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La politique au-delà des frontières : la sociologie politique de l'émigration

Le prochain séminaire du Cadis aura lieu le 4 mai 2012 de 11 h à 13 h
en salle du conseil A, R -1, bât. Le France, 190-198 av de France 75013 Paris

A l'invitation de la Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme et du CADIS,

Roger Waldinger, professeur de sociologie à l'Université de Californie à Los Angeles (UCLA), professeur invité à la FMSH interviendra sur le thème:

"La politique au-delà des frontières : la sociologie politique de l'émigration"

Abstract

This paper develops a framework for analyzing the political sociology of emigration, starting with the duality at the heart of the migration phenomenon: immigrants are also emigrants, aliens are also citizens, foreigners are also nationals, non-members are also members.  At once of the sending state, but not in it, the migrants are members whose everyday cross-border connections and ongoing needs pull them back home while also drawing the sending state across the border; residing abroad, however, the migrants’ claims to belonging are undermined by their presence on foreign soil.  At once in the receiving state but not of it, the migrants can access the economic and political resources available in their new home, using them to gain leverage in the home left behind; yet as aliens, their rights are circumscribed and as outsiders their acceptance is uncertain, vulnerabilities that are inherently unstable, susceptible both to alleviation (via rights extension) or exacerbation (via rights contraction).  Both conditions activate interventions by home states seeking to influence and protect nationals abroad and also to respond to emigrants’ demands for greater engagement from abroad.  While following “their” people to the countries on which they have converged, sending state extension to the territory of another state keeps options inherently limited: sending states can exercise neither despotic nor infrastructural power, as they lack the ability to compel the behavior of nationals living abroad and lack the capacity to reproduce the home state infrastructure in the foreign context.  Although the capacity to influence both emigrants and receiving state actors may be in reach, that influence is always at risk, since even limited sending state engagements can inflame the passions of receiving state nationals, anxious about the foreigners in their midst.