Migrants as a Pro-Democracy Lobby? Comparing Lebanon and the Dominican Republic

Migrants as a Pro-Democracy Lobby? Comparing Lebanon and the Dominican Republic

Katrina Burgess Fletcher School, Tufts University [email protected]

Prepared for delivery at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August 28-31.

PLEASE DO NOT CITE OR QUOTE WITHOUT THE AUTHOR’S PERMISSION

“In the U.S. there is another style of politics. People don’t fight with each other on the street. The candidates don’t attack each other in an offensive manner. The Dominican Republic should be more like 1 the U.S., where there is a complete democracy” (Dominican migrant who had returned from Boston). “There were a lot of changes in my understanding about Lebanon…before I didn’t know the differences between Lebanon and Australia. In Australia there is a social security system, law and order and no big man/small man. Why don’t they do this in Lebanon? You could see the bad things in Lebanon, could feel corruption in government.” (First-generation Lebanese immigrant in Australia after returning from a visit 2 to Lebanon). I mean, internally, you can jump up and down and nobody gives a shit, they’ll throw you in jail. But you get a letter of complaint from the U.S. State Department or a U.S. organization, and you get a couple of writeups in Time magazine or whatever, and suddenly they’ll take action because it’s like: “Oh my God! We’re 3 being exposed.” (First-generation Lebanese immigrant in the United States). I’ve felt the same alienation when I first visited Lebanon after moving out. It’s as if I had acquired 3D 4 glasses when everyone else was still on 2D (Lebanese immigrant commenting on a blog post).

These quotes capture the kinds of awakening that inspire some migrants to act collectively to demand change back home. Such activity is not new, but it has arguably become broader and deeper in the wake of a convergence between emigration and democratization in many developing countries. Between 1970 and 2013, the estimated number of international migrants nearly tripled from 81 million to 232 million (Castles and Miller 2009, 5; World Bank 2014, 2). Of the eighty percent of today’s migrants who come from the global South, nearly half live in the global North (UN 2013).5 In 2013, remittances to developing countries totaled over $400 billion, dwarfing official development assistance and proving considerably more stable than foreign investment (World Bank 2014, 3).

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Quoted in Levitt (2001). Quoted in Batrouney (2008). 3 Quoted in Abdelhady (2011, 109) 4 http://lebaneseexpatriate.wordpress.com/about/. 5 In the World Bank's classification, "South" refers to low- and middle-income countries, including a few located in northern latitudes, and "North" includes both OECD and non-OECD high-income countries, including a few located in southern latitudes. 2

During the same period, many developing countries joined the “third wave” of democratization (Huntington 1991), which began in southern Europe in the mid-1970s and spread to countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. By 2010, over one-third of developing countries had experienced transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule (Marshall and Jaggers 2009; World Bank 2010b). In the process, millions of people, many of whom are poor, gained the right to choose their leaders, join independent organizations, and speak their mind in public. Nonetheless, their ability to exercise these rights remains significantly compromised. The convergence between emigration and democratization has created new opportunities for migrants to exercise “voice after exit” by engaging in politics back home. This paper focuses on a particular kind of voice: long-distance lobbying of their home-country governments. Although such lobbying can occur on an individual basis, particularly if migrants have direct access to policymakers, it often requires collective action. Most migrant organizations focus on issues that affect them directly, such as the right to vote from abroad or protection against migrant abuses, but they may also lobby for domestic reforms (e.g., anti-corruption measures, language policy) or broader changes in foreign policy (e.g., contested borders, bilateral relations). Just because migrants engage in post-transition politics back home does not necessarily mean that they are acting as a pro-democracy lobby, however. As the cases of Lebanon and the Dominican Republic (DR) will show, they may reproduce the same divisions, practices, and authority relations that prevail in the homeland. This paper is part of a larger project on migrant engagement in homeland politics. My full sample includes 40 developing countries that made transitions to democracy

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between 1975 and 2006 and were characterized by the World Bank as low income (LIC), lower middle income (LMC), or upper middle income (UMC) in 2010. Using a combination of quantitative data and qualitative case studies, I examine three kinds of voice after exit: (1) electoral participation in the form of expatriate voting, party activism, or campaign financing; (2) long-distance lobbying through insider bargaining, media campaigns, street protests, and other pressure tactics; and (3) provision of public goods, either as a substitute for or in collaboration with home governments. After hypothesizing and scoring the structural conditions under which migrants are likely to exercise these kinds of voice after exit, I explore how well they map onto actual patterns of diaspora engagement.6 This paper focuses on long-distance lobbying and tests my theoretical framework in the cases of Lebanon and the Dominican Republic. Although not an obvious pair, they are small, high-migration countries that receive the two highest aggregate scores for the enabling conditions for long-distance lobbying. After providing a brief history of their emigration patterns, I develop my hypotheses about the factors that are likely to motivate and enable migrants to engage in long-distance lobbying and apply them to the Lebanese and Dominican cases. I then turn to the actual patterns of migrant advocacy in the two cases and find that they map quite well onto the enabling conditions. I conclude with a brief assessment of the implications for democracy in the two countries

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As Brubaker (2005) notes, the term “diaspora” has been stretched beyond a few cases of dispossessed peoples with strong attachments to a conceptual homeland (e.g., Jews, Armenians) to include nearly any emigrant group. Unfortunately, this conceptual stretching has become institutionalized as governments, international organizations, and the migrants themselves increasingly use this weaker version of the term. Thus, for the purposes of this paper, I use migrants, diasporas, and expatriates interchangeably.

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Emigration from Lebanon and the Dominican Republic Lebanon has been a country of emigration since the days of the Ottoman Empire. Triggered by dislocations associated with socio-economic development, the first wave began in the 1860s and was dominated by Maronite Christians. Between 1860 and 1914, over 300,000 Lebanese left what was then Mount Lebanon and Greater Syria (Abdelhady 2011, 6). High rates of emigration persisted until World War I, with up to 15,000 people leaving each year, mostly to the Americas (Abdelhady 2011; Brand 2006; Maaouia 1992; Pearlman 2014). Emigration slowed during the global recession and restrictionist turn of the interwar period, and the main destination shifted to the French colonial empire in Africa, which attracted primarily Shia Muslims after the 1920s (Pearlman 2013, 111). The second wave began in the 1940s in the context of postwar reconstruction and Lebanese independence. Although economic factors were once again the main driver, Maronite Christians were joined by growing numbers of Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholics (Melkites), Muslims, and Druzes. There was also a diversification of sending regions in Lebanon as well as the countries of destination, with significant flows to Africa and Australia in the 1950s and to the oil-producing countries of the Persian Gulf in the 1960s and 1970s (Maaouia 1992, 652). These flows continued to follow sectarian patterns, with Christians migrating primarily to the Americas, Shia Muslims to Africa, and Sunni Muslims to the Gulf states (Pearlman 2013). The character of Lebanese migration changed dramatically with the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, which unleashed the third wave. For the first time, political drivers outweighed economic ones, and the rate of departure surpassed even that of the first wave, with nearly one million people (40 percent of the population) fleeing the

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violence between 1975 and 1989 (Abdelhady 2011, 6). In the process, migrant profiles shifted once again. According to one estimate, nearly three-quarters of these migrants went to Western Europe, North America, or Australia. Although Christians continued to dominate migrant stocks in these destinations, Muslims arrived at nearly the same rate, in some cases with refugee status (Pearlman 2013, 120). In addition, there was a much higher incidence of family migration and a significant increase in the share of skilled professionals, who accounted for nearly half of all Lebanese migrants during this period (Abdelhady 2011, 6; Brand 2006, 137). Finally, this cohort was more politically active and outspoken than its predecessors (Koinova 2010, 445). Some Lebanese returned home after the war ended, but many either stayed abroad or continued to leave for primarily economic reasons, resulting in the departure of another 10 to 14 percent of the population between 1992 and 2007 (Pearlman 2013, 120). According to one estimate, six million Lebanese live outside the country, compared to only four million at home (Pearlman 2014). This number falls significantly if we limit our count to the first generation, which most sources estimate at under 700,000 (Migration Policy Centre 2013; World Bank 2010a). Although nearly half of those who left during the 1990s went to the Persian Gulf, OECD countries still account for nearly 80 percent of first-generation migrants. Within the OECD, the top five destinations are the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, and France. Mass migration from the Dominican Republic is a more recent phenomenon. Although a few affluent Dominicans left in the 1950s, the first major wave was sparked by the assassination of President Trujillo in 1961, which unleashed a period of instability that culminated in a U.S. military intervention to overthrow the leftist government of

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Juan Bosch in 1965 (Levitt 2001). Aided by the removal of strict controls on emigration and relaxed requirements for Dominicans to get U.S. visas, thousands of mostly urban and middle class Dominicans left the island to settle in New York. They included a critical mass of activists from Bosch’s Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), which was marginalized (though not explicitly banned) during the authoritarian regime of Joaquín Balaguer (1966 – 1978). Fueled by migratory networks and deepening integration with the U.S. economy, Dominican migration accelerated in the 1980s but with quite different characteristics. This second wave was dominated by low-skilled workers, first from rural areas and then from poor urban neighborhoods, who were motivated to leave primarily for economic reasons. While many of them followed their predecessors to the New York area (including New Jersey), Dominican communities also began to emerge in places like Boston, Providence, Miami, and Madrid. By 2010, nearly 800,000 Dominicans lived in the United States and another 189,000 lived in other OECD countries, primarily Spain (World Bank 2010a). These newer migrants were less likely to have been politically active back home, but they often encountered a dense network of party and civic organizations upon their arrival, particularly in New York.

Enabling Conditions for Long-Distance Lobbying The extent and nature of long-distance lobbying is likely to depend on the presence of socio-economic and political conditions that would motivate and enable such engagement. On the socio-economic front, I argue that we need to understand the socioeconomic incentives for migrants to demand change back home and the socio-economic

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resources that enable them to do so.7 These categories are related to Itzigsohn and Saucedo’s distinction between “reactive transnationalism” (2002, 771) prompted by a migrant’s negative experiences in the host country and “resource-based transnationalism” (2002, 772) made possible by the accumulation of sufficient resources for transnational engagement. Rather than treating the two pathways as mutually exclusive, however, I argue that their interaction creates the best conditions for long-distance lobbying.8 This approach is consistent with studies that find a non-linear relationship between integration and transnational engagement, whereby first-generation migrants who are wellestablished and/or upwardly mobile are the most inclined to care about politics back home (Abdelhady 2011; Guarnizo, Portes, and Haller 2003; Orozco and Rouse 2007; Portes, Escobar, and Radford 2007; Portes 2003; Tabar and Skulte-Ouaiss 2012). On the political front, I distinguish between political incentives to intervene in public affairs back home and political access to home-country policymakers and institutions. While incentives serve as catalysts for political mobilization around homecountry issues, access provides channels of communication and influence through which migrants can make demands and potentially shape policy outcomes. The particular mix of incentives and access is likely to shape the nature as well as the degree of long-distance lobbying. Unlike socio-economic resources, however, political access is not a necessary condition for long-distance lobbying, since migrants can advocate just as loudly (if not more so) from outside the formal political system. In addition, preliminary research suggests that there may be an inverse relationship between incentives and access, since a greater degree of political apathy among migrants makes it “safer” for political elites to 7

We find a similar distinction between mobilization and resources in the literature on civic engagement in democracies (see, e.g., Dalton 2013; Rosenstone and Hansen 2009; Verba, Nie, and Kim 1987). 8 As explained below, I also consider both proactive and reactive incentives for transnational engagement.

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grant them formal access and then coopt or contain the small minority who are politically active (Burgess 2014, 25).9 Drawing on a dataset that I have constructed for all 40 new democracies, I will use the cases of Lebanon and the Dominican Republic to flesh out these four enabling conditions for long-distance lobbying.10 After justifying and explaining my coding strategy for each indicator, I will present the scores for the two cases, along with thick description of their similarities and differences. Since we have far more data on OECD countries, I will limit my analysis to OECD-based migrants even though they represent barely more than half of all migrants from the global South (Ratha and Shaw 2007). Nonetheless, there are several reasons to expect a higher incidence of long-distance lobbying among OECD-based migrants. First, they tend to be wealthier and better educated, both of which are associated with higher levels of political efficacy. Second, their host countries are more likely to have political freedoms and vibrant civil societies, making it easier to organize collectively.

Socio-Economic Incentives I distinguish between loyalty-based incentives, which generate a sense of obligation and commitment toward the homeland, and status-based incentives, which privilege the homeland as an arena for reaping status gains. I argue that the most important loyalty-based incentive is the act of sending remittances. This expression of loyalty is likely to raise a migrant’s stake in conditions back home, not only because she

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It should also be acknowledged that access also shapes incentives, although not always in the same direction. It may induce mobilization by enhancing the probability of success, or it may weaken it by removing a key target of migrant demand-making. 10 This paper uses a modified version of the data and analysis in Burgess (2014).

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is concerned with the well-being of her compatriots but also because she feels entitled to have a say where her money is being spent. It is also likely to be accompanied by more frequent communication with friends and relatives, enabling the migrant to access information about conditions and political choices back home. To measure this incentive, I use the volume of remittances per OECD-based migrant (World Bank 2010a). Lebanese and Dominican migrants share strong loyalty-based incentives to engage in long-distance lobbying. The average remittance by OECD-based migrants from Lebanon was an astounding $12,927 in 2010. While this figure is most likely inflated, it nonetheless portrays the sustained commitment many Lebanese have to their homeland, along with their greater wealth compared to other immigrant groups.11 Anecdotal evidence suggests that Lebanese migrants maintain close contact with friends and relatives back home. For example, the Australian Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs recorded nearly 19,000 short-term visits home by Lebanese-born migrants in 1998-1999 (Batrouney 2008). While many of these visits are likely to have been by migrants living in non-OECD countries, where rates of circular and return migration are much higher (Pearlman 2013), narrative accounts of first-generation Lebanese living in OECD countries suggest that they also make frequent visits and communicate regularly with friends and family back home (Abdelhady 2011, 94). Dominicans also maintain close ties with relatives and friends back home, as indicated by their per-migrant remittances of $3,318 in 2010. Although they do not send as much money home as their Lebanese counterparts, they maintain equally strong and sustained connections with their communities of origin. According to a 2003-2004 survey 11

Aside from the possibility that first-generation migrants may have been undercounted, other reasons for such inflation could be (1) the inclusion of remittances sent by second generation-plus Lebanese; or (2) the inclusion of other kinds of financial transfers, including campaign contributions.

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of Latin Americans living in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Chicago, and Miami, nearly 70 percent of Dominican migrants traveled home at least once a year (Orozco et al. 2005, 16), with the highest rates among those who had lived in the United States for more than twelve years.12 In addition, 60 percent of Dominican migrants called home two or more times a week, compared to an average of only 29 percent across the entire sample of eleven countries (Orozco et al. 2005, 19). I also identify two status-based incentives for long-distance lobbying. One is gender. Numerous studies find that male migrants are more likely to be politically active in their communities of origin, whereas women tend to focus their energies on building a new life in the host country (see, e.g., Abdelhady 2011; Goldring 2001; Guarnizo, Portes, and Haller 2003; Itzigsohn and Saucedo 2002; Jones-Correa 1998; Kandel and Massey 2001; Kibria 1993; Levitt 2001; Pessar and Mahler 2003; Tabar and Skulte-Ouaiss 2012; Wampler, Chávez, and Genova 2009).13 Women are by no means absent from the diaspora channel, but they tend to reap fewer status gains through transnational engagement and to face greater obstacles to entering the public sphere back home.14 Thus, my measure for this indicator is the male share of OECD-based migrants (OECD 2005). A significantly higher share of Lebanese migrants are male. Even with the increase in family migration during the civil war, men represented 54 percent of firstgeneration Lebanese living in the OECD in 2010. This imbalance reflects a long tradition

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Travel is made relatively easy by the nearly 12,000 flights each year between the island and North America, as well as almost 2,000 flights to and from Europe (IDAC 2012). 13 At first, these findings appear to contradict evidence that women spend a higher share of their income on remittances and maintain closer ties with home than men (see, e.g., Chant and Radcliffe 1992; Tacoli 1999; Zontini 2010). But a clearer picture emerges once we clearly distinguish between personal connections and broader forms of transnational engagement, which are more likely to have a male gender bias. 14 This is not to say that female migrants are any less susceptible to feeling excluded and marginalized in the host countries, particularly if they are undocumented.

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of male-dominated migration from Lebanon (Abdelhady 2011). Not coincidentally, Lebanese men are likely to reap greater status gains than women from long-distance lobbying. Patriarchal constructs, which permeate public life in Lebanon both informally and formally, are often replicated in the diaspora (Tabar and Skulte-Ouaiss 2012), thereby limiting opportunities for women to play leading roles. At the same time, these constructs are likely to clash with the social norms of the host countries, thereby giving men an additional reason to privilege transnational engagement. Relatedly, Abdelhady finds in her study of first-generation Lebanese immigrants in Montreal, New York, and Paris that men tend to remain connected to their homeland through participation in community events, whereas women are more likely to reproduce the feel of home within the household (2011, 95–97). Dominican men also have status-based incentives to exercise voice after exit, but they are in the minority rather than the majority. Reflecting the matrilocal structure of Dominican society, women have always migrated at a higher rate (Georges 1992, 84; Massey, Fischer, and Capoferro 2006), and this gap widened as demand for female labor grew in the developed countries, particularly Spain.15 As of 2010, men represented only 43 percent OECD-based migrants from the Dominican Republic. Several studies find that Dominican women are more inclined to settle permanently in the host country, where they enjoy higher status than back home (Guarnizo 1997; Pessar 1986). Relatedly, their organizational efforts tend to be focused on improving living conditions in their new

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Massey, Fischer, and Capoferro characterize matrifocal as a family system in which “mother and children comprise the basic family unit, into and out of which adult males come and go” (2006, 69). The female share of Dominican migrants in Spain fell from 75 percent in 1991 to 59 percent in 2007, largely because of family reunification and increased demand for male workers in the agricultural, construction, and service sectors during Spain’s pre-recession boom (Hierro 2013, 11).

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home, even while maintaining strong personal and economic ties with their community of origin. Another status-based incentive for home-country political engagement is the experience of anti-immigrant hostility in the host country. Besides creating feelings of alienation, a hostile environment can heighten bonds of solidarity and transnational identity formation among migrants from the same place, particularly if they share markers of difference relative to the native population (Massey and Sanchez R. 2010). While an admittedly rough proxy for a complex set of interactions that vary by race, ethnicity, language, and local politics, I use public opinion data from the host OECD countries to construct a weighted average of ant-immigrant sentiment in the top five destinations for each country’s migrants.16 Migrants from both countries face anti-immigrant hostility, but this incentive is arguably stronger for Dominicans. Besides being more exposed to class- and race-based discrimination, a larger share of Dominican migrants live in countries with moderate to high levels of anti-immigrant sentiment. In their primary destination, the United States, only 38 percent of the population believes that immigration is changing their country for the better (Public Religion Research Institute 2013). This share rises to 53 percent among New Yorkers, but Dominicans nonetheless experience racial and class-based segregation that reinforces social divisions and alienation, particularly among men (see, e.g., Lopez 2002). The context of reception is even less welcoming in Spain and Italy, where most

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The other weakness of this indicator is that I had to rely on different surveys from different years (European Social Survey 2002; Llewelyn and Hirano 2009; Nanos 2010; Public Religion Research Institute 2013; Vision Critical Australia 2012). Nonetheless, I was able to find relatively similar questions about the perceived impact of immigration in each host country, and the results are consistent with other studies. I am therefore fairly confident that these scores serve as a rough approximation of anti-immigrant hostility that can be used as a starting point for a deeper analysis of each case.

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other Dominican migrants live. When asked whether immigration is making their country a better or worse place to live, only 28 percent of Spaniards and 27 percent of Italians gave a positive response (European Social Survey 2002).17 Dominican migrants in Europe also face discrimination based on their lack of education and racial difference. Although a plurality of Lebanese migrants live in the United States, they are more spread out across other OECD countries. Anti-immigrant sentiment is moderately high in Australia and Germany, and quite high in France (European Social Survey 2002), but it is much lower in Canada, where we find the third largest concentration of OECD-based Lebanese. Not only do nearly two-thirds of Canadians express positive attitudes about immigrants (Nanos 2010), but the Canadian government has made an explicit commitment to multicultural policies (Abdelhady 2011). Even in less welcoming countries, Lebanese Christians enjoy the advantages of higher educational and socioeconomic status, thereby counteracting some of the anti-immigrant sentiment. For example, one scholar observes that: Even when tension in Lebanon is highest, protest by the Lebanese community in France remains quite civilized, and demonstrations by Lebanese nationals have a certain BCBG (bon chic bon genre) touch and never constitute a threat to public order. When they shout slogans, Lebanese demonstrators do so in good French, their banderoles are written in Latin scripts and show no spelling mistakes, and they are always accompanied by this or that French politician who acts as their advocate and interpreter before French public opinion (Kemp 1992, 693). Lebanese Muslims face a more challenging environment, regardless of social class, particularly since the 9/11 attacks prompted a wave of anti-Muslim backlash in the United States and Europe. 17

The European survey asked respondents to select their answer based on an 11-point scale from 10 (better) to 0 (worse). I therefore include any response of 6 or above as positive. This survey was taken when the European economies were booming, so the responses may be even more negative today. The latest round of the survey (2014) focuses on immigration, but the results had still not been published at the time of this writing.

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Socio-Economic Resources Incentives are likely to be necessary but not sufficient to elicit long-distance lobbying. Like any political actor, migrants rely on socio-economic resources to formulate their preferences, gather information, and act collectively. I distinguish between collective-based and individual-based resources. Collectively, a key variable is the geographical density of the migrant community. Besides facilitating transnational identity formation, living in close proximity to others from the same place lowers the barriers to voice after exit, particularly if migrants are concentrated in “ethnic enclaves” with community leaders who were politically active before migrating (see, e.g., Guarnizo, Portes, and Haller 2003; Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2010; Waldinger and Lim 2009). These migrants have more opportunities to form and join migrant organizations that can mobilize support for transnational initiatives. To measure this resource, I construct an index of migrant density based on a weighted average of the share of migrants across the top five country-wide OECD destinations, adjusted for the state-level concentration of U.S.-based migrants and the total number of OECD-based migrants (US Census 2011; World Bank 2010a).18 Dominicans have a strong advantage on this indicator. They are more highly concentrated both across countries and within the United States, where 45 percent of U.S.-based Dominicans live in New York state. By contrast, Lebanese migrants are widely dispersed. Not only do a significant number live in non-OECD countries, but they are also spread out within the OECD. Fewer than 20 percent live in their top destination,

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Unfortunately, the United States is the only country that provides disaggregated data.

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the United States, and even these migrants are scattered around the country, with the largest shares living in California (28 percent) and Michigan (17 percent). We still find concentrations of Lebanese in cities such as Dearborn, Michigan and Montreal, Canada, but they lack the critical mass and nationality-based enclave quality of the Dominican community in New York. Individually, two key variables are education level and duration of residence. Education not only facilitates political participation (Nie and Stehlik-Barry 1996; Rosenstone and Hansen 2009; Verba and Nie 1987), but is also critical to leadership development, since it provides the confidence and communication skills necessary to mobilize others.19 It also tends to overlap with upward mobility, even among skilled migrants who are initially underemployed (e.g., engineers driving taxis). Since migrants who have attended high school or college are more likely than those with only a primary education to possess the intellectual and economic resources to engage in long-distance lobbying, my measure for this indicator is the share of OECD-based migrants with a postprimary level of education (OECD 2005). The other individual-based resource likely to facilitate long-distance lobbying is duration of residence in the host country. Newly-arrived migrants face significant demands on their time and money while adjusting to life in their new home, particularly if they have accumulated debts to finance their journey. By contrast, migrants who have spent many years in their host country are likely to have a more stable source of income (even if still poor) and to be more well-integrated into the community, thereby gaining the leisure time and social networks necessary to participate in lobbying activities. I use 19

It should be noted that there is a debate on the precise relationship between education and political participation. See, e.g., Berinksy and Lenz (2011).

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the share of OECD-based migrants who had been in their host country for at least ten years in 2005 to measure this resource (OECD 2005). Dominican migrants are at a disadvantage on both fronts compared to their Lebanese counterparts. Only a slight majority of Dominican migrants have completed high school, compared to 73 percent of OECD-based Lebanese. The gap remains at the university level: nearly one-third of Lebanese migrants are college graduates, compared to only 12 percent of Dominicans. The Lebanese also have a slight advantage with regard to duration of residence, although both groups are well-established in their host countries. In 2005, 78 percent of Lebanese migrants had lived in their host country for at least ten years, compared to 69 percent of Dominicans. Thus, despite their higher degree of geographical density, Dominicans may be inhibited from engaging in long-distance lobbying to the same degree as their Lebanese counterparts, particularly at the national level, by their lower socio-economic status.

Political Incentives While socio-economic incentives and resources are likely to have a significant impact on whether migrants engage in long-distance lobbying, political incentives and access may be even more crucial. With regard to incentives, I distinguish between identity-based ones, which create strong attachments to factions and/or issues back home, and deficiency-based ones, which are shortcomings in home-country governance that provide targets for migrant demand-making. I identify two identity-based incentives: (1) a legacy of crisis-induced refugee flows; and (2) social cleavages in the diaspora that overlap significantly with home-country partisan divisions, which I call cleavage-based

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partisanship. Both are likely to generate strong feelings about homeland politics, as well as providing the organizational foundations for long-distance lobbying. While some refugees are so alienated from their homeland that they want nothing to do with its politics, others are highly politicized, particularly if they were politically active back home and perceive opportunities for redress under a new government or regime. In addition, refugees in developed democracies are often more likely than economic migrants to receive support from the host government and civil society, thereby facilitating collective action and solidarity. Even when decades have passed since the crisis, and people no longer emigrate primarily for political reasons, the patterns of identity formation and organization established by political refugees often shape the context of reception for new arrivals. Thus, I give a full score for refugee legacy to countries in which recent civil wars or local conflicts resulted in more than three percent of all migrants still being classified as refugees in 2010 and a partial score to countries that experienced significant refugee outflows in the past but with intervening waves of economically-motivated migration. Lebanon and the DR are both in the second group, but the conflict in Lebanon was much more violent, protracted, and recent. Heavily influenced by the Arab-Israeli conflict, the civil war was the culmination of years of simmering tensions between the politically-dominant Maronite Christians and the Muslim majority, who demanded a renegotiation of the consociational system that was still based on the 1932 census. Besides inflating the already-declining share of Christians by countring expatriates, the census had never been updated to account for demographic shifts that favored other

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groups (Pearlman 2014). As a result, Christians received a disproportionate share of political offices, even after a slight modification of the original pact in 1958 (Brand 2006). Fighting first broke out in 1975 between Palestinian and Maronite forces, but it quickly devolved into a free-for-all of violence, betrayal, and shifting domestic and international alliances that lasted until the signing of the Taif Agreement in 1989, which led to a redistribution of seats under the consociational system. The outflow of political refugees did not fully subside, however, until the 1992 elections brought a modicum of national consensus and stability, at which point economic factors once again became the main drivers (Pearlman 2014, 7). Still under Syrian occupation until April 2005, Lebanon did not make a full transition to democracy until elections held later that year. The political conflict that sparked the first wave of mass migration from the Dominican Republic in the 1960s was serious but did not lead to a civil war. Not only was the most important cleavage class rather than religion, but the challenge posed by Juan Bosch and his working-class followers was quickly contained by U.S. intervention, followed by the reimposition of authoritarian rule in 1966. Moreover, the levels of repression were significantly lower than under the South American dictatorships of the 1970s, reducing the need for reconciliation after the transition to democracy in the 1990s. Nonetheless, this episode of political explusion had a profound effect on the Dominican community in New York (Guarnizo 1998). As mentioned above, a critical mass of activists from Bosch’s Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) fled the island. When Bosch became disillusioned with the PRD and formed the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) in 1973, some of these activists defected from the PRD to establish an overseas branch of the PLD (Lieber 2010). By the time electoral competition was restored in 1978,

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both parties were firmly entrenched in the migrant community and would soon dominate the political system on the island. The second identity-based incentive is cleavage-based partisanship, which imbues political loyalties with deeper meaning and serves as a lightening rod for diaspora organization and mobilization. Even though direct participation by migrants in homecountry parties is beyond the scope of this paper, I emphasize partisanship because social cleavages are most likely to matter for long-distance lobbying when they overlap with political lines of exclusion and inclusion. Thus, I give a full score to countries in which parties are predominantly organized along ethnic, racial, religious, and/or linguistic lines and a partial score to countries in which social cleavages are important but correspond to partisan divisions in less explicit or encompassing ways. Cleavage-based partisanship is much stronger in Lebanon than in the DR. Although competition for clientelist spoils dominates the political system in both countries, Dominican parties are defined by little else. The PLD remained relatively weak into the 1980s, but its fortunes surged in the 1990s as a result of the PRD’s ill-fated period in office (1978-1986) that prompted the election of Joaquín Balaguer and the transfer of PLD leadership to Leonel Fernández, a charismatic lawyer who grew up in New York (Morgan et al. 2008). Today, the parties are nearly indistinguishable in their policy platforms or the socio-economic profile of their electorates. Thus, while they have a profound impact on electoral politics in the diaspora, they do not inspire long-distance lobbying on issues of identity or even ideology. In Lebanon, by contrast, the dominant parties are sectarian and operate under confessional quotas that determine their maximum number of seats in Parliament

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(Pearlman 2014, 57). While this system encourages coalition-building, it also reinforces identity-based cleavages, particularly in the wake of the civil war. Following the “Cedar Revolution” that led to Syria’s departure and democratic elections in 2005, the party system gradually split into two camps: (1) the pro-Western 14th of March coalition led by the predominantly Sunni Future Movement (FM) and its allies, the Druze Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) and the Maronite Lebanese Forces (LF); and (2) the anti-Western 8th of March coalition led by Hezbollah’s Party of God and its allies, the Shia Amal Movement and the predominantly Maronite Free Patriotic Movement (FPM). Most of these parties were either founded as militias during the civil war or emerged after the war, often as electoral vehicles for their leaders (Senesig-Dabbous 2009). Despite being highly personalistic and clientelistic, these parties divide clearly along religious and foreign policy lines, thereby creating a basis for migrant allegiances and providing targets for long-distance lobbying. I also identify two deficiency-based incentives: (1) blocked political rights for migrants; and (2) low-quality democracy back home. Although migrants have fought for a broad set of rights including national treatment, dual nationality, overseas voting, and legislative representation, I focus on overseas voting as the key threshold for exercising political citizenship in the country of origin. Particularly given the global diffusion of expatriate voting rights in the last decade, migrants who remain disenfranchised have an incentive to organize collectively to demand reform by their home governments. If and when they win this battle, they are better-positioned to demand additional rights than migrants to whom voting rights were granted unilaterally during the country’s transition to democracy or to consolidate a new governing coalition. I therefore give a full score to

21

countries in which expatriates have yet to vote from abroad, regardless of whether the right to do so has been granted, and a partial score to countries that have overseas voting but only because of prior mobilization by migrants. The DR receives a partial score on this indicator because of the role played by migrant organizations in winning the right to vote from abroad. New York-based entrepreneurs first began demanding dual nationality in the 1970s to facilitate their crossborder transactions. They were joined in the 1980s by coalitions of opposition political parties, grassroots migrant organizations, and migrant returnees, who also called for absentee voting rights (Itzigsohn and Villacres 2008, 670–71; Pantoja 2005, 127). Once the PRD and PLD finally consolidated their position as the country’s dominant parties, they met these demands with legislative reforms in the mid-1990s granting dual nationality and expatriate voting rights (Pantoja 2005). When political elites dragged their feet on implementing the reform, migrants put further pressure on them by forming coalitions, organizing events, and demanding the vote at party rallies, community assemblies, and backroom meetings (Itzigsohn and Villacres 2008, 671). Overeas voting finally became a reality in the 2004 elections. Lebanese migrants are still waiting to vote from abroad. As in the Dominican Republic, leading politicians joined migrant activists to support an electoral reform after the transition to democracy. In 2005, the new government created a National Commission for the New Electoral Law to propose changes to the electoral system, which had not been reformed since 1960. One of the commission’s recommendations was authorization of non-resident absentee voting, which was subsequently included in a new electoral law approved by the Parliament in 2008 (Pearlman 2014, 54–55). As in the DR, however, so-

22

called administrative delays prevented Lebanese expatriates from going to the polls in 2009.20 The Parliament finally passed the implementing legislation in 2012, opening the way for Lebanese migrants to vote from abroad in the next elections, which were supposed to take place in June 2013 but were postponed to November 2014 amidst growing violence and stalled negotiations over further reforms to the electoral law (The Guardian, 31 May 2013).21 The other deficiency-based incentive is low-quality democracy back home. Democratic deficits such as fraudulent elections, concentration of executive power, or weak rule of law may spark grievances among migrants, particularly if they have acquired higher expectations while living abroad (Levitt 2001). Such deficits also tend to be associated with higher levels of political instability, leading to recurrent crises that serve as catalysts for diaspora mobilization. To measure this indicator, I use the Polity dataset to create an index based on the gap between full democracy (+10) and each country’s average Polity score since its transition to democracy (Marshall and Jaggers 2009).22 Once again, Lebanese migrants have more grounds for complaint than their Dominican counterparts. While the DR suffers from high levels of corruption, clientelism, and impunity, it has a stable and competitive electoral system, as well as respect for civil liberties. After winning (or stealing) elections in 1986, 1990, and 1994, Joaquín Balaguer finally lost his grip on the political system when he agreed to resign early in response to 20

Specifically, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants missed the deadline for preparing a study on the mechanisms of non-resident voting (Pearlman 2014, 55). 21 Political experts expect the election to be delayed further because of a political deadlock over the parliament’s selection of a new president. (Daily Star, 7 July 2014). 22 The Polity IV Project calculates degrees of democratic and autocratic authority along a 21-point scale ranging from -10 (hereditary monarchy) to +10 (consolidated democracy), with a score of +6 considered as the threshold for a democracy (Marshall and Jaggers 2009).

23

accusations of electoral fraud that prompted massive demonstrations. Since the 1996 elections, candidates from the PRD and the PLD have regularly traded victories in the executive and legislative branches. Dominican elections are widely considered to be free and fair, although the Organization of American States did report several violations, including vote buying, during the 2010 legislative elections (Freedom House 2014a). The judiciary is more problematic, and law enforcement institutions are notorious for corruption and extrajudicial killings. In addition, the legislature and the Constitutional Court recently rescinded the citizenship rights of Haitian children of undocumented residents born since 1929. Lebanese democracy is far more fragile and has become a battleground for the warring parties in the broader Middle East. In fact, Freedom House does not consider Lebanon to be a electoral democracy because “[t]he sectarian political system and the powerful role of foreign patrons effectively limit the accountability of elected officials to the public at large” (2014b). Recognizing these problems, Polity nonetheless puts Lebanon over the democratic threshold (barely) because of the significant limits on executive authority and overall respect for civil liberties (CSP 2011). Freedom House agrees with the latter assessment but notes an increase in violent attacks on journalists and constraints on protest and NGO activity, particularly in relation to the Syrian conflict. Even accepting Polity’s more generous scoring, Lebanon’s democracy is severely compromised. Corruption and vote-buying are rampant, the judiciary is highly politicized, and refugees are subject to abuse. Perhaps even more worrisome is the growing sectarian violence and political deadlock between Sunni-dominated and Shia-dominated factions that threatens to derail the electoral process altogether. In addition, women are unable to

24

pass citizenship on to their children, resulting in the disenfranchisement of thousands of Lebanese born to non-Lebanese fathers.

Political Access Even in the absence of social cleavages or catalyzing events, migrants may be encouraged to make political demands back home when they have formal access to the political system. I identify three access points: (1) state institutions dedicated to diaspora outreach; (2) quasi-governmental advisory councils with migrant representation; and (3) overseas legislative districts. A growing number of countries have created diaspora outreach institutions to strengthen and manage relations with their emigrants (Gallina 2007; Gamlen et al. 2013; Ionescu 2006; Rannveig Agunias and Newland 2012). Although these institutions are usually top-down initiatives aimed at strengthening and managing state-diaspora relations, they can serve as interlocutors with the migrant community, raise migrant expectations, and provide a clear target for migrant demandmaking. I give a full score to countries that have a cabinet-level ministry and/or multiple sub-ministerial or specialized offices dedicated to diaspora outreach and a partial score to countries that have a sub-ministry or a specialized agency of diaspora outreach at the national level. A much smaller number of countries give migrants direct access to the executive or legislative branches, thereby allowing them to exercise voice after exit from within the halls of government. Although no longer “lobbyists” in the strict sense of the term, the occupants of these seats can use their position to demand policy responses by homecountry politicians and public officials. Within the executive branch, several countries

25

have created quasi-governmental advisory councils composed of migrant representatives who consult the government on diaspora-related issues. I give a full score to countries with permanent advisory councils and a partial score to countries that have either periodically engaged migrants in formal consultations or sponsored the creation of nongovernmental consultative mechanisms. Within the legislative branch, several countries have created overseas districts to enable migrants to elect their own representatives to the home-country parliament. I give a full score to countries with migrant seats in the national legislature and a partial score to countries with migrant seats at the sub-national level. Although both Lebanon and the DR have weak states in which non-state actors, particularly political parties, have taken primary responsibility for diaspora outreach (Lieber 2010; Pearlman 2014), this arrangement has resulted in very different degrees of institutionalized access for migrants to the political system. Lebanese expatriates remain largely outside the realm of formal politics, at least while abroad, despite Lebanon’s long history of diaspora outreach.23 In 1945, the newly-independent government rejected Maronite proposals to establish a separate ministry, choosing instead to create an Emigrant Directorate as a branch of the renamed Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates (MFAE) (Brand 2006, 140–42). This arrangement lasted until the end of the civil war, when Prime Minister Rafic Hariri created several new ministries to accomodate the new balance of power under the Taif Accords, including a Ministry of Expatriates (ME). His nod to the diaspora reflected his own experience as an expatriate in Saudi Arabia, the diversification of confessional alignments in the diaspora, and Lebanon’s

23

There is high level of political participation by return diaspora.

26

urgent need for external resources and expertise for the country’s postwar reconstruction (Brand 2006, 160–61). The ME only survived for eight years, however, because of hiring conflicts and turf battles with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2000, Prime Minister Salim al-Huss reintegrated the ME into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which once again became a hybrid ministry (Brand 2006, 169–70). But even as a division within MFAE, the Emigrant Directorate could have led a comprehensive and coordinated effort to support and manage the state’s relationship with its diaspora, along the lines of the Commission for Overseas Filipinos in the Philippines. Instead, it has been more symbolic than substantive, leaving diaspora outreach primarily in the hands of political parties and sectarian organizations (Brand 2006; Pearlman 2014). A more important point of state access for migrants is the World Lebanese Cultural Union (WLCU) founded in 1960. The WLCU is similar in form and function to a migrant advisory council, but it lacks the official status of being part of the state, thereby earning a partial score on this indicator. Like the Ministry of Expatriates, it emerged out of a crisis in Lebanon’s consociational bargain, this time in the form of a Muslim uprising in 1958 that was quelled by U.S. intervention. Seeking to reassert Christian hegemony with the help of the Christian-dominated diaspora, Prime Minister Fouad Chehab convened a conference for Lebanese expatriates, which was held in Beirut and attended by representatives from 36 countries. The delegates approved the creation of a World Lebanese Union (WLU) to represent all Lebanese and descendants of Lebanese living abroad. The WLU constitution, approved in 1964, mandated a federated structure composed of local branches, regional councils, and continental committees with

27

representatives to be elected by expatriates. It also codified the WLU’s status as a nongovernmental, apolitical, and non-confessional organization, even though its permanent secretariat included officials from MFAE. In addition, the government provided the WLU with financing and office space (Brand 2006, 149–51). Renamed the World Lebanese Cultural Union in the early 1970s, the WLCU was crippled by crisis and division during the Lebanese Civil War. Mirroring the cleavages back home, a pro-Syria faction, consisting primarily of Muslims based in Africa, sought to wrest control of the organization away from an anti-Syria faction, consisting primarily of Christians based in the Americas. In 1980, this dispute resulted in the election of two presidents and two secretary-generals. The organization barely survived the next two decades, when factional disputes intersected with personal ambitions and turf battles unleashed by the creation the Ministry of Expatriates (Brand 2006, 153–59). By the end of the 1990s, the WLCU’s ability to function as a migrant advisory council had been severely compromised by splits, defections, and an overall loss of legitimacy. Currently, there are three rival organizations, each of which claims to be the “real” WLCU. In 1995, the WLCU split into two factions (U.S. District Court 2011), and many chapters from the Americas, Australia, and Europe defected to join the dissidents. In 2000, the dissident group (which I will call WLCU-2) convened a meeting in Mexico City to “restart the WLCU by its own means” (http://www.ulcm.org/). Three years later, WLCU-2 severed ties with the government of pro-Syria President Emile Lahoud and sought official recognition by the United Nations as an International Non-Governmental Organization (INGO), which it received in 2009 (http://www.ulcm.org/).24 The WLCU-2 24

At some point, WLCU-2 reportedly won a court case against the original WLCU, although it is not clear when or in which country this took place (Hourani 2007, 17).

28

has subsequently restored relations with the government but as a civic organization. Meanwhile, another splinter group (which I will call WLCU-3) left the original WLCU in 2010 to hold an independent congress and elect its own leadership.25 Within Lebanon, the fortunes of WLCU-3 seem to have improved with the arrival of a new Foreign Minister, FPM leader Gebran Bassil, in February 2014 (http://www.al-mohajer.com/).26 Diaspora outreach is a much more recent phenomenon in the Dominican Republic, but migrants have achieved a stronger presence in key government institutions. In the executive branch, direct access for migrants predated the creation of diaspora outreach institutions staffed by government officials. Soon after being reelected in 2005, President Leonel Fernández created the first Consultative Council to the Presidency of Dominicans Abroad (CCPDE), which was led by the director of the Institute of Dominican Studies at the City University of New York, a strategic ally of the Global Foundation of Democracy and Development (FUNGLODE) founded by Fernández in 2001 (Portes, Escobar, and Radford 2007, 256). Over the next year, he added seven CCPDE in the United States (Miami, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, and Puerto Rico) and another eight in Europe (Berlin, Benelux, Madrid, Barcelona, France, Italy, and Switzerland). In 2008, the government restructured the CCPDE and integrated them into a newly-formed National Council for Dominican Communities Abroad (CONDEX), which the legislature tasked with receiving policy recommendations from the CCPDE and directing them to the appropriate government ministries (Bouvier 2009). Led by the

25

In 2011, WLCU-2 brought a trademark infringement case against WLCU-3 in a U.S. District Court after the latter used the WLCU name to organize an independence-day dinner with Lebanese expatriates in California (http://wlcu.ws/about-us-bylaws/history/; U.S. District Court 2011). 26 Further research is needed to verify this information and sort out the politics behind these divisions.

29

President of the Republic, CONDEX is managed by an Executive Vice President (with the rank of Minister) and includes the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Economy, Education, Public Health, Culture, Tourism, and Labor, as well as the directors of Migration and the Center for Exports and Investment.27 Initially appointed by the President of the Republic, the leadership of the restructured CCPDE was elected in constituent assemblies, although apparently with indefinite terms. The legislative branch also provides migrants with a combination of outreach and representation. Reflecting the prevalent role of the political parties in mediating statediaspora relations, the House and the Senate both have permanent commissions dedicated to Dominicans abroad. In addition, the legislature passed a constitutional reform in 2010 to give migrants the right to elect their own representatives to the House of Deputies starting in 2012.28 The reform created three new districts: the Caribbean Basin (including Florida) with two seats; the United States and Canada with three seats; and Europe with two seats (Vargas 2011). As a group, these legislators occupy around four percent of the total seats in the House.

Long-Distance Lobbying in Lebanon and the Dominican Republic Based on their aggregate scores, migrants from Lebanon and the Dominican Republic should face the most favorable conditions for long-distance lobbying of any new democracies. Table 1 shows that Lebanon has a combined score of 61.5 and aboveaverage scores in every category, while the DR has a combined score of 61.3 and above-

27

Ley Orgánica del Consejo Nacional para las Comunidades Dominicanas en el Exterior (CONDEX), No. 1-08. 28 I am still trying to find out when these commissions were created, but they have been in existence since at least 2006.

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average scores in every category except political incentives. As we have seen, however, the two cases look quite different once we dig deeper. Socio-economically, Lebanese and Dominican migrants share strong ties to their homeland and a well-established presence in their host countries but differ significantly on gender composition, geographical density, and education. Politically, both countries have weak states that cede a sizable share of diaspora outreach to political parties and other non-state actors but in the context of dramatically different social cleavages and party systems. Figure 1 puts these differences in comparative context by plotting a subset of 18 high-migration countries with different enabling conditions along two dimensions: (1) socio-economic and political incentives; and (2) socio-economic resources and political access. Interestingly, every country except Moldova clusters into one of two quadrants. In one group, which includes Lebanon, migrants have above-average incentives but belowaverage resources and/or access. In the other group, which includes the DR, they have below-average incentives but above-average resources and/or access. This distribution suggests two conclusions. First, none of these countries is likely to face sustained and mass-based pressure for political change by migrants, given the apparent trade-off between incentives and the tools to act on them. Second, we can expect to see different types of long-distance lobbying by migrants from each cluster. Migrants from countries in the lower, right-hand quadrant are more likely to mobilize independently of the home state and to care about a broad range of issues that include, but are not limited to, political rights for migrants. By contrast, migrants from countries in the upper, left-hand quadrant are more likely to rely on interlocutors in the home government and to focus more narrowly on migrant interests.

31

The remainder of this paper provides a preliminary test of these hypotheses through a detailed comparison of long-distance lobbying by Lebanese and Dominican migrants in OECD countries. As we will see, migrants from both countries have advocated strongly for migrant political rights, but Lebanese are more actively engaged in broader questions of national politics. The most notable exception is Dominican mobilization against the Constitutional Court’s decision to revoke the citizenship rights of children of undocumented Haitian immigrants. In addition, Lebanese utilize a diverse set of advocacy tools, including appeals to their host country governments to put pressure on Lebanese politicians and powerbrokers, while Domincans work primarily through the parties or outreach institutions.

Sectarian Politics and Diaspora Rights in Lebanon Lebanese migrants have formed their own organizations and been involved in long-distance lobbying for decades. Similarly to the WLCU, this organizational space has reproduced many of the sectarian tensions found in Lebanon, particularly during and after the civil war (Skulte-Ouaiss and Tabar 2011). In OECD countries, where Lebanese Christians have the oldest and largest presence, long-distance lobbying is dominated by groups who oppose Syria’s influence, are critical of Hezbollah, and seek to counteract Muslim power within the Lebanese political system. While some groups pursue this agenda explicitly and directly, others do so indirectly by lobbying for expatriate voting and citizenship rights as a way to alter the balance of political power within Lebanon. Particularly in the United States, these groups are often led by second-plus generation

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Lebanese who focus their lobbying efforts on the host government as an influential third party that provides them with greater access than their home-country political system.29 Not all long-distance lobbying by OECD-based Lebanese follows this pattern, however. First, the growing presence of Lebanese Muslims in the OECD has been accompanied by advocacy on the other side of the sectarian divide, although it has been more limited and sporadic. Second, first-generation immigrants often feel disconnected from the struggles and organizations of the more established “Lebanese community” (Abdelhady 2011, 130), leading some of them to promote a non-sectarian agenda of respect for human rights, reform of Lebanon’s gender-biased citizenship law, and an overall rejection of the sectarian political system. As in Lebanon, however, their voices tend to get drowned out by the sectarian uproar. I do not have sufficient data to draw a comprehensive map of long-distance lobbying by OECD-based Lebanese since the Cedar Revolution in 2005, but I can provide illustrative examples of each type of advocacy mentioned above. Prominent organizations in the anti-Syrian camp include the American Lebanese Coalition (ALC), the American Task Force for Lebanon (ATFL), the Lebanese American Renaissance Partnership (LARP), the Lebanese-Canadian Coordinating Council (LCCC), the Lebanese Information Center (LIC), the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL), the World Council for the Cedars Revolution (WCCR), the World Lebanese Cultural Union (WLCU-2), and the Maronite Foundation of the World (MFW). Among the policies advocated by these groups are supporting Lebanon’s armed forces (including U.S.

29

Although I am most interested in home-country engagement by first-generation migrants, I am including organizations dominated by the second-plus generations for two reasons: (1) I do not have sufficient data to determine the extent to which first-generation migrants also participate; and (2) these organizations are an important component of the context of reception.

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military aid), holding timely elections, adhering to UN resolutions, approving an international ban on cluster bombs, controlling the Lebanese-Syrian border, disarming domestic militias, demanding the release of Lebanese detainees in Syria, and challenging media discourses that portray Syria, Iran, or Hezbollah in a favorable light. Besides issuing public statements, often with a list of specific demands, these organizations meet with public officials, mostly from their host governments, as well as international organizations such as the United Nations. The U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, which calls itself “America’s Pro-Lebanon Lobby” also has a lobbying page on its website with recommendations and contact information.30 When President Michel Aoun signed an agreement with Hezbollah in 2006, dozens of Maronite organizations launched an international media campaign demanding that his party be banned in the United States and Europe (Karouby 2013, 172). These groups have been less inclined to rely on mass demonstrations since the transition, but small protests have been organized in response to specific events, such as the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in 2006 and Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s visit to Paris in 2008 (Asal 2012; NOW 2008). Several of these groups are also active on the issues of voting and/or citizenship rights for Lebanese expatriates. LARP and WLCU-2 have joined other groups such as the Lebanese International Business Council (LIBC), Lebanese Living Abroad (LLA), and Youth for Democratic Participation (Liban 2013) to lobby for overseas voting rights. LLA was most active right after the transition in 2005, when it used multiple pressure tactics including (1) an online petition that was reportedly signed by 14,000 people in 139 countries demanding the right to vote from abroad; (2) a “global day of solidarity” with

30

http://www.freelebanon.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=43.

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demonstrations outside of Lebanese embassies and consulates, as well as in front of the foreign mininstry in Beirut; and (3) meetings with Lebanese legislators and public officials (Bakri 2005; CAMEO 2012). Other groups have taken the lead in pressuring for implementation of the voting rights legislation passed in 2008. Like LLA, they have used a combination of petitions, public statements, social media, direct meetings with Lebanese politicians, and street mobilizations to make their case. Besides criticizing the delays and unreasonable registration deadline, LIBC has also called for the creation of migrants seats in the parliament (http://www.libc.net/). Although most of these groups are multi-confessional and claim to be non-partisan, their support for expatriate voting rights has sectarian undertones given the implications for the balance of power in Lebanon. The sectarian agenda is even clearer among diaspora organizations that have focused on citizenship rights for Lebanese expatriates. In collaboration with Lebanon’s Consul General in New York, the Maronite Foundation of the World launched the “I am Lebanese” campaign in 2013 to encourage Lebanese-Americans to activate their Lebanese citizenship (NOW 2014). On their website, they explicitly state that “increasing the number of Lebanese citizens across the globe will help maintain the demographic and political power-sharing balance.”31 A similar campaign has been launched by the Christian Lebanese Foundation of the World (CLFW), which has also created an online petition and lobbied the parliament to ratify a Lebanese Nationality Draft Law that would streamline the registration process. The press release announcing the CLFW’s formation in 2014 highlighted its commitment to “preserving the demographic balance among the

31

https://iamlebanese.org/index.php/why-citizenship-matters/.

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different religious communities in Lebanon [for which] it strives to register all Americans of Lebanese descent in the official registry of the Lebanese administration.”32 Notably lacking from these citizenship drives is support for the Nationality Campaign, which is an initiative in Lebanon to allow Lebanese women to pass their citizenship to their children. The movement has tried to reach out to the diaspora through Facebook and other social media (Nationality Campaign 2007) with limited success. While individual bloggers and the president of the LIBC have expressed support for the reform, there is little evidence of collective lobbying efforts from abroad. The “I am Lebanese” website regrets the ineligibility of Lebanese descendants with maternal lineage but then merely encourages them to apply so their request can be processed “when and if the law is passed.”33 Several critics on Facebook and in media reports accuse these organizations (and their political allies in Lebanon) of hypocrisy for supporting diaspora citizenship rights while disenfranchising the children of Lebanese women within Lebanon’s borders (Maktabi 2012). Overall, these anti-Syrian, anti-Hezbollah, predominantly Christian organizations tend to be relatively well-institutionalized, have dense networks, and use a diverse repertoire of tactics to pressure multiple targets. Their strength derives from the historical trajectory and demographic profile of the Lebanese diaspora in the OECD, as well as the policy preferences of their host governments. The other two types of advocacy mentioned above face greater obstacles and therefore have more limited reach. Besides relying more heavily on “outsider” tactics such as street protests and social media, they appear most

32 33

http://www.clfw.org/our-news.html. https://iamlebanese.org/index.php/why-citizenship-matters/.

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successful when they form alliances with civil society organizations either in Lebanon or with non-Lebanese membership in the host country. We find some long-distance lobbying by groups sympathetic to Hezbollah and/or the Palestinians, particularly in cities such as Montreal, Dearborn, and Paris with higher concentrations of Lebanese Muslims. The greatest outpouring occurred in response to the 33-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, when thousands of people took to the streets in Montreal, Paris, and Dearborn to protest the Israeli action (Asal 2012; Koinova 2010, 449). Although some participants openly expressed support for Hezbollah, taking such a position is risky in the United States, Canada, and Europe because Hezbollah is officially considered to be a terrorist organization.34 Relatedly, Lebanese on this side of the sectarian divide tend to join pan-Arab groups with a broader agenda rather than forming lobbying organizations of their own. Two partial exceptions are UK-based Friends of Lebanon and Montreal-based Tadamon. Friends of Lebanon advertises itself as an organization dedicated to building “a better and more peaceful Lebanon” but it features non-Lebanese contributors and its lobbying activities extend more broadly to include anti-war petitions and Palestinian solidarity.35 Tadamon started out as a solidarity project between Montreal and Beirut, but later broadened its scope to work “in solidarity with struggles for self-determination, equality and justice in the ‘Middle East’ and in diaspora communities in Montreal and beyond.”36 According to Asal (2012), Tadamon acts as a bridge between a Shia-affiliated newspaper and pan-Arab groups in Canada. 34

For this reason, the organizers of the protests in Montreal, which had around 20,000 participants, banned Hezbollah flags, although some marchers defied the ban (Asal 2012). 35 http://friendsoflebanon.org/actions. 36 http://www.tadamon.ca/about-us/information.

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It is even more difficult to find instances of long-distance lobbying by groups with a non-sectarian agenda, even among first-generation Lebanese migrants who might have been expected to join the wave of non-sectarian mobilization that took place in Lebanon in the wake of the Arab Spring.37 Although more research is needed, I have identified only a few other organizations that appear to be genuinely committed to promoting an alternative kind of politics. One is a news website, The Cedar’s Echo, which was founded by four young Lebanese writers living in Europe and North America. Although not explicitly a lobbying organization, the site seeks to rally young Lebanese living abroad around a message of secularism, modernity, and peace: “We are working for the Lebanon we dream of; one nation above sectarian tensions.” (Hassan 2014). Another is The Third Voice for the Sake of Lebanon, a group involving Lebanese in Canada that launched a Facebook campaign to protest the current state of politics and government failure (Aspen Institute 2012).38 Finally, there are a few human rights organizations that appear to cross the sectarian divide. For example, the Beirut-based Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH), which was founded by a Lebanese organization in France (SOLIDA), lobbies on behalf of Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon as well as Lebanese detainees in Syria.39 Initially, this partnership appeared to exemplify a transnational partnership, but it appears that SOLIDA has since disappeared, leaving CLDH as an active but largely domestic initiative.

37

Although more research is needed, there also appears to be little diaspora involvement in the so-called “Tomato Revolution” that has been launched by a domestic NGO, the Civil Movement for Accountability, to protest any further delays of the 2014 parliamentary elections (Daily Star, 09 August 2014). 38 Other Facebook pages have promoted anti-sectarianism or political neutrality (Ajami 2013; Lowry 2008), but it is not clear how much of their support comes from outside Lebanon. 39 http://www.helloasso.com/associations/solida/collectes/centre-libanais-droits-humains.

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Diaspora Representation and Human Rights in the Dominican Republic Long-distance lobbying is a more recent and less extensive phenomenon in the Dominican Republic. It is also much less sectarian, although home-country political parties arguably occupy even more of the organizational space than in the case of Lebanon. Aside from overseas party chapters, Dominicans have a plethora of civic organizations, especially in New York, but they tend to be oriented toward the host community (Portes, Escobar, and Radford 2007). Non-partisan groups engaged in longdistance lobbying are less numerous and often short-lived (Lieber 2010, 109–110). In addition, they tend to be reactive rather than proactive, mobilizing when called upon by like-minded political elites in the Dominican Republic. Relatedly, they rarely move beyond issues linked to the rights and benefits of Dominicans living abroad, with the notable exception of the small but outspoken movement to defend the rights of Haitians in the Dominican Republic. Nonetheless, migrants have become important actors in the Dominican political system, and further research is likely to reveal more contestation than is portrayed in news reports and official documents.40 Dominican migrants finally exercised their right to cast overseas ballots in the 2004 presidential elections, thereby removing this particular grievance. But rather than abandoning long-distance lobbying, the activists who fought for these rights redirected their energies into new channels and issues. First, a few of them gained direct access to the state with the formation of the Consultative Councils to the Presidency of Dominicans 40

There is some debate in the literature over whether long-distance lobbying in the Dominican case is predominantly top-down or bottom-up. Guarnizo (1998) argues strongly that migrant activism has been bottom-up in the context of a weak state, while Lieber (2010) finds that domestic political elites have been the key drivers behind most migrant-friendly reforms. There may be a temporal element that can bridge this divide, namely that the same political parties that once mobilized for change from “outside” have now been governing the country for nearly two decades. Relatedly, the election of Leonel Fernández, himself a return migrant from New York, gave migrants a powerful ally in the presidency.

39

Abroad (CCPDE) starting in 2005. Second, they demanded additional political rights, as well as more extensive support for Dominicans living abroad. Their key political demands were inclusion in the debate over a new constitution, the establishment of overseas districts in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, and the creation of a new Ministry of Dominicans Abroad (Hoy Digital, 01 June 2006; Dominicanos en el Exterior, 16 June 2009). They also requested that the Dominican state play a more proactive role in lowering the cost of remittances, creating a more favorable environment for diaspora investment, providing social services and legal protection to migrants, and empowering Dominican-origin politicians in the United States. (Dominicanos en el Exterior, 16 June 2009). While not all of their demands were met, President Fernández and the legislature responded to some of them. In 2008, Condex organized a series of popular consultations with leaders of the CCPDE and other prominent Dominican organizations in the United States and Europe to discuss the constitutional reform, including legislative seats for migrants (CONDEX 2008; Diario Dominicano, 24 September 2008). In 2009, Condex sent an Action Plan to Fernández based on opinions solicited from Dominican elected officials in the United States regarding how the Dominican government could assist them in their political careers. Condex also signed an agreement with the Dominican-American National Roundtable (DANR) to support civic education for young Dominican migrants (CONDEX 2009). Finally, in 2010, the Dominican legislature passed a constitutional reform that included the creation of three overseas districts, with a total of seven seats, in the Chamber of Deputies.

40

Since gaining direct access to the halls of Congress, these “insider” activists have focused primarily on strengthening their voice within the government and developing new programs for migrants. Echoing calls by organizations such as the Boston-based Quisqueya Foundation that President Danilo Pérez fulfill his promise to create a Ministry or Institute of Dominicans Abroad (Diaspora Dominicana, 13 June 2013), the newly elected overseas deputies proposed the creation of an Institute for the Welfare of Dominicans Living Abroad (INBIDOEX). Focusing primarily on return migrants, the Institute would support “dignified return” and provide legal and financial support for the repatriation of dead relatives, the reimport of automobiles, and the reinsertion of workers into the labor market. The project was signed by all seven overseas deputies and received support from Condex and the majority of the Permanent Commission on Dominicans Abroad (El Nacional, 13 March 2014). Other proposals to assist migrants include a Foundation for Defense of Dominicans in North America (Primacias, 27 June 2014), a Savings and Investment Fund for Dominicans Abroad, and extension of the government’s scholarship program to include Dominican students living abroad (Hoy, 03 April 2014). Another issue taken up by the overseas deputies was the closure of 19 foreign offices of the Central Electoral Junta (JCE) in 2012. Arguing that Dominican migrants were being denied access not just to voter registration but to other key documents and services, they met with migrant organizations, appeared in the media, submitted a legislative proposal to the Chamber of Deputies, and met with public officials from the JCE and the president’s office to demand that the offices be reopened. In 2014, the JCE finally agreed to resume operations in New York, New Jersey, Boston, Miami, Puerto Rico, and Spain (Amo Dominicano, 23 October 2013, 14 July 2014). When the consul

41

generals in several European cities reportedly refused to cooperate with the JCE, the Permanent Commission on Dominicans Abroad demanded that President Medina remove them from their posts (DominicanosHOY.com, 11 July 2014). Overseas deputies have also requested representation on the executive board of Condex. In early 2013, Adelys Oliverares, representing the overseas district that includes Puerto Rico, Miami, Panama, Venezuela, and the Caribbean islands, submitted a proposal to modify the law that created Condex. Along with other members of the Permanent Commission on Dominicans Abroad, she argued that such representation is necessary because “it is not possible that, being a council to aid Dominicans abroad, it includes nobody who represents us” (La Republica, 21 January 2013). Finally, a few migrant deputies have supported legislation aimed at domestic issues. For example, Levis Suriel Gómez, the other deputy representing the Caribbean area, participated in discussions of modifications to the penal code (Hoy, 03 April 2014) and considered submitting a proposal to strengthen moral and civic education in public schools in the Dominican Republic (Servicios de Noticias, 18 July 2014). Even though legislative representation appears to give migrants a more direct voice in policymaking than the CCPDE, the overseas deputies have been vehemently criticized by some members of the migrant community. Many of these attacks have come from rival politicians, but others have come from civic leaders and ordinary people who complain that the overseas deputies have failed to deliver any meaningful reforms, are wealthy expatriates who earn excessively high salaries, were imposed by the political parties in the Dominican Republic, do not comply with transparency requirements, and are more interested in patronage and power than serving the migrant community. Some

42

critics have gone so far as to demand that they resign or that the overseas districts be eliminated altogether.41 Beyond the formal political arena, we find only sporadic evidence of Dominican migrants lobbying for change back home. One example is the support offered by the New York-based Hermana Mirabal Family Care Network and San Romero Ministry to local NGOs demanding women’s rights and fighting against domestic violence in the interior of the country (Portes, Escobar, and Radford 2007, 272). A more significant example is criticism of human rights violations against Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic (Lieber 2010; Wooding 2012). This issue gained increased salience following the 2013 decision by the country’s Constitutional Court to annul the citizenship of anyone born to undocumented Haitian immigrants since 1929. Dominican community leaders and intellectuals in the United States responded with outrage, calling the decision “shameful, aberrant, and highly discriminatory” and arguing that “we do not have the moral authority to demand respect for our citizenship rights when in our own house they are being violated in such an aberrant and abusive way” (El Diario, 29 September 2013). Migrant activists formed solidarity groups, collaborated with Haitian organizations, held protests, supported local activists in the Dominican Republic, wrote op-ed pieces, appealed to President Pérez for support, and launched campaigns on social media.42

41

For a sample of these criticisms, see the articles and opinion pieces published in Amo Dominicano on 22 August 2013, 28 September 2013, and 30 July 2014. 42 See, e.g., El Diario, 29 September 2013; New York Times, 17 October 2013; Fox News Latino, 29 October 2013; NPR Code Switch 20 December 2013; http://wearealldominicannyc.wordpress.com/.

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Conclusion The patterns of long-distancing lobbying by Lebanese and Dominican migrants map quite well onto the enabling conditions identified earlier in this paper. Although political parties have a strong presence in both communities. Lebanese migrants have more multi-faceted and institutionalized lobbying organizations than their Dominican counterparts. This profile is consistent with their combination of a male gender bias, abundant individual resources, and restricted access to their home-country political system. At the same time, the Lebanese organizational landscape is geographically dispersed and fraught with the same sectarian divisions that have crippled Lebanon’s democracy back home. While young Lebanese migrants often express frustration with sectarianism, they have not supported domestic anti-sectarian movements or lobbied for an alternative style of politics to any significant degree. Thus, even when battling forces of extremism or demanding expatriate rights, Lebanese migrants tend to reproduce the political dysfunction and competition for spoils of their homeland. As expected, long-distance lobbying by Dominican migrants relies more heavily on formal channels of access and focuses more narrowly on migrant interests. This profile is consistent with the lower socio-economic status and female gender of many Dominican migrants, the majority of whom either lack the resources to organize autonomously or prefer to devote their energies to improving conditions in their adopted home. There is a small but very active elite of transnational activists who have demanded and taken advantage of direct channels of access to the Dominican political system, but they tend to privilege competition for political spoils over autonomous struggles for democratic reform. Thus, as in Lebanon, long-distance lobbying tends to reproduce rather

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than ameliorate the democratic deficits found at home (Lieber 2010; Morgan, Hartlyn, and Espinal 2010). The most notable exception is the solidarity campaign to restore the citizenship rights of Haitian descendants, but it remains to be seen whether these activists and organizations will take on other governance issues in the future. This assessment of migrants as a pro-democracy lobby is disheartening and is likely to be replicated in other cases. But it does not tell the whole story of migrant engagement in politics back home. As my larger project will show, other channels of influence, both direct and influence, may be having more positive effects on the quality of democracy. In addition, the potential for migrants to act as a pro-democracy lobby remains and could be activated as conditions change in the host and home countries.

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Table 1. Enabling Conditions for Long-Distance Lobbying Lebanon

Dominican Republic

Full Sample Average

70.6

63.0

62.6

$12,927

$3,318

$2,493

Male share

53.9

42.6

49.2

Anti-Immigrant Opinion

57.8

60.9

61.4

Socio-Economic Resources

60.7

61.3

55.9

Geographical density

30.8

58.6

46.9

Post-primary education

73.3

56.4

66.7

10+ years in host country

77.9

68.8

54.2

Political Incentives

81.3

37.5

40.6

Refugee legacy

0.5

0.5

0.2

Cleavage-based partisanship

1

0

0.3

Blocked political rights

1

0.5

0.4

Democratic deficit

7.5

5.0

6.4

Political Access

33.3

83.3

29.2

Diaspora outreach institutions

0.5

0.5

0.5

Migrant advisory council

0.5

1

0.2

0

1

0.2

61.5

61.3

47.0

Socio-Economic Incentives Remittances/migrant

Overseas legislative districts AGGREGATE SCORE

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