ECAS 2013

Work on how migrants relate to politics has shed light on an uncharted continent of political practices. In a reflection of the prominence of the assimilationist model in migration studies, this work has long focused solely on migrants' political integration in the host society. The spread of the transnational concept in the social sciences has reshaped this approach. Migration studies researchers have spearheaded research into the participation of emigrants in the politics of both their host and home countries. Yet research into migrants' transnational electoral behaviour remains very thin. The scarcity of studies on migrants' voting practices in their home country is paradoxical since most origin countries have granted nationals living abroad dual citizenship in recent years.

The Senegalese case study presented in our paper is the first statistical analysis of African transnational electoral processes. This analysis draws on a quantitative survey in France and the United States during the 2012 Senegalese presidential election. The paper opens with a presentation of migrant electoral participation, goes on to examine voters' social characteristics and closes with an analysis of "social remittances" between host and home country (voter registration, electoral mobilisation and voting instructions).

The broad movement of democratization at work in Africa since the 1990's has transformed political order throughout the continent in diverse ways : not only has it implied the adoption of multi-party systems and free, monitored elections, but in many cases, it has also allowed expatriate citizens to vote from their host countries. Senegal can be examined as an example of this shift : in 1993, under pressure from the international community, Abdou Diouf's government did indeed adopt a major reform to democratize the electoral processes, which allowed the Senegalese living abroad to make their voices count (Vengroff, 2007).

In this context, one can wonder about the role that Senegalese journalists, working in France for traditional newspapers, television stations or Internet medias, played during the late 2012 presidential campaign. Through an ethnographic study of their practices, from production to reception, it is possible to shed a light on their daily work as press correspondents, and to draw an accurate picture of the constraints and choices they had to face everyday (Frère, 2000). As a bridge between Senegalese diaspora and its country of origin, they strongly influenced the outcome of the campaign, despite deontological (Lemieux, 2010) and technological issues (Coumba-Diop, 2002). By consolidating the very idea of « diaspora » (Dufoix, 2003 ; Sheffer, 2003), by increasing mutual interactions between interlaced social groups, they modified the electoral behavior of African migrants, and triggered simultaneities at the heart of the voting processes between in France and Senegal that deserve closer studies.

Le mouvement du 23 juin 2011 (M23) est né au Sénégal de la volonté de constituer un garde fou de la Constitution, afin d'empêcher une nouvelle candidature d'Abdoulaye Wade, le président sénégalais depuis le 1er avril 2000. En réunissant différents partis politiques d'opposition, ainsi que des organisations de la société civile, le rôle symbolique initial de ce collectif s'est finalement conclut par un échec. Le 26 février 2012, Abdoulaye Wade briguait un nouveau mandat. S'en sont suivis plusieurs mois de violentes manifestations, arbitrées en grande partie par le M23 à Dakar. Malgré ce premier échec, ce collectif a sauvegardé son rôle d'initiateur des mouvements qui ont secoué la capitale sénégalaise pendant plusieurs mois.

Plusieurs antennes du M23 ont vu le jour au Canada par exemple, en Italie, mais aussi à Paris. Ses membres mettent en avant la volonté de défendre des valeurs pour justifier la création de ces antennes.

Cependant, tout en se mobilisant pour les mêmes objectifs, le M23 en France est investit par des logiques spécifiques, propres notamment au parcours des expatriés, induisant ainsi des logiques transnationales, militantes, dans une perspective de préparation d'un éventuel retour au pays.

Il s'agit d'étudier les parcours des membres du M23 en France, les trajectoires de migrations, ainsi que les trajectoires militantes de ces individus, afin de dégager des spécificités à l'engagement de la diaspora sénégalaise à Paris dans le M23, et de penser l'engagement non seulement au service de valeurs à défendre, mais également de carrières à bâtir.

Le lien politique avec le système algérien, pour des Algériens vivant en France, s'examine en parcourant l'évolution des formes d'engagement de leurs activités politiques, et en distinguant deux configurations : avant et après la création de la circonscription législative à l'étranger, 1962-1997 et 1997-2012.

Dans la première, co-existe en France une opposition clandestine au régime de parti unique algérien, et une action encadrée par des organisations « satellites » du régime algérien, Amicales et Unions nationales. Cette physionomie se renouvelle avec des changements institutionnels doublement localisés : la direction associative s'ouvre aux étrangers en France (1981) et l'Algérie institue le multipartisme (1988).

Dans la seconde, la création de huit postes de députés de l'émigration siégeant à l'Assemblée Populaire Algérienne [APN], dont quatre en France, bouleverse les comportements et les organisations politiques et renforce l'intégration des expatriés au système politique algérien.

L'ethnographie des pratiques actuelles de mobilisation et d'organisation politique, centrée sur les effets de la parlementarisation des expatriés algériens — enquête à Marseille auprès des députés de l'émigration, de militants de partis algériens, d'acteurs associatifs, de citoyens — permet d'observer la construction d'un espace sociopolitique de la communauté algérienne, liant et associant les acteurs politiques des territoires algérien et français. Elle conduit à s'interroger sur l'émergence d'une société civile trans-nationalisée franco-algérienne qui questionne la notion de diaspora avec les nouvelles entités diasporiques (Ma-Mung 1999, Dufoix 2006, Fibbi et Meyer, 2002), les mobilisations et politisations doublement localisées (Sassen 2009, Combes, 2011), et les formes de la société civile en contexte trans-national (Bolzman, 1999).

Whereas most African countries formally allow their emigrants to take part in home country elections from abroad, the Congo-DRC finds itself in a peculiar situation. Citizens living abroad are not entitled to take part in Congolese elections from abroad but a significant number of Congolese Parliamentarians hold multiple nationalities and are themselves (former) emigrants.

In this paper, we first propose to examine why and how the diaspora has been prevented to this date to take part in home country elections from abroad. To do so, we shall rely on existing works on external voting which relate the development of external voting to processes of democratic transition (Escobar 2007) and to dependency of sending states on emigrant resources (Lafleur 2011). Through an analysis of the legal and political arguments used in this debate, we will shed light on the concerns among Congolese ruling elites that the diaspora might be able to influence electoral results.

In the second part of the paper, we argue that the absence of formal voting rights do not prevent the diaspora from exercising strong influence on the home country politics. To do so, we will refer on the literature on transnational political participation and diaspora politics which has experienced a dramatic increase over the past decade. Looking at the case study of the 2011 Presidential election and relying on ten years of field research with the Congolese Diaspora, we will demonstrate how local and radical movement of pressure managed to transform their small-scale movement into a transnational mobilization.

Although the Cape Verdean diaspora is numerically superior to residents in Cape Verde, on the electoral roll with a total of 305,349 registered voters, merely 36,970 are listed in all the countries of the diaspora, a total of 12.1% of voters.

In recent presidential elections in 2011, the diaspora contributed with 7.4% of the votes spread over 241 polling stations. Although there are a number of people heavily involved and engaged in electoral matters, to conquer a wide audience and census Diaspora remains a challenge.

Dispersed across several continents, with higher expression in Europe, Portugal, America, USA and Africa in Angola, most Cape Verdean diaspora has not yet gained much a right and that the diaspora from other countries claim.

Considering the strong contribution that the Cape Verdean diaspora has in the economic balance of Cape Verde, which is a nation in which the diaspora exceeds in number the residents, what still keeps so many voters away from the polling stations?

Having been involved in the electoral process of the Cape Verdean diaspora in Portugal since 1995, and participated more actively in the last parliamentary and presidential elections, it is intended to provide a brief analysis of the possible reasons that keep most of the Cape Verdean diaspora away from polling stations.

If very low levels of citizens participation in elections and the corresponding apathy are a danger for the future of democracy and of democratic systems, or a synonymous of a high level of confidence in political leaders, migrants participation in the electoral processes of their countries of origin is a fundamental part of the democratic electoral competition being placed in the heart of the effort to globalize democracy.

Elections are only a step, although crucial, in a process of democratization and as a reflection of the expression of the political will of the population and of the right to participate in Government, either directly or through freely chosen representatives.

The idea of democracy cannot be static, and cannot be considered only by assuring domestic participation.

Some of the CPLP countries adopted legislation in 1975 allaying migrants to participate there electoral processes in their countries of origin, more than 30 years after we propose to the audience to observe CPLP reality about this particular aspect.