Parliament and Diaspora in Europe

M. Laguerre

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349447794, 9781137280596
• eBook ISBN: 9781137280602
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book analyzes the unfolding of a new institutional phenomenon: the cosmonational parliament of the cross-border nation and the expanded state, focusing on three European national parliaments, namely the French Senate, the Italian Chamber of Representatives and Senate, and the Croatian unicameral parliament.

CHAPTER 1

Parliament and Diaspora

The study of diaspora politics has seldom been framed in terms of the relationship between parliament and diaspora, either in the political science or in the more recent transnational migration literature.¹ Despite this oversight (or perhaps lack of interest) by political scientists, sociologists, and immigration scholars, however, this juncture is one that is important to analyze to understand the interactions of the diaspora with the parliament and the parliamentary activities that engage the diaspora. These two-way relationships have existed for centuries but are yet to be conceptualized. In an attempt to frame the diaspora and parliament binary relationship question and unveil the ramifications that it has generated for the transformation of state and nation, this chapter begins by defining the object of study. The relationship between these two entities means different things in different contexts: it is, therefore, important to specify the angle taken in this investigation.

The Cosmonational Parliament Model

To identify the cosmonational parliament model used in this study, I present it in contrast to previous models, specifying their different conceptual orientations. For example, “parliament and diaspora” more commonly evokes the idea of the relations of a national parliament to its emigrants abroad.² This includes the development of new laws for the protection and welfare of the diaspora, overseas visits by parliamentarians to be informed of the conditions of emigrants, contacts with the parliament initiated by the diaspora, and diasporans’ occasional visits to the homeland to vote in presidential and legislative elections.³ Some countries (for example, Canada and the Philippines) that do not allow diaspora parliamentary representation have, however, made it possible for emigrants to vote in their nearby consulates or embassies. One may refer to this mode of operation as the national parliament model.

Parliament and diaspora may also mean a national legislature that reconstitutes itself in diaspora, similar to, or constitutive of, a government-in-exile.⁴ In this context, as a result of war, revolution, or a coup d’etat, a national parliament may reconstitute itself abroad in the hope that such a body will be portable to the homeland when conditions on the ground allow for such a return. This may happen when members of the party in power are forced to resign, leave the country, and provisionally resettle elsewhere. It may also mean the initiative of a government formed overseas that develops its own parliament-in-exile to neutralize the activities of the government in power and develop strategies to overthrow it in the near future. One may refer to this mode of operation as the parliament in diaspora model.

Parliament and diaspora further means a legislative body developed by groups of people in the diaspora to care for their legitimate needs, as in the case of the World Jewish Congress.⁵ The principal task of such an institution is to interface with foreign governments; it is not in opposition to the homeland government, even though it may disagree with some of the homeland policies. It is a global parliament because its members reside in countries all over the world. One may refer to this mode of operation as the parliament of the diaspora model.

Parliament and diaspora also refers to local assemblies established during the colonial period in the colonies, with or without the consent of the Crown government, to protect the commercial interests of the colonists and the merchant class.⁶ The Crown government established some assemblies as a means to maintain order, serve as policy formation sites, and act as channels through which the rules and laws promulgated in the homeland could be communicated to the local colonial population and implemented. Others were created to protect the commercial interests of chartered companies, develop some manners of colonial autonomy, and resist the imposition of high taxes by the metropolitan administration. One may refer to this mode of operation as the colonial parliament model.

In addition, there is the example of members of immigrant groups with permanent residence status in their adopted countries who have been elected and served in hostland parliaments. Such groups as Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, Anglo Americans, Cuban Americans, and Jamaican Americans come to mind; they all have compatriots serving as members of Congress in the United States.⁷ This category of parliamentarians differs from the models analyzed above in that its point of reference is not the parliament of the homeland, but rather that of the hostland. One may refer to this mode of operation as the diaspora in hostland parliament model.

This book will not deal with the above aspects of the question. Rather, it conceives of the relations between diaspora and parliament in terms of the diasporization of the parliament. In this light, the diaspora is not seen as an external entity, but as participating members of homeland parliament and, therefore, as directly contributing to the legislative cogovernance of the homeland and the diaspora. This model differs in that it identifies elected diasporan leaders as parliamentarians representing the diaspora in the homeland parliament, and exerting their rights to hold office in that body. It sees the diaspora as constituting a constitutionally agreed upon circumscription of the larger global nation. This mode of operation will be referred to as the cosmonational parliament model.

The diasporization of the parliament means that these units do not relate to each other as completely separate entities, but rather as parts of the same continuum or the same expanded nation. The lines that are supposed to separate the two are blurred because of the flows of people, goods, and communication from one to the other, the integration of one into the other, and the laws that are developed and implemented in both the homeland and the diaspora. It is this novel hybrid transnational parliamentary form that this chapter investigates.

Conceptualizing Parliament and Diaspora in Theory

The interface of parliament with the globalization process, to the existence of which it contributes, calls into question the relevance of the traditional parliament and pinpoints the need for change so that parliament can respond efficiently to extraterritorial diaspora initiatives and interference in homeland politics.⁸ More precisely, diaspora intrusion in homeland affairs has called for organizational and managerial change in state institutions, including the parliament. By their everyday actions, diasporans have undermined their traditional relations with parliament and, in doing so, provided a new rationale for the structural reengineering of the institution. Since the end of World War II, these efforts have led to the incremental rise of the cosmonational parliament. The cosmonational parliament—unlike the national parliament—is a constitutionally mandated legislative body that is comprised of elected representatives from the homeland, any extraterritorial or overseas territories, and the diaspora; it operates on the basis of cogovernance and develops laws applicable to all the communities inside and outside the homeland (constituting the expanded nation) that fall under its jurisdiction.

The cosmonational parliament is to be distinguished from transnational parliamentary assemblies that often emerge out of international organizations, such as NATO or the Council of Europe, and are not an outgrowth of a nation-state.⁹ A transnational parliamentary assembly is an institution, whose membership is recruited out of different constituencies, that develops laws and procedures pertaining to actionable recommendations by the organizations it represents and fills a void in the international arena by promoting and supporting sustained equilibrium in interstate relations.

The cosmonational parliament must also be distinguished from parliamentary committees. As an outgrowth of the traditional parliament, the parliamentary committees have evolved as a response to questions that have been raised about the ability of national parliaments to resolve cross-border issues because of the geographical and national limitations of their jurisdictions. In the words of Longley and Davidson,¹⁰ “Parliamentary committees have emerged as vibrant and central institutions of democratic parliaments of today’s world and have begun to define new and changing roles for themselves.” Others see the proliferation of parliamentary committees as the outcome of the impact of globalization on the national parliament. According to this view, under the assault of globalization, national parliaments have become “reactive institutional bodies.”¹¹ The point that these scholars stress is that one way parliaments have adapted to this new development is through the creation of parliamentary committees to deal with growing transnational issues they are now confronting.

A national parliament cannot be considered as a cosmonational parliament unless and until it integrates diaspora parliamentarians into its membership. Neither the participation of ethnic parliamentarians in a national parliament, such as Italian American representatives in the US Congress, nor the parliament of a cultural community such as the Parliament of the Quebec province in Canada, which attends to the needs of a specific group of people, meets the test for classification as a cosmonational parliament.

Although these views present angles through which the parliament and diaspora question could be deconstructed, it is not the perspective that is favored in this book. Rather, the perspective is the entanglement of the diaspora with the parliament studied through the prism of diaspora representation; in other words, viewing the role of globalization through a focus on diaspora political engagement and transnational parliamentary inclusion.

There is a history and body of literature that indirectly touches on the parliament interface with the diaspora. This literature can be dissected into three phases. The first is concerned with the production of laws pertaining to emigration of citizens to foreign lands and their rights as expatriates.¹² These are protective laws that address security concerns, human rights, religious expression, discrimination in employment and housing, repatriation procedures, language schools, access to the appropriate embassy if arrested or jailed, loss of citizenship, citizenship of children born outside the country, acquisition of citizenship by a foreign-born spouse, and dual citizenship. This literature discusses legal, procedural, and logistical issues. It evokes a top-down, politico-legal approach that addresses the role of the state in the welfare of emigrants and their recourse in protecting their rights.

The second literature phase repositions the relationships between homeland and diaspora in a different manner, elaborating on the transnational politics of diasporans and homeland politicians.¹³ What is stressed here is the ability of diasporans to participate in homeland politics, such as serving in a presidential cabinet or in parliament representing districts inside the homeland, voting abroad in elections held in the homeland, doing fundraising in the diaspora in support of their campaigns or on behalf of candidates, and lobbying hostland regimes on behalf of the homeland government. On the one hand, diasporans live overseas and participate in homeland affairs, and on the other, homelanders also participate in diaspora affairs. For example, homeland politicians include the diaspora in their fundraising activities, select diasporans for ministerial jobs, support them as party affiliates in parliament, and use diasporans as consuls or ambassadors. This is a transnational political approach that operates in a transnational field.¹⁴ The first approach differs from the second because it sees diasporans as functioning in foreign lands, hence the emphasis on law; the second approach sees the diaspora as an extension of the nation and part of the same field of practice. The first emphasizes the rule of law, while the second explores informal practices carried out under the radar of the state because formal laws to justify such activities have not been developed. In this matter, laws formulated to regulate homeland practices are stretched to apply them to diasporans; for example, they are used to verify residence status of those who seek certain public offices or to prevent a diasporan from serving as president, prime minister, or even legislator. By and large, countries have not yet developed a comprehensive set of diaspora laws to regulate the relations of the homeland with the diaspora. To my knowledge, Croatia is the only country that has been working toward formulating a corpus of laws that deals with every aspect of diaspora-homeland relations.

The third approach that I formulate in this study of diaspora and parliament argues that diaspora parliamentary representation has produced the formalization of the nation as a de jure cosmonation and the state as a de facto cosmonation-centric social formation. In other words, representation reflects through the constitution an important aspect of the configuration of the new form that the state and the nation are taking. This approach states that the diaspora is part and parcel of the nation and is moving toward having similar rights as those enjoyed by the homeland residents. It goes further by implying that overseas residence is not an impediment to full participation and membership in the parliament and, given the special condition diasporans are in, they are entitled not only to vote abroad but also to be represented by diasporan parliamentarians they elect. This new development does away with overseas residence as an obstacle to full membership in the polity, without, however, resolving the taxation issue.

Inclusion of diaspora representatives in the homeland parliament narrates the forms of diasporan participation in the governance of the collectivity. This new development of diaspora participation is reflected at various levels, through voting abroad as reaffirmed by dual citizenship, through diaspora political parties and associations as affiliates of homeland institutions, and through recruitment of diaspora leaders to serve as officials in homeland governments. Representation, however, is limited; for example, task and sociological representation are fulfilled in this scheme, but not fiduciary representation.¹⁵ Full diaspora representation presents a challenge because of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• 1   Parliament and Diaspora
• 2   Italy: Diaspora Parliamentary Representation
• 3   France: Diaspora Parliamentary Representation
• 4   Croatia: Diaspora Parliamentary Representation
• 5   The Cosmonational Politics of Diaspora Parliamentary Representation
• Conclusion: Parliament of the Cosmonation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index