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Migrants's Reform Potential for North Africa - Mobility, Identity and Transition in the Mediterranean Area
Abstract
Recent uprisings of the Tunisian and Egyptian populations radically question former analyses on the resistance of the Arab World to reform processes, ascribed to the implied non-compatibility of democracy and the Islamic civilization. In addition to the importance attributed to the new media within these opposition movements, other factors have also contributed to the outbreak that maybe leads to a “fourth democratisation vague”. One of these factors is mobility. I argue that in political science the role of migrants as carriers of change thanks to their mobility and their hybridity (in a postcolonial sense) has been neglected so far. We actually know little about the influence of mobility on identity. Since two decades, mobility is accelerating, structures and forms of migration flows are changing, collective identities are redefined and questioned. In the Euro-Mediterranean space transnational migrant flows cross each other. This growing mobility between Europe and North Africa leads to a multiethnic constellation that can be experienced as a conflict, but also as a potential. The number of these individuals born out of mixed marriages or relations, having a “bi- or multi-cultural” background, is estimated up to 20 million in the Euro-Mediterranean area. So-called hybrid identities, meaning individuals who feel simultaneously belonging to different cultural spaces, moving between Europe and the countries of origin, illustrate the interwoven character of transnational identities. I argue that these individuals can be considered as “agents of change” for their countries of origin. By travelling in the Mediterranean, they do not only carry values, ideas, cultural oeuvres and social practices, but also professional knowledge, competences and financial transfers. An extended, dense and complex relational tissue (family, friendship, professional) is emerging “in between” Europe and North Africa, and thus contributing from below to the construction of a Mediterranean region. Therefore this contribution seeks to analyse the different forms of post-colonial identities in the Mediterranean Area and how these individuals with a specific hybrid migration background contribute to reform processes in the North African countries. The paper will mainly be based on qualitative interviews conducted with Euro-Tunisian and Euro-Moroccan migrants.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Mediterranean Countries
Sub Area
Mediterranean Studies