African states, global migration, and transformations in citizenship politics

Abstract

Over the past three decades, relations between African emigrants and their home-states have been changing from antagonism to attempts to embrace and structure emigrant behaviors. This transformation in the conception of emigration and citizenship has hardly been interrogated by the growing scholarship on African and global migrations. Three of the most contentious strategies to extend the frontiers of loyalty of otherwise weak African states, namely dual citizenship or dual nationality, the right to vote from overseas, and the right to run for public office by emigrants from foreign locations are explored. Evidence from a wide range of African emigration states suggests that these strategies are neither an embrace of the global trend toward extra-territorialized states and shared citizenship between those at ‘home’ and others outside the state boundaries, nor are they about national development or diaspora welfare. Instead, they seem to be strategies to tap into emigrant resources to enhance weakened state power. The study interrogates the viability and advisability of emigrant voting and political participation from foreign locations, stressing their tendency to destabilize homeland political power structures, undermine the nurturing of effective diaspora mobilization platforms in both home and host states, and export homeland political practices to diaspora locations.

Keywords:

• citizenship
• diaspora
• Africa
• voting
• globalization

Notes

 1. Other diaspora reconnection strategies range from consular reforms to investment policies which seek to attract or channel migrant remittances, extension of state protections or services to nationals living abroad that go beyond traditional consular services, and implementation of symbolic policies designed to reinforce emigrants' sense of enduring membership in their home countries. See Levitt and de la Dehesa (2003).

 2. Diaspora as an alternative to FDI is not completely novel, nor is it unique to any country or region. Rather, it is rooted in the theoretical construct known as ‘the New Economics of Migration (NEM).’ See Bloom and Stark (1985).

 3. Under section 22.1 of the 1973 law (amended 1974), Liberians who are naturalized in another state lose their Liberian citizenship. Critics contend that the large Liberian war-generated diaspora makes an affirmative provision allowing for dual nationality imperative to facilitate more beneficial diaspora–homeland interactions. See ABA (2009, p. 17).

 4. Kenyan vice president assured a group of Kenyans in Germany in June 2009 that ‘there was consensus to provide for dual citizenship in the new constitution and diaspora voting rights.’ See Anon (2009b). Chapter 3 of the Kenyan Constitution approved by 68% of the population in a referendum on 4 August 2010 now allows for dual citizenship of another state and anyone to acquire Kenyan citizenship. Earlier on 22 January 2010, Justice L. Kimanu of the Kenyan High Court ruled that the old Constitution did not prohibit acquisition of dual citizenship and that one did not lose Kenyan citizenship by acquiring that of another country unless in so doing, he or she renounces Kenyan citizenship. See Muchene (2010).

 5. Baker (2006) explores the claim that Cape Verde ‘is the best country in Africa for political rights and civil liberties’.

 6. See Spiro (2003, p. 139) for the concept of diaspora and ‘undisciplined voting’, and Spiro (2006) for a global survey of the political rights of nonresident citizens. In Cape Verde, six delegates of the 72-member national assembly are elected by nonresident voters, some of whom have become arrogant and extremely difficult for local politicians to control (see Carling and Åkesson 2009, pp. 144–146).

 7. ‘Personal voting’ is a mechanism for voting in which electors attend at a polling station or polling site in person in order to cast their votes; whereas in ‘proxy voting’, qualified electors appoint another person to vote on their behalf. See IDEA (2007, pp. 249–250).

 8. See Sanusi (1999). Mallam Sanusi, the son of the late Emir of Kano, has been the Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria since June 2009.

 9. For an early formulation that attributed the continued survival of Africa's weak states to the legitimating role of external actors or assistance, especially the norm of territorial integrity of existing states, see Jackson and Rosberg (1982–1983). On the concept of ‘state survival’ or ‘state permanence,’ see Clapham (1996).

10. See Ghanaian Chronicle (2006) for one of the scores of early warnings about the potential impact of diaspora vote on national politics, should ROPAA be implemented in 2008.