state, including voting rights and direct representation in their home parliaments. These evolutions have reinforced the political ties that emigrants keep with their home nation-states and helped the strengthening and deepening of banal (trans)national ties, transforming deeply therefore the nexus between mobilities, values and citizenship. Building on the literature on political transnationalism, this presentation aims to assess the structural, cognitive and emotional consequences of these evolutions. It will focus on the French case, which is at the forefront of the ongoing transformations. Indeed, the French expatriates are directly represented by 12 senators (since 1982) and 11 MPs (since 2012) but also by an Assembly of French citizens abroad as well as by 130 consular councils (since 2014). This has raised serious debates regarding the form of the French nation-state and its borders, and also spurred the political structuration of French abroad (associations, lobbies, political parties). The paper will be based on an ethnographical and sociological fieldwork done on French living in Switzerland, Belgium and the United-States.

Tudi Kernalegenn hasn't uploaded this document.

Let Tudi know you want this document to be uploaded.

Ask for this document to be uploaded.