ABSTRACT
Habermas’ theory of communicative action (1984, 1987) is a seldom found reference in migration studies, let alone in transnational studies. Transnationalism is a relatively recent but fairly well established strand of research focusing on the ties and practices that migrants maintain beyond the borders of their settlement country, including with their origin country. My own research focused on remittances and the development projects that migrant groups undertake for the benefit of their place of origin. Hometown organisations are a widespread form of organising among immigrants all around the world. Their primary function is to provide support to hometowners in their place of arrival. A flurry of recent works document the developmentalist turn of these collectives. While philanthropic initiatives are nothing new (Fujianese living abroad were already paving the roads of Fujian in the nineteenth century; Italians living in France were refurbishing the churches of Lombardy after the First World War . . .) one observes a marked increase in development initiatives among different immigrant groups in the world since the early nineties. Irrigation systems have been set up in the Kayes region of Mali, water systems in Zacatecas (Mexico), crematoriums in Cameroon, villages have been electrified in Morocco . . . thanks to the support of expatriates. Countless examples of such initiatives have been recorded throughout the world. The first aim of my work is to uncover the reason why one observes such a development at roughly the same period among groups that have no relation whatsoever.1 However, this mobilisation is not a universal phenomenon and some groups may be more involved than others, even though they may share relatively similar characteristics. The three investigated case studies, Indian Punjabis in the UK on the one hand, Moroccan and Algerian Berbers in France on the other, clearly display outstanding discrepancies. A survey of Punjabi villages showed that emigrants donated 296 million dollars to charitable and development projects between 2005 and 2010 (Chanda and Ghosh, 2013). Likewise, Southern Morocco attracts the bulk of collective remittances in Morocco (Lacroix and Dumont, 2015). The area has been entirely electrified thanks to hometown organisations and NGOs between 1995 and 2005. Conversely, evidence shows that Kabylia, the largest emigration area in Algeria, has not enjoyed a similar
remittance-supported development dynamics. This observation provides the second question that has driven my research: why do some groups choose to engage in such long distance, time-consuming and costly endeavours while others do not? With this in mind, I have adapted Habermas’ theory for the study of a distinctive form of social group: those who share their lives between several countries. The second part of this chapter unfolds a structure agency approach I forged for this purpose. The theory of communicative action provides the possibility to think of these transnational engagements as a communicative behaviour through which actors express and give meaning to the multiplicity of their social embedding. This theory is associated with three other conceptual packages: Heidegger’s Dasein (Heidegger, 2008); a conception of social actors as a bundle of identities (Lahire, 1998) and associated roles (Mead, 1967); a concept of social institutions structuring the deliberative process that makes communicative action possible. In the third part, methodological and analytical implications of these theoretical considerations will be presented. The conclusion comes back to Habermas’ theory and shows how its operationalisation challenges or expands the tenets of this theory in new directions. But before addressing the different aspects of my use of Habermas, I will explain why I found his approach more appropriate than the usual ‘champions’ in this category, namely Giddens’ structuration theory and Bourdieu’s theory of practice.
