Hometown Transnationalism: Long Distance Villageness among Indian Punjabis and North African Berbers

By Thomas Lacroix

Collective remittances, that is to say development initiatives carried out by immigrant groups for the benefit of their place of origin, have been attracting growing attention from both academics and policy makers. Focusing on hometown organisations, this book analyses the social mechanics that are conducive to collective transnationalism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Nov 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781137567215

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Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship

Series Editors: Robin Cohen, Former Director of the International Migration Institute and Professor of Development Studies, University of Oxford, UK, and Zig Layton-Henry, Professor of Politics, University of Warwick, UK

Editorial Board: Rainer Baubock, European University Institute, Italy; James F. Hollifield, Southern Methodist University, USA; Jan Rath, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship series covers three important aspects of the migration progress. Firstly, the determinants, dynamics and characteristics of international migration. Secondly, the continuing attachment of many contemporary migrants to their places of origin, signified by the word ‘diaspora’, and thirdly the attempt, by contrast, to belong and gain acceptance in places of settlement, signified by the word ‘citizenship’. The series publishes work that shows engagement with and a lively appreciation of the wider social and political issues that are influenced by international migration.

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Feedback in International Migration

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CONTESTING INTEGRATION, ENGENDERING MIGRATION

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Fiona Barker

NATIONALISM, IDENTITY AND THE GOVERNANCE OF DIVERSITY

Old Politics, New Arrivals

Loretta Bass

AFRICAN IMMIGRANT FAMILIES IN ANOTHER FRANCE

Michaela Benson and Nick Osbaldiston

UNDERSTANDING LIFESTYLE MIGRATION

Theoretical Approaches to Migration and the Quest for a Better Way of Life

Glenda Bonifacio and Maria Kontos

MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS AND FAMILY LIFE

International Perspectives

Michael Collyer

EMIGRATION NATIONS

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Daniel Conway and Pauline Leonard

MIGRATION, SPACE AND TRANSNATIONAL IDENTITIES

The British in South Africa

Rosie Cox (editor)

SISTERS OR SERVANTS

Au Pairs’ Lives in Global Context

Saniye Dedeoglu

MIGRANTS, WORK AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION

Women’s Labour in the Turkish Ethnic Economy

Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot and Itaru Nagasaka (editors)

MOBILE CHILDHOODS IN FILIPINO TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES

Migrant Children with Similar Roots in Different Routes

Jane Garnett and Sondra L. Hausner

RELIGION IN DIASPORA

Cultures of Citizenship

Eleonore Kofman and Parvati Raghuram

GENDERED MIGRATIONS AND GLOBAL SOCIAL REPRODUCTION

Thomas Lacroix

HOMETOWN TRANSNATIONALISM

Long Distance Villageness among Indian Punjabis and North African Berbers

Catrin Lundström

WHITE MIGRATIONS

Gender, Whiteness and Privilege in Transnational Migration

Majella Kilkey, Diane Perrons and Ania Plomien

GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC WORK

Masculinities, Male Labour and Fathering in the UK and USA

Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels

MIGRANTS OR EXPATRIATES?

Americans in Europe

Dominic Pasura

AFRICAN TRANSNATIONAL DIASPORAS

Fractured Communities and Plural Identities of Zimbabweans in Britain

Helen Schwenken and Sabine Ruß-Sattar

NEW BORDER AND CITIZENSHIP POLITICS

Shanthi Robertson

TRANSNATIONAL STUDENT-MIGRANTS AND THE STATE

The Education-Migration Nexus

Olivia Sheringham

TRANSNATIONAL RELIGIOUS SPACES

Faith and the Brazilian Migration Experience

Evan Smith and Marinella Marmo

RACE, GENDER AND THE BODY IN BRITISH IMMIGRATION CONTROL

Subject to Examination

Helen Taylor

REFUGEES AND THE MEANING OF HOME

Cypriot Narratives of Loss, Longing and Daily Life in London

Holly Thorpe

TRANSNATIONAL MOBILITIES IN ACTION SPORT CULTURES

Anna Triandafyllidou and Irina Isaakyan

HIGH SKILL MIGRATION AND RECESSION

Gendered Perspectives

Louise Waite, Gary Craig, Hannah Lewis and Klara Skrivankova

VULNERABILIY, EXPLOITATION AND MIGRANTS

Insecure Work in a Globalised Economy

Vron Ware

MILITARY MIGRANTS

Fighting for YOUR Country

Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship

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Hometown Transnationalism

Long Distance Villageness among Indian Punjabis and North African Berbers

Thomas Lacroix

CNRS Research Fellow, University of Poitiers, France

© Thomas Lacroix 2016

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

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First published 2016 by

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lacroix, Thomas, author.

Hometown transnationalism : long distance villageness

among Indian Punjabis and North African Berbers / Thomas Lacroix.

     pages   cm. — (Migration, diasporas and citizenship)

ISBN 978–1–137–56720–8 (hardback)

1.  Immigrants—Europe—Societies, etc.   2.  Punjabis (South Asian people)—Social networks—Europe.   3.  Berbers—Social networks— Europe.   4.  Emigrant remittances.   5.  Transnationalism—Economic aspects.   6.  India—Emigration and immigration—Social aspects.   7.  Africa, North—Emigration and immigration—Social aspects.   I.  Title.

JV7590.L33 2015

305.8914’2104—dc23

2015025764

This book is for Noam, who buoyantly blows in the wind

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Preface and Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I   Methodological and Theoretical Outline

1   Selecting Groups: Moroccan Chleuhs, Algerian Kabyles and Indian Sikhs in Europe

2   Outline of a Structure and Agency to Hometown Transnationalism

Part II   Transnationalism: An Emergent Process

3   Migration and the Village Lifeworld: Exploring the Ambivalence of the Migration Act

4   Hometown Organising and the Multipolarisation of Migrants’ Lives

Part III   State Policies and Immigrant Volunteering: The Developmentalist Turn

5   The Indian and North African Volunteer Sector in Europe

6   Migrant Organisations and the New Governance of Development

Conclusion: Moving beyond the Postmodern Trap of Transnational Studies

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Figures and Tables

Figures

1.1   Indian, Algerian and Moroccan immigrant populations in France and the UK: 1961–2011

5.1   Indian associations in the UK: 1992–2009

5.2   Algerian associations in France: 1997–2011

5.3   Moroccan associations in France: 1997–2011

Tables

I.1   Hometown groups involved in development initiatives in France, the UK and the US

1.1   Moroccans abroad: The ten main recipient countries (in thousands)

1.2   Indian migration: Main host countries (in millions)

5.1   Cross-border activities of Indian, Moroccan and Algerian associations

5.2   Voluntary and charity activism and integration among North Africans in France

Preface and Acknowledgements

This book is the synthesis of a decade of research on hometown organisations. The origin of this work is probably to be traced back to a lecture given by Patrick Gonin during my Sciences Po years. But the comparative work as such started thanks to a two-year EU Marie Curie fellowship at the University of Warwick (at the now-dismantled Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, 2005–2007). My following research position at Oxford University (International Migration Institute) provided me with the opportunity to further develop my expertise on Indian Punjabis in the UK in the context of the Volkswagen Foundation funded TRAMO project (Diffusion and Contexts of Transnational Migrant Organisations in Europe). For those UK years, my gratitude goes to Danièle Joly and the CRER (Centre For Research in Ethnic Relations) crowd, Hein de Haas, Oliver Bakewell, Stephen Castles and all the friends I left behind in Oxford and beyond, Ludger Pries, Alejandro Portes, Terminder Singh, Jasdev Rai, Johinder and Jugjit Sanghera and Mohamed El Ayoubi. The final step to this process started with my recruitment as a CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) research fellow at the University of Poitiers (2011–). Among the many commitments inherent in such a position, I was able to develop the quantitative aspects of this research thanks to the capacities provided by the Sciences-Po-based MOBGLOB (Global Governance of Mobility) project, funded by the National Research Agency. This track record reflects the common lot of what remains of independent research, which is increasingly dependent on the possibility of diverting time and resources from fundable projects to keep afloat those which do not fit the agendas of funding bodies because they are deemed inappropriate in terms of their relevance, format or duration. I owe very much to Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, Hélène Thiollet at Sciences Po, Cedric Audebert and Kamel Dorai, all the Migrinter team and the UFR SHA in Poitiers. I want to give a special thank you to David Lessault, Christophe Imbert and especially Guillaume Le Roux who introduced me to the technicalities of quantitative research. A big thank you to Jean-Charles Khalifa who did a terrific job of turning my wording into palatable English.

My time in Oxford was a strange turning point which has left a durable imprint on my intellectual path. Oxford’s academic restlessness is a unique catalyser of ideas and energy. In spite of (or maybe owing to) this amazing environment, I was gnawed by a pervasive dissatisfaction. My presence in one of the world’s temples of migration studies had, for nearly two years, the paradoxical effect of moving me away from the migration scholarship. This dissatisfaction urged me to leave the secure compound of transnational and migration studies and to seek by myself a path that would do justice to hometowners’ being and engagement. And it is with the readings of philosophers that I ventured for new theoretical terrains that would better fit with my personal concerns. I am extremely grateful to Barbara Harris White and Robin Cohen who provided me with invaluable support during this solitary endeavour. Hence the peculiar nature of this book: it is neither a case study, nor a high-flying theoretical opus, but something in between. It is firmly grounded in empirical investigations, but runs through more demanding and abstract passages that are rather uncommon in this type of work. Holding together these two aspects has been a particularly difficult ordeal. Ilka Vari Lavoisier, who, at that time, was finishing her PhD, helped me to find a way out of this conundrum. This book owes her a lot.

Lastly, I want to express my gratitude to the only one who has been my wonderful and patient companion during this adventure: Yasmina.

Introduction

Clichy is a suburban area at the northern edge of Paris, a world away from the Eiffel Tower. In 2005, it was still recovering from the stigma left by the recent riots that had shaken the entire area. There, in a café in the city centre, I met Lahcen, a former singer in a Kabyle folk band, former factory worker, unionist, volunteer in a literacy centre and member of the hometown organisation (HTO) of Ouled Ali,¹ his home village. The café itself did not differ from any of its kind: same fake leather benches, same Formica tables and the usual rank of bottles of spirits behind the bar. Only a poster of Matoub Lounès, the popular Kabyle singer, was here to remind the customer that we were in a Kabyle café. Lahcen and I talked for two hours. We talked about his hometown fellows and the project they wanted to set up for the village but also of what had become of French unionism and the place of immigrants, about the policy of the Chirac government and the feats of Zidane in the French football team. On the one hand, Lahcen is an archetypal product of the poly-cultural French working class, fashioned by a century of successive immigration waves and moulded by a history of industrial actions, associational engagements, de-industrialisation and the slow disintegration of working-class structures. On the other hand, Lahcen’s life rests upon his participation in the hometown group, its code of conduct, its complex hierarchy and quasi-religious set of moral obligations. Political and social materialism and identity mysticism coexist within the same character. It would be easy to draw a parallel between this contrasting duality and his migration trajectory, to associate the mystic Kabyle with the material French, the irrational emigrant with the well-grounded immigrant. But such inference would be misleading. Lahcen, this book seeks to show, is not the mere addition of two geo-social polarities, but the actual product of a specific form of migrant social institution: the HTO.

Since the early 1990s, HTOs have received renewed scholarly attention. The surge of studies dedicated to hometowners and their activities has been spurred by their growing participation in development projects for the benefit of their sending area. What is new is less their dedication in charitable causes than their increase in terms of volume and sophistication. And the global scale of the phenomenon is puzzling. Mexicans in the US, Malians in France, Nigerians in the UK, Guineans in Portugal, Ecuadorians in Spain, to name but a few examples, are among the groups that, despite being totally unrelated to one another, have multiplied the number of formal and informal endeavours in long distance development at roughly the same time. Indeed, Lahcen could have been Moroccan or Indian, and also Guinean, Mexican or Laotian. This book takes global reorientation of HTOs’ activities as an opportunity to uncover the specifics of hometown transnationalism. Its aim is to unveil what is common between these groups, to uncover the mechanics that turn a primordial locality-based solidarity into a cross-border social formation that is to be found all over the world.

One could argue that it has already been done. A fair amount of academic and non-academic studies document their participation and impact in local development. The common scenario explaining HTOs’ recent developmentalist turn that stands out from the literature unfolds as such: drawing on customary forms of collective mobilisation, hometown groups and their leaders rely on existing public schemes to pursue personal strategies of statutory enhancement. The strategy scenario might hold for some leaders, but is nowhere to be seen for the vast majority of members who reap little, if any, benefit from their engagement. In fact, these studies pay more attention to development activities than to hometown groups themselves. They take for natural their participation in development activities, while this pattern is far from being widespread. In parallel, a number of detailed ethnographies of hometowners have flourished, depicting formal and informal collective organisations, generational and factional conflicts and the multi-sited deployment of hometowners’ lives. They show that development activities are one among an array of collective processes induced by the existence of HTOs. And yet, this strand of works is mostly case-study based and fails to propose a more encompassing view of what an HTO is and who hometowners are beyond the particularities of specific groups. We already know from historical studies that this pattern of organisation is probably as old as migration itself. On the one hand, there is something trans-historical in hometown organising, and on the other, this social configuration is far from being universal: it is to be found among certain groups and not others, among collectives with a rural rather than an urban background, coming from peripheral and minority areas rather than from central ones, and so on. And the surge of development initiatives observed simultaneously among groups that have nothing in common and have no contact whatsoever shows that beyond its atemporal/aspatial character, this pattern of group-making has been reconfigured by contemporary globalisation. My intent is to use this developmentalist turn, a particular moment in HTO’s history, to disclose the most fundamental trait of hometown transnationalism.

In order to move beyond the constraints of the case-study analysis, this book draws on a comparison between three distinct groups: the Algerian Kabyles and Moroccan Chleuhs in France and Indian Sikhs in the UK. The explanation I want to propose moves away from strategy-minded and other (social) capitalistic frameworks of understanding. It is posited on two key aspects: the identity dynamics of their members and the temporality of transnationalism. Transnationalist or diaspora scholars tend to treat hybridity and the plurality of identity as the consequence of actors’ transnational positioning. My stance reverses this assumption: identities are hybrid not because they are transnational but because they are temporal. In other words, hybridity is a normal and universal state of being of identities that are evolving, pluralising and re-organising as life goes on. But the specific position of migrants straddled between several social universes in several locations gives a particular salience of this process. And Lahcen is a good example of this. HTOs are social institutions in which migrants strive to collectively re-articulate the coherence of their multi-stranded selves, to find coherence in a history of disjunctions, to remain a villager when even the place of departure has radically changed. In this perspective, the identity plurality that characterises hometowners is not something to be explained, but the factor driving their cross-border engagements. Development initiatives, it is argued, are collective attempts to get a grasp on their transforming self and environment. They are a stand taken, a discourse on what a globalised village man/woman is supposed to be. But this pattern of engagement is structurally embedded in contemporary, neoliberal globalisation. The simultaneous surge of development initiatives around the world shows just how much the context matters. And this includes national contexts: focusing on a phenomenon scattered around the globe should not lead to overlooking the efficiency of integration models and policies offered by host countries. An exclusive focus on actors’ behaviours would fail to grasp a more global dynamics. The nexus between hometown transnationalism and development is the product of a twofold history: that of expatriate villagers on the one hand and of globalised villages on the other. In order to grasp both sides of the coin, this work relies on a structure and agency approach, which relates the evolution of hometown groupings and the behaviour of their members to the social transformation at stake in receiving and sending societies. The challenge is here to move away from economistic assumptions and actor-centred approaches, and to seriously tackle the question of social temporality, of collective rationality and the coordination of interests and activities. This introduction briefly presents an overview of extant literature on HTOs and highlights empirical as well as theoretical gaps.

Global villages in the global village

Hometown transnationalism is probably as old as migration itself. Migrant communities fed by interpersonal networks tend to cluster in the same arrival settings and reproduce the pattern of social organisations inherited from sending areas. Most of them host people coming from the same locality of origin, but some display other cultural grounding, such as caste organisations from Gujarat, tribal organisations from Nigeria, or the Chinese or Syrian organisations built along patrilineal or linguistic lines. Hometown groups started to pave the way for grassroots globalisation long before the mass migration waves of the 1960s and 1970s. In the main destination countries, one fellow after the other, expatriated hometowners clustered along the lines of aggregate families until entire migration fields were covered by their cross-border networks. These clusters, scattered around the world, have maintained multi-pronged and long-standing connections with the place of origin, conveying remittances, people, symbols, goods and ideas. Next to multinational corporations, mafia networks, global cities or international governmental and non-governmental organisations, these networked villages stand as actors of globalisation. It is yet another trick of history: at the heart of globalisation (the paragon of contemporary societal dynamics) stands one of the most ancient social institutions. The global village imagined by Marshal McLuhan in the 1960s is, in a way, poles apart from these village networks produced by migration. Globalised villages are outcomes of re-processed pre-existing socialities. They do not dissolve distance but use it to produce new roles and hierarchies moulded and remoulded over decades. They are not the translation at the local level of global processes but the transposition at the global scale of enduring local socialities. In his literature review, Jose Moya states the omnipresence of hometown or locality-based associations is so remarkable that at first glance it would seem to embody a universal law and a primordial attachment to birthplace (Moya 2005, 847). This pattern of organising has been reported, for instance, among the Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, Basque, German, Peruvian, Tongan, Indian, Nigerian or Filipino emigrants,² and also among groups of internal migrants in large cities: this phenomenon is not specific to international migrants (Barkan et al. 1991; Mercer et al. 2008; Mohan 2006; Moya 2005; Perraudin 2011).

Hometown groups tend to cluster around locality-based primordial solidarities, as opposed to other groups that form along ethnic or religious lines. The latter may bring together members coming from a plurality of locales: Indian caste associations or African tribal association (Nigerian Igbos) or language-based association (common among Chinese) are a few instances of such organisations. In contrast, hometown groups often have a pluriethnic character. This has been reported in the Eastern African context (Mercer et al. 2008, 9), and, for our concern, Punjabis organisations, although dominated by Sikhs of the Jat caste, may also include members from other Hindu or Sikh castes. In some cases, however, ethnic and place dimensions may overlap; this will be alluded to in the case of organisations gathering hometowners on a caste basis (common among Gujaratis, for example). The constituency of the home area delimiting the group may vary a great deal. The structuration of hometown networks displays a whole chromatic scale from acentric networks of branches scattered within and outside the sending country to hierarchic organisational networks whose apex is formed by powerful federations of HTOs that, as in the Mexican case, engage with state sending and receiving authorities (J. A. Fox 2005a). The sections of these networks may be formal branches of the same cross-border organisations or informal nodes of people clustered around a local leader with no overarching organisation. The distribution of power, the degree of institutionalisation, the division of labour and other organisational parameters vary from one case to the other. The scholarship signals the extensive fluidity of this pattern of collective mobilisation and the way they are affected by the sociological and political contexts in which they are embedded. For this reason, I prefer to use the terms organisation and hometown organisation rather than the one commonly found in the Anglo-Saxon literature of association/hometown association. On continental Europe, the latter refers to legally registered collectives (association loi 1901 in France, association sans but lucratif in Belgium, Verein in Germany … ) that points to a misleading Western conception. I use the more encompassing term of organisation to do justice to the polymorphism of this pattern of mobilisation. And association is reserved to designate formally registered entities (see for example Chapter 5).

Beyond their formal differences, HTOs are characterised by their bi-focality, geared towards both their origin and expatriate communities. On the one hand, research emphasises the role of support organisations in easing settlement and integration of newcomers in destination areas. HTOs are conceived as a vehicle of collective integration (Somerville et al. 2008). These groupings primarily provide a space of intimacy for their members. Weddings, celebration of hometown patrons, funerals … are some occasions of collective gatherings. The most institutionalised forms of hometown networks maintain collective funds for insurance purposes. Burial committees, set up to cover the repatriation expenses in case of the death of a fellow, are a widespread example (Evans 2007; Joly 1987). On the other hand, HTOs showcase and mediate the continuous attachment to the place of origin. To some extent, HTOs can be seen as a social institution that translates shared sentiment for the sending community into a sense of community belonging, hence the importance taken by homeland issues in daily interactions. Jewish Landsmanschaften in the Americas were known to maintain newspapers spreading the latest news of the origin area. In times of conflict, hometown networks can spur collective mobilisations. The public demonstrations in London following the pogroms that took place in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century are a case in point (Gidley 2013). The financial mobilisations in the wake of environmental hazards are widespread (Sezgin and Dijkzeul 2013). Another manifestation of the transnational role of HTOs is visible in the relations they maintain with consular or local authorities or mayors from sending municipalities. As far as they are concerned, hometown leaders are seen as useful brokers with expatriate nationals (Mercer et al. 2008, 15; Okamura 1983; R. Waldinger et al. 2008). David Fitzgerald has underscored this capacity of hometown groups to engage with different political and identification levels, whether they are local or national. This entanglement of levels of local, translocal and national activities reflects the scales of membership and citizenship (Neveu et al. 2007) that underpin migrants’ collective engagements. HTOs do not in any way materialise a transnational social and political sphere that is closed on itself.

Hometown transnationalism and development: A state of the art

But HTOs are best known for their commitment to development projects. Schools were built by wealthy expatriates in India in the 1930s (Dusenbery and Tatla 2009). Between the end of the nineteenth century and 1949, 4000 projects were reported in the Chinese province of Fujian, 10% of which were collective and individual projects aiming at improving the transportation system between the Harbour of