Migrant Associations’ Double Engagement and the Transnationalisation of Public Spheres

With this chapter I focus on a specific form of transnational engagement and space of action, namely that of migrant associations. In the last ten years there is an expanding interest in migrants who with their organisations strengthen transnational connections and address remittances not only to the kin groups but also to broader social and collective projects in the country of origin. This social process can be well explored by a transnational perspective towrds migrants as subjects who are "doubly engaged" in diversified transnational spaces and organise accordingly. They are increasigly articulating their lives through transnational social, cultural, religious and political spheres. Nancy Fraser (2007) argues that the Westphalian nature of public sphere theory is being challenged by the fact that people increasingly hold multiple nationalities and that individuals and communities inhabit social, political and cultural spaces across borders. In other words, they represent a lived example of the inadequacy of what has been called “methodological nationalism” (Glick Schiller, Wimmer 2002; Beck 2006) and of nationally bounded conceptions of membership and political mobilisation. This is exemplified by the continuous back and forth movements of migrants from the society of origin to the society of destination and beyond, whether by way of recurrent physical return or through symbolic cultural, social and/or political ties and loyalties, gradually shaping “transnational public spheres from below” (Salih 2010). Relying on the case of the Senegalese in Italy, with this paper I will suggest the need to explore how a specific kind of double engagement - namely those of migrants’ associations involved in co-development projects - may contribute to the transnationalisation of public spheres. Against the most celebrative reading of the Migration-Development Nexus, I will argue in favour of considering the difficulties encountered by such a double engagement. With this purpose, I briefly take into account some broader analysis of migrant associations’ transnational co-development before moving to the specific case study. After a background on Senegalese migration in Italy, I than take into account the diversification of their associational life and the difficulties and ambivalences characterising the development projects they undertake within trans-local spaces. Despite this criticism, I consider these processes deserving further research because they are meaningful arena within which transnational migration experience is negotiated.