International Migration and Globalization of Domestic Politics

Rey Koslowski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781134515233
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Increasing international migration, the information revolution and democratization have propelled a globalization of the domestic politics of many states and, although diasporic politics is not new, emigrant political participation in homeland politics has grown as well as adapted to the new methods of the information revolution. This book examines the participation of emigrants in their home country politics. It considers the consequences of such participation for domestic and foreign policies in both host and home country, and explores the theoretical implications for democracy, nationalism, the state and the shape of world politics in the future. It includes detailed case studies of Turkish emigrants in Europe, the US and Saudi Arabia, Kurds in Europe, Israeli emigrants and the American Jewish community, Mexicans in the US, Chinese throughout the Pacific Rim, Indians in the US and Russians who found themselves outside Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed. By providing extensive documentation of emigrant political activity with significant impact on homeland politics and foreign policies, this work provides ammunition to the argument that international migration, globalization and transnational phenomena pose serious challenges to the state and the international system of states. It will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists and area studies specialists as well as political science and international relations scholars.

1 International migration and the globalization of domestic politics

A conceptual framework

Rey Koslowski

Introduction

The combination of international migration, advances in transportation and communications technology, and spreading democratization fosters a globalization of the domestic politics of many states that is similar to the globalization of national economies. Just as the spread of new information technologies that connect headquarters, factories and distribution centers has enabled the globalization of production across borders, these technologies have enabled the globalization of domestic politics by connecting emigrants with their kin and political organizations back home. In addition to the transformation of the political environment brought on by the information and communications revolution, the globalization of domestic politics is driven by the confluence of two trends – increasing migration and increasing democratization of the world's states.

Over the past few decades, international migration has expanded to the point where there are now an estimated 175 million people living outside of their state of nationality. Moreover, these 175 million migrants are coming from a greater variety of source countries and moving to a greater variety of host countries. For example, until three decades ago, the US population was composed largely of the descendants of African slaves and European immigrants. Then, however, large-scale migration from a wide variety of migrant-sending countries in Latin America and East and South Asia transformed the United States into what the demographer Ben Wattenberg (1991) called “the first universal nation.” Over the same period, migration flows out of historic migrant-sending countries in Europe, such as Germany and then Italy, Spain and Greece, reversed direction, and these countries have become hosts to a growing number of new diasporic communities.

Democratization in host countries provides more conducive environments for emigrant political activity while democratization of home countries increases the chance that emigrants are able to influence their homelands’ politics. Moreover, democratization facilitates international migration (mostly by reducing the number of states willing to stop their citizens from leaving).

When the domestic politics of one state actually takes place in several states, it is a dimension of politics that is neither within individual states nor between several states. In that this political practice is not captured by state-centric international relations theories that conceptualize the world in terms of international anarchy in contrast to domestic hierarchy, the globalization of domestic politics challenges traditional conceptualizations of world politics. As the globalization of politics expands, the impact of migration on international politics grows, yet, as long as the anarchy-hierarchy dichotomy continues to govern mainstream approaches to the study of international politics, an adequate understanding of this phenomenon is not forthcoming.

My argument proceeds as follows: first, I review the implications of international migration for the conceptualization of world politics in general by examining migration with respect to two bodies of international relations theory that are divided on the conceptualization of world politics – state-centric theories, primarily realism and neorealism, and non-state-centric theories, which developed as alternatives to realism and focus on transnational interaction and non-state actors. Second, I build on the transnationalist approach by developing the concept of the globalization of domestic politics through the elaboration of several kinds of emigrant political activity and its expansion through increased migration. Third, I explain how democratization is expanding the globalization of domestic politics and consider the implications of emigrant participation for democracy and democratic theory in general. Fourth, I demonstrate how emigrant influence on host-and home-country foreign policy, as well as homeland political conflicts fought on foreign soil, transcends the globalization of domestic politics and becomes international politics as traditionally understood. Fifth, I examine the place of emigrant remittances and investment in the globalization of the international economy. Sixth, I examine the relationship between emigrants and nationalism and explore the potential for the development of alternative transnational identities within diasporas. Finally, I conclude by reviewing some implications of the above for the study of politics in general.

Migration, domestic politics and international relations theory

Refugee crises, human smuggling and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by terrorists who resided in the United States on student, business and tourist visas have recently thrown a spotlight on the role of international migration in contemporary world politics. The growing role of migration in the calculations of policy-makers has been reflected in an expanding literature on migration in comparative politics (Hollifield 1992; Freeman and Jupp 1992; Cornelius et al. 1994; Castles and Miller 1993)¹ and international relations (Mitchell 1989; Zolberg et al. 1989; Tucker et al. 1990; Heisler 1992; Hollifield 1992; Weiner 1993; Waever et al. 1993; Loescher 1993; Teitelbaum and Weiner 1995; Weiner 1995, 1996; Keely 1996; Posen 1996; Miller 1997; Muenz and Weiner 1997; Money 1997, 1999; Koslowski 2000, 2002). Still, migration is rarely considered in general works of international relations theory, and much of the recent work on the consequences of migration for international politics is written by scholars with backgrounds in demography, comparative politics and area studies. Although the role of diasporas in world politics has long been appreciated by foreign policy-makers (Mathias 1981) and analyzed by a few political scientists (Armstrong 1976; Sheffer 1986; Shain 1989, 1999; Shain and Barth 2003; Callahan 2003; Weiner 1995), mainstream neorealists and neoliberals downplay the significance of migration as a security issue (Walt 1991) and the factor of labor migration in the international economy (Keohane and Milner 1996). Some scholars developing alternative sociological perspectives, such as constructivism, have noted that migration is an issue that has “reemerged as deeply politicized from relatively taken-for-granted conventions of nationalism and citizenship … and could induce expansion in the conceptualization of security affairs” (Jepperson et al. 1996: 73). Still, they have shied away from analysis of such “new security issues” as migration so that their arguments will be taken seriously by neorealists and neoliberals (Katzenstein 1996: 7–11). Those international relations scholars who have systematically incorporated migration into their theoretical frameworks have placed the primary focus on the politics of immigration in host states and conceptualized the consequences of immigration for international politics in terms of “societal security” (Waever et al. 1993). In contrast, this volume focuses on the political activity of emigrants in their home countries, its international ramifications and theoretical implications.

With respect to the conceptualization of world politics, international relations theories can be divided into two groups on either side of a debate over the state as a unit of analysis. State-centric theories, primarily realism and neorealism (but also micro-economic-based, neoliberal institutionalism (Keohane 1984) and some forms of constructivism (Wendt 1994, 1999), are pitted against non-state-centric theories, which developed as alternatives to realism and focus on transnational interaction and non-state actors.

In state-centric theories, world politics is conceptualized in terms of an inter-national system of territorially delineated states. Due to the existence of government within states, domestic politics is characterized by order and hierarchy; due to the absence of world government, politics among states is characterized by anarchy (Waltz 1979: 88–9). While both traditional realism and neorealism are state-centric, neorealist analysis is almost exclusively conducted in the “third image,” or on the level of the international system, rather than in the “second image,” or at the level of politics within the state (Waltz 1959). Unfortunately, third-image, state-centric, capability-driven analysis does not deal adequately with international migration because international migration can lead to changes in domestic politics that reverberate on the international level in the form of changes in foreign policies that are not necessarily the result of changes in military capabilities. Moreover, the concept of domestic hierarchy assumes a territorially contained polity, which obfuscates analysis of a diaspora that may be a part of a polity living outside of the territory of the home state.

As opposed to the state-centric approach of realism and neorealism, a host of theories taking a transnationalist approach have been advanced.² This group of theories includes functionalism (see Mitrany 1946), neofunctionalism (see Haas 1968), social communications theory (see Deutsch et al. 1957), interdependence theory (see Keohane and Nye 1977), world society theory (see Burton 1972) and epistemic community theory (Haas 1992). Theorists taking a transnationalist approach try to understand world politics in its totality. They point to non-state actors such as multinational corporations, international trade unions, international scientific, technical and functional organizations, etc., and argue that state-to-state relations represent only part of world politics and that many politically significant actions bypass states themselves. For instance, Keohane and Nye identified four global interactions: communication – the movement of information, including beliefs and ideas; transportation – the movement of physical objects, including merchandise and arms; finance – the movement of money and instruments of credit; and travel – the movement of persons (Keohane and Nye 1971).

While early work on transnational relations included analysis of international migration, most subsequent arguments challenging state-centric theories focused on economic interdependence arising from increasing international trade and monetary flows and neglected international migration. A more recent volume edited by Robert Keohane and Helen Milner emerged from a discussion of “What happened to interdependence theory?” and was entitled Internationalization and Domestic Politics. At first glance, one would think that the globalization of domestic politics resulting from international migration might be a prominent feature of the analysis. However, Keohane and Milner define internationalization as “the processes generated by underlying shifts in transaction costs that produce observable flows of goods, services, and capital” (Keohane and Milner 1996: 4). They did not consider migration as a part of internationalization “since labor moves much less readily across national borders than goods or capital” (ibid.: 256, n. 1).

Keohane and Milner are correct in arguing that labor does not move as readily as goods and capital. This should not, however, justify dropping migration from the factors of internationalization and minimizing its impact on domestic politics, because migration is often part and parcel of the cross-border movement of services and capital, and the actions of a state's nationals who reside abroad often have political consequences that are disproportionate to their numbers. While the international movement of services often conjures the image of software, financial data and legal information being communicated through transnational information networks, it also involves the migration of professionals who produce such information and services (about a third of Silicon Valley's engineers are foreign born; Sweeny 1996: 3) and lower skilled service workers (e.g., nurses and maids from the Philippines, Polish nannies, Chinese cooks and Mexican gardeners) who in turn provide services for highly skilled professionals. Only a small fraction of a country's citizens may work abroad, but capital movements in the form of migrant worker remittances may exceed merchandise export earnings, as is the case in many developing countries (see below). Similarly, emigrants and political refugees often participate in home-country politics with an influence that is disproportionate to their numbers due to the acquisition of education and skills, the accumulation of financial capital and the cultivation of influence on host-state foreign policies toward their home states. Even individual emigrants may change the course of their home country's political development. Moreover, the number of people who reside outside of their state of nationality understates the political consequences of international migration because it does not include the descendants of migrants, who may have the nationality of the state in which they reside but still identify politically with their parents’ and grandparents’ home-state and participate in home-state politics.

The neglect of international migration by scholars of transnational relations and international interdependence is unfortunate because in many cases the international movement of humans is potentially much more politically significant than the international movement of goods or money. As opposed to goods and money, migrants have a will of their own (Weiner 1989: 75, cited in Hollifield 1992: 21, n. 5) and can themselves become significant political actors. Migrants challenge assumptions of territoriality not just when they cross borders but also when they participate in home-country politics, influence the foreign policymaking of host and home states, and even develop alternative diaspora political identities which transcend existing borders. In this sense, the globalization of domestic politics refers not only to a growing political phenomenon. The concept of a diasporic polity existing in several states and influencing their domestic politics and foreign policies provides another way of understanding the relationship between domestic and international politics that builds on, but goes beyond, the “second image reversed” (Gourevitch 1978), “two level games” (Putnam 1988) or “agent-structure” debates (see Wendt 1987; Dessler 1989).

The international relations literature has a long tradition of theories of transnational relations but little analysis of diasporas. In contrast, anthropologists and sociologists have studied diasporas extensively; many virtually take it for granted that diasporas are majors factors of domestic politics and foreign policy in many parts of the world and some have made “transnationalism” a new analytical focus in their fields (see, e.g., Glick Schiller et al. 1992; Portes 1995; Kearney 1995; Appadurai 1996; Cohen 1997; Kyle 2000; Levitt 2001).³ This chapter bridges this disciplinary divide by providing a conceptual framework that orients international relations scholars to the subject matter and helps anthropologists, sociologists and area studies specialists put their research into a format that will effectively register with international relations scholars and foreign policy-makers.

Emigration, diasporas and homeland political participation

Throughout history, victorious parties in domestic political conflicts often used banishment abroad as an alternative to killing or imprisoning political opponents, because exile was a more humane way of effectively eliminating political challengers (many of whom were related to the victor); it also avoided turning opponents into martyrs. The development of an international system of indepen-dent states facilitated both the expulsion of political opponents by states and the reception of political refugees by other states. In this way, the states system enabled opponents of any individual state's rulers to escape that state through refuge in another. The combination of an international system of states and better transportation and communication also opened up the possibility that exiles and political refugees could continue to influence the course of domestic politics in their home countries even after they left.⁴ Emigration has long functioned as a release valve reducing revolutionary social pressure in the emigrants’ home countries.⁵ However, the greater the emigrant contacts with the home country, the greater the potential for emigrants abroad to foment revolution and national independence movements back home.

Diasporic politics is not a new phenomenon, as just one example from ancient Greece makes clear. Between 1050 and 950 BC Athenians and Ionian and other Greek refugees, as well as their Athenian-born descendants, moved from Athens to the central and northern coast of Asia Minor, which became known as Ionia and Aeolia (Forrest 1986: 20). Centuries later, the ties between the Athenian mother state and the Ionian diaspora were renewed during the Persian Wars. After Cyrus united the Persian kingdom in 546 bc and installed pro-Persian tyrants in Ionian cities, Ionians fled to Athens, and these Ionian refugees persuaded the Athenians to become involved in the conflict (Watson 1992: 57). Athenians responded to the Ionian revolt in 499 BC by sending twenty ships, while the Spartans refused to help.

In modern times, active involvement of refugees in the domestic politics of their home countries goes back at least to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when James II received refuge in France and aspired to regain the English throne through mobilizing supporters in England, Scotland and Ireland (Mansbach et al. 1976: ch. 4). After the French Revolution, aristocrats who fled France attempted to moderate, if not reverse, the revolution (Roberts 1978: 45–6). These aristocrats eventually participated in the restoration of the monarchy in 1815 (Artz 1963). In response to the restoration, throughout the nineteenth century, liberal, nationalist and radical refugees and exiles organized groups, published manifestos and supported clandestine political activity in attempts to change the course of their home-country politics.⁶ Although the influence of refugees, exiles and emigrants on their home country's domestic politics may be revolutionary, reactionary, liberal, conservative or nationalist in nature, contemporary emigrant political activity has been directed primarily toward movements of national selfdetermination and democratization.

During the struggle against communism and Soviet imperialism, the Polish diaspora supported the Solidarity labor movement of 1980–81 and underground Solidarity throughout the 1980s (Nash 1989; Blejwas 1995). For example, after General Jaruzelski declared a state of war on December 13, 1981, Jerzy Milewski (later National Security Advisor to the Polish president, Lech Walesa) and other members of the Solidarity leadership found themselves outside of Poland. They transmitted uncensored information from Poland to the West, and opened the Coordinating Office Abroad of NSZZ Solidarność in Brussels. The office itself was provid...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• International Migration and the Globalization of Domestic Politics
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1  International migration and the globalization of domestic politics: a conceptual framework
• 2  Immigrant organizations and the globalization of Turkey’s domestic politics
• 3  Mobilizing ethnic conflict: Kurdish separatism in Germany and the PKK
• 4  Israelis in a Jewish diaspora: the dilemmas of a globalized group
• 5  Migrant membership as an instituted process: transnationalization, the state and the extra-territorial conduct of Mexican politics
• 6  Politics from outside: Chinese overseas and political and economic change in China
• 7  Opposing constructions and agendas: the politics of Hindu and Muslim Indian-American organizations
• 8  A marooned diaspora: ethnic Russians in the near abroad and their impact on Russia’s foreign policy and domestic politics
• Index