The long arm of the Arab state

ABSTRACT

Under what conditions do authoritarian states exercise control over populations abroad? The securitization of cross-border mobility has been a common theme in examining immigration policies in the Global North. The securitization of emigration and diasporas in non-democratic contexts remains neglected; this is particularly true with regard to Arab states’ extraterritorial authoritarian practices. This article argues that authoritarian states develop a range of migration policies that are driven by the contradictory pressures of economic and political imperatives or, put differently, an illiberal paradox: if a state does not expect economic gains from cross-border mobility, it is more likely to securitize its emigration policy; otherwise, it is more likely to securitize its diaspora policy. The article illustrates this trade-off via a most-similar comparison of Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, and Morocco. Drawing on Arabic and non-Arabic primary and secondary sources, it sketches a novel area of research on migration and security.

KEYWORDS:

• Authoritarianism
• migration
• Middle East
• North Africa
• diasporas
• securitisation

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the three anonymous reviewers and the journal editors for their feedback and attention, as well to Katharina Natter and Mathilde Zederman for their help in developing the paper's argumentation. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at workshops organised by the University of Toronto, Coventry University, and the University of Warwick. Thanks are due to Bahar Baser, Foteini Kalantzi, Maria Koinova, Matthew Light, Willem Maas, Darshan Vigneswaran, as well as to workshop participants for their valuable insights.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Gerasimos Tsourapas http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2746-9752

Notes

1 For analytic clarity, I approach emigration and diaspora policy-making as distinct processes (Tsourapas 2015, 2196–2197). The former refers to processes governing the physical “exit” from a country, while the latter targeting those that are already outside the physical boundaries of the sending state.

2 As per Linz’s classic definition, authoritarianism consists of

political systems with limited, not responsible, political pluralism, without elaborate and guiding ideology, but with distinctive mentalities, without extensive nor intensive political mobilization, except at some points in their development, and in which a leader or occasionally a small group exercises power within formally ill-defined limits but actually quite predictable ones. (Linz 1964, 255)

Authoritarian emigration states include “the set of institutions, practices, and mechanisms regulating cross-border mobility” developed in such systems (Tsourapas 2018a, 403).

3 The AAF later became known as Amicale des Algériens en Europe.

4 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out Algeria’s rationale behind this policy shift.

5 Many thanks to the anonymous reviewer for suggesting this information. For additional information on the politics of Morocco’s religious reforms at home and abroad, see Maghraoui (2009).

6 Brand (2006, 92–132) and others consider this a strategy of encadrement, which refers to the unique manner with which the Tunisian aimed to govern populations abroad (Dazey and Zederman 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by British Academy / Leverhulme Small Grant [Grant Number SG163246].