Sending States and the Making of Intra-Diasporic Politics

In recent years, scholars have begun to pay greater attention to the role that sending state policies have in shaping the behavior of diaspora populations. The literature has taken up issues such as remittances, citizenship policies, and voting rights. In this paper, however, I wish to look not at the formal policies of sending states towards their diasporas, but rather how domestic politics within a state contribute both to the creation of a diaspora itself, but also the emergence and maintenance of intra-diasporic cleavages.  Domestic political cleavages are reproduced transnationally in diaspora politics – a fact that is observed empirically in case studies of diaspora politics but has not been adequately theorized, and is often missing in the policy literature which treats “diasporas” as coherent interest groups. I will focus on four types of cleavages in my paper: ethnic, religious, class and party-based. In the empirical section, I will draw examples from the MENA region and discuss how these play out within Europe.