Transnational Politics of Integration and an “Imagined Global Diaspora”

Abstract

Transnational politics reflect the changes in the perception of migration, increasingly linking the question of identity and participation beyond borders. This chapter attempts to show how transnational politics of integration has become a way to re-territorialise globalised identities and how it creates a new configuration of the nation and nationalism and territory and power within globalisation. Communities, based upon cultural, ethnic, religious identifications, and recognised as such by states that increasingly rely on transnational solidarity, have sparked new upsurges of nationalism, accompanied by new forms of subjectivity which claim to be non-territorial. States, on the other hand, expand their nationalism in order to maintain the “power” of incorporation and citizenship, while expanding their influence beyond their territories, and compete with transnational communities in their engagement in the process of globalisation.

1 Introduction

Politics of immigration and integration have always been analysed in relation to receiving states: control of borders, politics of entry , rules of participation and laws on citizenship. Settlement turns migrants into minorities who express their claims before the states in which they reside for equal citizenship, for recognition and for political representation . At the same time, the increasing importance of solidarity beyond national borders on the grounds of one or several identities—national, religious, ethnic, regional—and interests removes claims, mobilisations and participation from a national to a transnational level. The process re-defines solidarity beyond borders and involves a multilevel interaction between home and host countries and the transnational community spread throughout several countries, which, together, create a transnational space for action.

Such an evolution is the result of the intense and complex ongoing ties that migrants maintain with their country of origin and the cultural, social, economic, political and ideological transfers that occur between both the country of departure and the receiving country and beyond. These multiple levels of participation are perceived as a challenge to the founding principles of nation -states with regard to territoriality , citizenship and membership in a single political community . Andreas Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002) argued that “methodological nationalism ” has influenced studies on migration—its relations to states, societies, politics and sovereignty (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). Nevertheless, transnational studies that take into consideration the process of globalisation as a source of the expression of solidarity and identification beyond borders also include states—at least for a comparative analysis—in order to establish the internal differences in such an organisation.

Indeed, transnational organisations and multiple identifications compel home states to position themselves and develop what is called “diaspora politics” as a means of maintaining the loyalty of the citizens on both their territory of settlement and “abroad”. For the countries of origin, the process involves extending their power beyond their territories, which leads to the de-territorialisation of nationhood, which becomes a resource for identity and for mobilisation . Receiving countries are driven to collaborate with the home countries in order to insure the integration to “re-territorialise” citizenship and identities. In both cases, the objective is to maintain the “power” of incorporation and citizenship while expanding state influences beyond territories and to compete with transnational communities in their engagement in the process of globalisation . Political participation in more than one political community, which brings to light multiple membership and multiple loyalties crystallised around dual citizenship , becomes, for immigrants, a way of maintaining an identity rooted in their home country. Citizenship thus becomes an entitlement within the country of residence . For home states, this means maintaining a link with citizens “abroad”; it involves, at the same time, the extension of the power of the state beyond its territories. What is at stake is the integration of the states (both states, host and home) like transnational communities into a global space.

In Europe, postcolonial migrants, Muslims comprising a large majority, spread in all member states express their attachment to the country of settlement in terms of citizenship and rights. They also express their loyalty to the country of origin, in terms of emotions and identity. Being a Muslim minority in Europe as a way of belonging to a new “imagined global diaspora” brings a third dimension based upon a religious identification that is transnational both in essence and definition. Pnina Werbner shows how “imagining their different diasporas, local Pakistani tended to position themselves imaginatively as the heroes of global battles” and argues that “diasporas are transnational communities of co-responsibility ” (Werbner 2002). In an “imagined global diaspora” where individuals and groups and transnational communities are connected in global networks, the traditional diaspora loses its territorial bases in which home is an imagined place to express precisely “co-responsibility” without a territorial reference as “home”.

Receiving countries are driven to collaborate with home countries in order to insure the integration of Muslims and to “re-territorialise” Islam (both here and there), that is, to reject any identification with “globalised Islam” (Roy 2002), promoted by international organisations which, through images, symbols and speeches, try to create a transnational solidarity founded on a religious and/or ideological identification around Islam. What is at stake is state control over transnational actions, which, by definition, intend to bypass the state. Transnational politics reflect the changes in the perception of migration, increasingly linking the question of identity and participation to the question of security . In this perspective, this chapter attempts to show how the politics of integration is not a single state policy. I argue that cooperation among states ultimately targets the politics of integration by trying to re-territorialise globalised identities. Thus, transnational politics of both communities and states creates a new configuration of the nation and nationalism and territory and power within globalisation. Communities, based upon cultural, ethnic, religious identifications , and recognised as such by states that increasingly rely on transnational solidarity , have sparked new upsurges of nationalism, accompanied by new forms of subjectivity which claim to be non-territorial. States, on the other hand, expand their nationalism in order to maintain the “power” of incorporation and citizenship, while expanding their influence beyond their territories, and compete with transnational communities in their engagement in the process of globalisation.

2 Transnationalism “En Œuvre”

“Transnational labor migration has now become a major structural feature of communities which have become truly transnational” (Kearney 1995). This observation is certified by the flourishing literature in social sciences with regard to studies on the settlement of the postcolonial immigrants and their social organisation, as well as their economic and political participation. What is meant by transnational community is a community structured by individuals or groups settled in different national societies, sharing common references—territorial, religious, linguistic—and expressing common interest beyond boundaries. Migrants or minorities or ethnic groups rely on a sense of belonging to a unity through transnational networks in order to consolidate their solidarity beyond territorial settings, which provides all the content to the term diaspora—that is, unity within dispersion.

The emergence of transnational communities is a “global phenomenon” and mainly concerns postcolonial migration. Immigrants are involved in structuring networks based upon economic interests , cultural exchanges, social relations and political mobilisations . Their action is de-territorialised. Transnational communities are thus considered as a new type of migrants’ experience. Obviously, migrants have always been de facto—at least for one generation or two—in more than one setting, maintaining ties with a real or “imagined community” to quote Anderson (in reference to home), that is, their nation-state of origin. Through new means of communication and their influence on institutions and national and international policies, transnational actors are also at the centre of networks through which knowledge and power circulate—knowledge about other cultures and institutional structures—and the power to act beyond territorial boundaries. An increasing mobility and the development of communication has contributed to intensify such transborder relations and even to create a transnational space of economic, cultural and political participation.

The emergence of transnational communities appears as a logical next step to cultural pluralism and to identity politics. The liberalism which favours ethnic pluralism has privileged the cultural activities that are guided by the association of immigrants, at the heart of which lie re-appropriated, organised and re-defined identities, to place them before the state (Kastoryano 1994). They have also acquired a political legitimacy in the countries of immigration that re-define these forms of solidarity and attempt to institutionalise their links with the country of origin. Thus, a transnational form of participation allows the immigrant populations to bypass national policies and generates a new space of socialisation for those involved in building networks beyond national borders, interacting with each other in a new global space where the cultural and political specifics of national societies (both host and home) are combined with emerging multilevel and multinational activities.

Transnationalism leads to a new imagined community that goes against the unified community brought together around the same territorialised political project. This new community is imagined upon the basis of a religion or an ethnicity that encompasses linguistic and national differences and breaks away from the territorialised nationalist project to assert itself beyond national borders, without geographical limits, as a de-territorialised nation in search of an inclusive (and exclusive) centre, around an identity or an experience constructed out of immigration, dispersion and a minority situation that aims to achieve legitimacy and recognition not only from states but also from supranational or international institutions. This quest generates “a permanent tension between the idea of the state as a source of absolute power and the reality of the state as something limited from beyond”.¹ These tensions crystallise around the issue of minority nationalisms, be they national, territorial, ethnic or religious.

Recent studies in the United States have developed other concepts such as that of “pan-ethnicity”. According to its author, Yen Le Espiritu, this concept underlines “the generalisation of solidarity among ethnic subgroups”.² He is referring, in particular, to the Asian population established in the United States, a population that is internally diverse in terms of nationality , language and even religion. Pan-ethnic identity would thus, by definition, be a multiple identity, in which groups of various origins blend into a single group with the aim of building a political unity that draws its legitimacy from its institutions and asserts its self-determination upon the basis of “race ”.³ Other times, other “races ”, but the issue remains the same. Like black nationalism, analysed as an innovative policy developing new paradigms to understand the history of racial and ethnic relations in the United States, pan-ethnicity is hailed, by its author, to be the future of ethnicity , in which the group’s internal diversity will be bound together by identity-based and institutional links, thus giving rise to new dynamics.⁴

In Europe, Islam, the common denominator for much of the postcolonial immigrant population, leads to similar interpretations, that is, an encompassing identity that transcends national, linguistic and ethnic, even religious (the brotherhoods) and political differences . Pan-Islam, pan-religiosity or the umma as a basis of a narrative of belonging to a global Muslim community, which is reinterpreted in such a way as to reframe all the internal diversity into an “imagined transnational community”, or an imagined global community, or even an imagined global nation that defines itself as a cultural nation, gives rise to a form of nationalism which can be viewed more as cultural nationalism than as ideological or state nationalism (Gans 2003).⁵ Such nationalism would be based upon a sense of belonging to a culture that sees itself as being “uprooted”, which leads to a re-defining of itself in a new environment. Its adaptation or resistance as well as its radicalisation lends it a new scope and a new content in which nationalities, ethnicities and religion are blended, thereby cultivating a culture which presents itself as “different” from both the environment and the developing unifying discourses about the experience of “being Muslim in Europe”.

Thus, for Muslim populations fragmented from within by various home and host national identities and denominations, Islam represents a unifying identity, a way of asserting a collective interest and a way of structuring a transnational community which transcends the boundaries of the EU member states. The internal diversity of the Muslim population in Europe is “re-centred” in two ways: (1) around norms and values diffused by European supranational institutions and their normativity in terms of the fight against racism and discrimination, via an inclusive discourse elaborated by transnational activists founded on human rights and equal citizenship.⁶ The same internal diversity is also “re-centred” (2) around a common identity element, to wit, religion, which is transnational both in essence and de facto. The process is promoted by international organisations which re-activate the religious loyalty of Muslim populations residing in different European countries. Their strategies seem contradictory with the strategy of countries of origin, which hope to re-nationalise or re-territorialise the identification of the Muslims. Emphasising and diffusing the debate about the current issues involving Muslims, such as the Rushdie affair or the headscarf affair, or, more broadly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , Islam has become a “refuge”, a source of identification with causes “agitating the world” both at local and at transnational levels, even at global level, all the more so since mobilisation around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has rallied not only Islamist and religious associations but also the most secular Muslim organisations, as well as other political groups that have been won over to their cause. This opening up to the “universal” lends greater legitimacy to the “identity-based re-centralisation” around Islam.

Such an “identity-based re-centralisation process” is expressed both on an everyday basis and in long-term political goals; it is developed in different domains and territories—real or symbolic—trying to re-establish social relations and a common identification . It is a more abstract identification with an “imagined global community”, fuelled by outside events such as wars, conflicts that take place “elsewhere”, actions that convert old grievances into new aspirations, colonial relations yielding to a quest for, and an expression of, local and transnational autonomy. This identification can be seen in the violence perpetrated in the name of a cause that directly or indirectly affects an Islam which is perceived as a “global victim”, an image that is reinforced by the rhetoric of humiliation and domination by the West propounded by its militants. The spiralling of violence in the Middle East, 9/11 (11 September 2001) attacks, and the war in Iraq all serve as many international events that have contributed to producing both heroes and victims among the young, influencing their way of dressing, their speech and their action as a sort of de-territorialised revenge that is nevertheless localised in urban areas. Violence also allows a form of territorialised and ethicised collective expression to develop, re-centring the diversity of the de-localised population around new subjectivities nourished by unifying discourses that seek to re-define solidarity and build a coherent whole.⁷ These references produce an identity that is not linked to the immediate space but to a non-territorial community, which becomes a refuge for a young generation that is looking for a cause and identification in action. The process gives rise to the formation of a transnational identity as an inspiration for political action and as an instrument for cultural and religious purposes beyond national borders.

I have argued elsewhere that cultural, ethnic and religious communities recognised as such by states that increasingly rely on transnational solidarity have sparked new upsurges of nationalism, a transnational nationalism (Kastoryano 2007). This translates as the transnationalisation of community sentiment (whatever its content may be) or the communitarisation of networks of transnational solidarity accompanied by new forms of subjectivity . The territorial boundaries of these communities are not disputed; on the contrary, their non-territorial boundaries follow formal and/or informal network connections that transcend the territorial limits of states and nations, thus creating a new form of territorialisation—invisible and unbounded—and, consequently, a form of political community within which individual actions become the basis for a form of non-territorial nationalism that seeks to strengthen itself through speeches, symbols, images and objects. These communities are guided by a de-territorialised “imagined geography”, in which the rhetoric of the umma, or global Muslim community, nourishes and gives rise to a form of transnational nationalism , or a type of nationalism without territory that should be conceived as a new historical stage in nationalism, by developing, in particular, a unifying narrative around current issues. As a matter of fact, they are drawn into a single narrative of belonging to the “reimagined” worldwide Muslim community in which national, religious and worldly attachments are all jumbled together. The narrative that combines ideology and tradition serves to generate identification among young Muslim populations with a re-constructed history and a contemporary experience (Kastoryano forthcoming).

It is not only via immigration that Islam contributes local and non-local elements of identification . And it is not only Islam that develops non-territorial modes of belonging . Non-territoriality is part of a globalisation process which, more generally, affects religions on the whole, perhaps Islam more particularly. This may be the result of the politicisation of Islam since the 1980s, expressed in various ways throughout the world. In fact, even in countries where Islam is the majority religion, where attachments are highly territorialised, discourses exceeding national limits are developed in a similar fashion. The rhetoric surrounding both territorialised and non-territorialised Islam seems to be the basis for a liberation movement or a new national emancipation movement, with a semblance of an identification with a new entity. A form of nationalism arises when they mobilise beyond national borders, and this phenomenon reinforces the interdependency between internal political developments and the involvement of transnational actors in the international political system.

A transnational nationalism —a non-territorial nationalism—differs from “long-distance nationalism” as elaborated by Benedict Anderson and from diaspora nationalism that Ernest Gellner qualifies as “historical fact” and considers as a subspecies of nationalism. Long-distance nationalism is analysed as a new type of nationalism generated by the development of capitalism .⁸ Gellner sees diaspora nationalism as the result of a social transformation, a cultural renaissance and a desire of this minority to acquire a territory (Gellner 1983, pp. 88–110). For Anderson , the development of emigration, the evolution of means of communication, the new industrial civilisation and the ensuing social and geographical mobility have all raised consciousnesses and led to an identity-based withdrawal which has fuelled nationalist claims to the effect that repressed ethnic identities should take the form of ethnicity -based nation -states (Anderson 1998).⁹ In their own definition of a similar concept, Nina Glick -Schiller and Georges Eugen Fouron suggest that long-distance nationalism is re-configuring the way in which many people understand the relationship between populations and the states that claim to represent them. According to these authors, the political agenda associated with this type of nationalism relates to “the vision of the nation as extending beyond the territorial boundaries of the state frequently springs from the life experiences of migrants of different classes , whose lives stretch across borders to connect homeland and new land ” (Glick Schiller and Eugen Fouron 2001). This is reminiscent of the projects of re-construction of nation -states elaborated in exile that Benedict Anderson also mentions. Both are projects that are territory-based with self -determination or the re-definition of the nationalist foundation for the building of the state. Transnational nationalism , or nationalism without territory, I argue, appears to be the result of a historical evolution a priori linked to what has become a global market, to the emergence of a so-called global space and the rising influence of supranational institutions, in short, to changes related to what is known as the process of globalisation.

3 Transnational Politics: “Bringing the State Back in”

The title of the book by Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back in (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Transnational solidarity and a non-territorial sense of nationhood finds an echo among states paradoxical as this may seem. Home states rely on transnational solidarities—territorial as well as non-territorial—in order to foster what is called “diaspora politics”—an extension of sovereignty and loyalty . An important number of transnational actors collaborate with them in these perspectives. In some cases, they have become “private ambassadors”, in charge of rebuilding a link between statehood, nationhood and peoplehood, with regard to both countries. Some leaders of voluntary associations are “ethnic entrepreneurs” or elected representatives in the parliaments in the country of settlement and of citizenship. By acting in two political spaces, they also contribute to the development of a new diplomacy and to the re-configuration of a new diplomatic space. Many cases show processes established by different countries such as China, India, Brazil and Mexico. They all participate in the social, cultural, political and economic life of their countries of settlement, simultaneously express a permanent loyalty to the home country, and manifest their integration in their country of settlement. Their involvement in “diaspora politics” becomes a way of maintaining a citizenship that is nevertheless extra-territorial and a nationhood that is de-territorialised.

Europe is facing the identification with “globalised Islam” of a small fragment of the Muslim population, categorised by Robert Leikin as “Angry Muslims ” (Leiken 2012). Turkey and Morocco , where national and religious identities are combined, are the most active in such transnational politics with regard to Muslims in Europe. The main objective is to oppose the strategy of international organisations that promote “global Islam” by re-territorialising and re-nationalising their belonging , expressed in terms of religion and in control of their citizenry and loyalty abroad as a resource for the transnationalisation of their state. Dual citizenship applied almost in all states institutionalises transnationalism, where the country of origin becomes a source of identity, and the country of settlement a source of right, leading to a confusion between rights and identity, culture and politics, states and nations.

Morocco and Turkey have the most important numbers of migrants, the most diffused throughout Europe.¹⁰ Turkey, a country with no colonial ties with any European country, has its citizens settled in almost all the countries of Europe. Morocco’s historical ties with France brought migrants first to France and to Belgium (based upon linguistic affinity), and thereafter its migrants followed the economic opportunities that opened the way to their migration throughout Europe.

Both countries, Turkey and Morocco , have special relationships with the European Union. Turkey is officially a candidate country, and Morocco has been associated to the Union since the year 2000, as part of the neighbouring policy of the Union with an “advanced status”, that is, with a high level of cooperation. Turkey’s relationship with the European Union is a long and tumultuous story that goes back to 1961, when Turkey asked to be associated with the European Community, which was accepted in 1964. Morocco and the EU have intensified their relationship since 2013, establishing a partnership for migrant flows. An agreement was also signed with Turkey in 2016 to stop the flow of refugees .

Both Turkey and Morocco have created specific ministries for immigration and integration for their “citizens abroad”. Their objective is to bring their citizens abroad “back” to their national identity , that is, to “a national Islam”, as opposed to the “global Islam” promoted by international organisations (Tozy 2009). For Morocco , for example, events like the terrorist attacks in Madrid in March 2004, in which five out of the seven jihadists who blew themselves up were Moroccans, and the assassination of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch film director, by a Moroccan young man in Amsterdam the same year, shook the state authorities . Such actions have been interpreted as the result of the difficulties that the young generations of immigrants experience in integrating into different European countries. Thus, all initiatives coming from the home state had the objective of insuring the integration of their migrants in their countries of settlement, in order to prevent the younger generation from being drawn to radicalisation spread by the Internet. What is at stake is the image of Morocco in international public opinion. It has thus become important for the Moroccan authorities to stress the difference between the understanding of Islam that migrants are developing abroad, which is leading them to violence—because of the influence of international organisations and their influence in the promotion of a “global Islam”—and the traditional , nationalist Islam promoted by home states and nations (Mohsen-Finan 2005). From national Islam to transnational Islam, Morocco has recently opened Koranic schools in Morocco for all European Muslims in order to counter radical mosques active in the countries of settlement.

Turkey’s motivations, on the other hand, were to combine a national identity abroad with “global Islam”, with Turkey wanting to be its protector. The strategy accompanies Turkey’s ambition to become a regional power and to control “global Islam” as a sign of the globalisation of the state. With regard to migration from Turkey as such, the extension of nationalism beyond borders arose, in the 1970s, from the Turkish state’s intervention in immigration by means of bilateral agreements. In the 1980s, the then secular Turkish state explicitly introduced religion as an element of national identification and institutionalised it under the auspices of the consular network abroad (Kastoryano 2013). This development contributes to re-defining Turkish nationalism both outside and inside its borders, since, for Turkey, it is “impossible to dissociate the Turks in Germany from Turkey”.

The new political actors emerging from migration, most of the time leaders of voluntary associations, have replaced left-wing or right-wing, military or revolutionary, religious or ethnic organisations rooted in Turkey and conveyed into “exile”, which were oriented towards Turkey. They have organised their interests and their identities, be they social, cultural, ethic or political, around associations created, in most cases, with the support of the host country in the name of a democracy that was by now anxious to recognise difference (s). With the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi—the Justice and Development Party) in power, the religious leaders (imams) who were officially sent to Europe within the framework of religious affairs, once they had established themselves in a European country, united the brotherhoods, which were illegal in Turkey, but active in Europe, with a power of conviction and strength of mobilisation greater than in Turkey, creating a convergence in which to frame the “Turkish Islam abroad”, albeit in collaboration with Muslim organisations established in Europe as religious representations of the country. Their modes of organisation, mobilisation and participation reflect multiple belongings , both as migrants in Europe and at home in Turkey. The refinement of the commercial, familial and organisational (based upon regional identities and/or political ideologies) networks by introducing Turkey into Europe draws the subtle borders of a transnational community. Islam has gained a foundation of legitimacy in politics within political frameworks for identity enforced in the countries of immigration which have been the basis of a solidarity that reaches from the local to the transnational.

What is at stake here is the importance of an electorate resource in which religious identification freed from the perceived oppression of secularism has always been expressed abroad. Secularism , for example, as a part of nationalism, which, until recently, was considered “natural”, is being replaced by the growing influence of Islamic streams of thought or factions on political life abroad and home. This is woven into the political projects and shows how the very understanding of nationalism undergoes changes in Germany. Islam has gained a legitimacy in politics within the framework of “identity politics” enforced in countries of settlement, which has provided the basis for a solidarity beyond borders, relating the home country to that of the host. Once transposed into the country of origin, such identities, which, in most cases, arose out of the relationship with the state of the country of immigration, give a new meaning to nationalism by drawing the state of origin into the same process of transnationalising nationalism.

In the last decade, Turkey’s aspirations in the Middle East and the Muslim world have led its president to develop a rhetoric for the protection of all Muslims as “minorities” in Europe, justified by the fight against exclusion and “Islamophobia ”. In this way, the Turkish president is linking a nationalistic perspective and Islam, a de-territorialised Turkish Islam and a non-territorial “global Islam” that coexist in the fight against exclusion , discrimination and Islamophobia . This has led its president to declare “integration” a sin, on the one hand, while supporting dual citizenship for better integration, on the other. The latest tensions between the Turkish political class and European countries caused by the importance of votes abroad for the Turkish constitutional referendum of 2017 is the best example that illustrates the use of national interest and the rhetoric of the “protection of Islam from increasing populism that targets Islam”, in the words of President Erdoğan .

Countries of settlement, on the other hand, try to integrate Islam into their existing institutional structures for equal representation along with other religions. In France, for example, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy succeeded in creating a French Council of the Muslim Faith (Conseil Français du Culte Musulman) in 2003 which elected its first national representative. This process clearly aims to organise a transition from Islam in France to an Islam of France, from the simple presence of Muslims and their visible practices on French space, to an Islam which will express itself and grow within the framework of national institutions. The latter assumes its liberation from foreign influences , especially those of the homeland, with the idea of “nationalising” Islam and making it a “French Islam”. Belgium and the Netherlands integrated Islam into the religious “pillarisation” of their respective countries very early on. Germany created the Deutsche Islam Konference in 2006, involving federal, regional and local authorities along with the slogan of “German Muslims” as a way of considering Islam as a part of the religious pluralism in Germany and of controlling extremist activities. Spain launched a petition for Islam to be officially recognised alongside Protestantism and Judaism in 1989.

Each country assumed that, by institutionalising Islam in order to nationalise the new religion established on their territory, it would liberate it from foreign influences as well as those of their homeland. Despite their strategy, the new trend for states is now to be jointly involved in the process of the integration of migrants, in both home and host countries. Whatever the ideology and objective in the understanding of integration, states, however, are confronted with the transnational actions of the activists who try to bypass both home and host states in order to reach a global perspective of their mobilisation . For transnational actors, any action beyond borders becomes a political tool which leads them to act from “outside”. For states, transnationalism is a way of including identity issues developed in a minority situation into their political strategy and thus of “re-territorialising” them in the home or/and host country. In both cases, it is a matter of maintaining or even of encouraging the multiple loyalties of transnational actors on their respective national territories.

For the country of origin, the extension of state action beyond boundaries makes the question of integration a transnational issue of having its “citizens abroad” integrated both here and there. It becomes a way for states to integrate their politics on identity and influence into the process of globalisation by transnationalising, in ways that combine national—territorial references—and “global Islam”. This involves states behaving as transnational actors in permanent interaction within a global de-territorialised space or encountering the cultural and political specifics of national associations with multinational activities. It entails a mode of integration performed by states in the process of globalisation.

After the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001, states changed their transnational strategies of integration. From the perspective of nation -states, transnational means cooperation in the domain of security , in the form of border controls, common politics of immigration and visa politics. The objective then is to counter non-territorial solidarity expressed in global religious terms, which often follow any extremist interpretation of Islam diffused by the Internet, which attracts the young generation, urging them to reject any or all national identification , to develop a new “ethnic” pride, a sense of community whose attributes are drawn out of a radical interpretation of Islam, its values and power to mobilise, essentially creating the foundations of a “moral identity”, as a basis of a global identification .

4 Territory, Identity and Globalisation

The transnational activities of states and non-state actors reveal competitions between the territorial and the non-territorial forces in globalisation. The extension of state nationalism along with an extra-territorial citizenship as translated by diaspora politics confronts a non-territorial, transnational nationalism . Such a confrontation that opposes the global community—imagined as umma in the case of Muslims—that rejects citizenship and territorial attachment and the diaspora politics of their home states with their strategies of transnational politics of integration create confusion in the use of space and power in globalisation. However, they try to develop solidarity , to influence identity expression and mobilisation beyond national boundaries and respond to a nationalism that is extra-territorial as a reaction to a nationalism that is de-territorialised.

But while the diaspora politics of states aims at re-territorialising allegiances, identities and citizenship, transnational actors promoting loyalty to an “imagined global diaspora” use discourses, speeches and symbols to create a new territorialisation, one that is unbound. Thus, the reality of the diaspora politics confronts the strength of discourses about a global identification . They both refer to dispersion and solidarity beyond the borders of groups and individuals who share common references. But they have a different understanding of geography, of the state and of nationhood: territorially bounded spaces for diasporas and an “imagined geography” that is de-territorialised and de-nationalised for a global diaspora imagined as a global nation.

Indeed, diasporas refer to territories that are ancestral, mythical. At the source of the concept of diaspora lies the dispersion of a people (Stéphane Dufoix).¹¹ Initially used in reference to the ethno-religious-motivated departure of Jews “in exile”,¹² the concept of diaspora has been applied to all “victim” populations who have suffered expulsion, persecution and forced migration for religious, political and economic reasons. For William Safran, the dispersion originates in a centre—an ancestral land or place or origin, a homeland. Diasporisation operates when the population in question feels excluded from their surrounding society. Retaining the memory of the centre—now idealised and mythologised—it makes plans to return there (William Safran 1991). Its goal is to construct a state on the ancestral land as a “retrieval” of its history and the “restoration” of its territory before its exodus. The plan is thus a re-territorialisation of the reunified nation after dispersion.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the same phenomenon gave way to the concept of “diaspora nationalism” which Ernest Gellner qualifies as a “historical event” and considers a subspecies of nationalism, as mentioned above. Here, a group that has been perceived as a minority due to its religion or language is as a consequence, excluded from state nationalism and bureaucracy. This is the group of urban, educated “foreigners” who have no political power, but who nonetheless enjoy an economic power and mobility which they use to fund nationalist activities (Gellner 1983). The classical examples refer to the experience of Central European Jews and Zionism, a mobilisation by Jews in various countries, their organisation and cross-border activities to create a territorialised state and endow it with legitimacy in the international system. This has led J.A. Armstrong to develop the concept of “mobilised diaspora” supporting the example of Jews as the “archetype” of diasporas. The literature attributes to Armenians, Chinese and Indians living outside their national territories, a status of diaspora historically comparable to that of the Jews . For Armstrong , however, this constitutes a “diaspora of situation ” (Armstrong 1976). Indians in Africa and other places overseas and Chinese dispersed throughout Asia were also mobilised to protest for the rights which they were denied, but their mobilisation had no nationalist perspective; instead, these situations involved interest groups trying to pressure the local authorities (Seton-Watson 1977).¹³ In the case of the Armenian diaspora, as in the Jewish case, a “long-distance ” nationalist mobilisation targeted a re-territorialisation based upon a return to the “sacred land”. This had limited results, due to internal splits in the nationalist movement and the fact that diaspora nationalism had taken the historical “recognition ” of their exile as a demand. Diaspora nationalism is thus interpreted as a territorialisation or a re-territorialisation .

Diaspora politics aims to re-territorialise the imagined de-territorialised nation, bringing the territorial and state nationalism back in. Diaspora politics becomes transnational when states of origin interact not only with its emigrated population through its consular networks and other institutions and organisations in order to propagate the nation’s official nationalism but also with receiving states in order to re-territorialise transnational nations.¹⁴ The home state appoints official state-to-state interlocutors and attributes the role of intermediary to political actors of immigrant stock. These actors provide the link between public and private spaces, as well as economic, social, cultural and political spaces through the various familial, commercial and organisational networks in both Europe and the country of origin. The state of origin thus takes part in defining or creating a diaspora, even in identifying its citizens with a diasporic identity.

If diasporas generate “long-distance nationalism”, the idea of belonging to a global community that goes beyond any territorial reference creates new senses of identity based upon discourses on a unified global community that refer to a new “imagined geography that is de-territorialised and de-nationalised”. It defines itself as a movement seeking a “new centre”, where solidarity follows the networks which create a new understanding of a political community that is invisible and unbound, one which tries to consolidate through discourses, symbols, images and objects that circulate along the real and virtual networks, that is to say, those on the Internet which have become the new space for power, influence and mobilisation .

States are brought in to re-territorialise their diaspora that has joined a broader imagined global diaspora based upon the identification of individuals with multiple identity references to a unified nation justified by common experiences—of immigration, of exile—and a discourse on generalised “humiliation”, generating a “we” that is de-nationalised and de-territorialised, and finds a basis not only in diasporas but in Muslim national societies as well. Therein lies all the ambiguity of the rhetoric, a “strategic ambiguity”¹⁵ that expresses a global vision and leaves the field open to local interpretations. Here, too, the interdependency between territorial and non-territorial issues is clear in these wars now fed by globalising rhetoric and transnational forms of solidarity .

Diasporas reflect a conception of the nation as a group unified from the start around a single ideal, drawing on symbols of the same past and projecting itself into the future with the same myths. With an imagined global nation—that is, transnational—the idea of nation is caught up in the dynamics of the interactions between the states of emigration and immigration that reveal all the heterogeneity of the population that composes it. In other words, the desire for reunification around a common project in diaspora is replaced by the quest for recognition and legitimacy by states and supranational institutions in the transnational community. This evolution, it is true, is the result of mobilisation and participation in several different national spaces and denser relations between the country of origin and the host country, but it is also the result of the emergence of organisations that are themselves transnational or formed around an identity that seeks to define itself through action, by circulating ideas, norms and demands for recognition in different political spaces. Such is the work of the new actors born of immigration, transnationals themselves, demonstrating their integration in their new country and able to deal with the codes of both political spaces.

Diasporas refer to a minority situation—sometimes to a minority status according to the recognition of differences and their legalisation on the part of states. Minorities rely on dual paradoxical, yet complementary, logics: fights for equality take place within national institutions and the assertion of a collective identity expresses a loyalty to the ancestral homeland. A political community imagined as an umma does not recognise itself as a minority, but re-centres all national diversities that characterise such a community, to develop an active identity according to a single exclusivist narrative based upon resistance. Such a community is sustained by the desire to belong to a “people” through a process of nominal appropriation of its actions and discourses, a sense of participation in its “destiny”. This gives birth to new subjectivities along with the imagined geography in which territorial frontiers are not disputed. On the contrary, its non-territorial borders follow the web of networks—formal and/or informal—which transcend the boundaries of state and national territories, engendering a new means of territorialisation—invisible and unenclosed.

Diasporas refer to multiple loyalties: to the homeland, to the country of settlement of citizenship and to the dispersed community (Brubaker 1996). The loyalty to the homeland ethnicises the diasporic identity and provides the emotional element of identification , and the country of citizenship provides the rights and the territorial basis for action. The umma , however, relies on a narrative that claims a single identification and loyalty to an “imagined community” constructed out of speeches and images that attract the young generation born in diaspora, for whom the country of origin of their parents does not have the same meaning as for the first generation; on the contrary, it is an imaginary and abstract reference. The homeland does not produce an identification neither does it constitute a basis for loyalty and belonging . In the same way, religious traditions—often related to a national identity —do not have the same strength and meaning as for their parents. They affirm to develop a new “modern” Islam, based upon knowledge, away from their parents’ soft, traditional Islam, based, according to them, upon “ignorance”. The experience of the diaspora along with mobilisation around a more radical Islam for some young generations brings new dynamics in the representation of the self , the representation of traditions, that mark the passage from the religion of a majority to a religion of a migrant minority. As Pnina Werbner underlines with regard to the British Muslims:

a part of British diaspora found its ‘cause’, and has appropriated a politicised Muslim identity, elaborated around justice and equality have developed a sense of ‘co-responsibility’ with the Muslim world in general in order to consolidate their diasporic solidarity . (Werbner 1996)

The representation of umma is not specific to dispersed population. National territories like diasporic spaces are part of the imagined political/moral community that umma represents. New actors, not necessarily born in a diaspora, present themselves as protectors of such a global identity and act in countries of immigration as well as in their countries of origin or other sites recognised as “the land of Islam” preaching radicalism . The discourses on the umma , where territorial and non-territorial Islam coexist, draw new boundaries based upon resistance, and radicalisation , where nationalities, ethnicities and religion are all mingled, and constitute a new source for mobilisation in the name of jihad. Reflecting to the states their “deficiency” in human rights, or citizenship as a foundation of democratic equality , the actors seek to channel the loyalty of individuals in the territorialised political community towards a non-territorialised political community, thus re-defining the terms of belonging and allegiance to a “global nation”. This global nation finds a basis in the rhetoric of unity diffused on the web producing a single langage—images—or a single langue—English as a language of participation of Internet sites and email exchange (Roy 2002).

5 Conclusions

Territory is at the core or transnational politics. It is also a source of ambiguity in the representation of the umma . So is the question of sovereignty and power. Diasporas acknowledge the territorial sovereignty of states—home and host—as diaspora politics shows. Discourses and narratives on belonging to the umma preach the re-establishment of the Khalifat in order to define a space ruled by the Shariat —the Islamic rule. When a faction of al-Qaeda took control of an area the size of the UK on the border between Syria and Iraq, and proclaimed itself to be the “Islamic State” (IS) and named a caliph, it had no legitimacy in the eyes of international law or the nations concerned. Yet, it confirmed the essential role of territory within the tactics of war and an expansionist strategy. As paradoxical as it is, an imagined geography without borders looks for legitimacy upon a territorial basis that gives it the power of agency. The areas seized serve to attract not only the young Muslim diaspora but also others from Europe, the Caucasus and Asia, coming together with local tribes to form an “army”. These young people, regardless of their national origin, see themselves as mobilising for the caliphate. They have made it their “homeland”, the homeland of an “imagined global diaspora”. Irrespective of whether they are organised in groups or networks, local or global, regardless of whether they act individually or in a collectively organised way, their identification —be it individual and/or collective—with the umma seems to find grounds in this “global diasporic” dispersion.

Hence, a paradox again: diasporas often raise the vision of a re-territorialisation , “restoration” or “recovery” of a real or mythical territory, yet still sovereign. The discourse that underlies the idea of transforming the umma into an “imagined global diaspora” relies on its members finding unity based upon overlapping identities (national, regional, religious, linguistic). It also relies on shared experiences (colonisation, exile or emigration). Furthermore, it relies on constant references to a denationalised and de-territorialised “we” that establishes itself within the conceptions of the diaspora and the nation.

If diasporas encourage a sort of “nationalism” that is abstract yet anchored in a physical territory, the umma generates new impulses based upon the transnational communities and networks that seek to consolidate themselves through the strength of a single narrative fed by symbols, images and objects.

These reflect the paradox of globalisation. If space replaces territory, it re-localises extra-territorial references and re-defines identity boundaries with new inclusions and exclusions . The expansion of state sovereignty beyond its borders generates a new power relationship between the mobility of individuals and the capacity of states to control individuals in movement within and without their borders.