Diaspora, , and Globalization This page intentionally left blank Diaspora, Politics, and Globalization

Michel S. Laguerre DIASPORA, POLITICS, AND GLOBALIZATION © Michel S. Laguerre, 2006. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-7452-5 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-53520-0 ISBN 978-1-4039-8332-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781403983329 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Laguerre, Michel S. Diaspora, politics, and globalization / Michel S. Laguerre p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-349-53520-0 1. —Political aspects—Case studies. 2. Globalization—Political aspects—Case studies. 3. Haitian Americans—Politics and . I. Title. JZ1320.L34 2006 320.973089Ј9697294—dc22 2005057928 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: July 2006 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Sibby and Norm Whitten,Jr. This page intentionally left blank Contents

List of Tables ix Preface and Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Mapping the Global Arena of Diasporic Politics 1 1. The Practice of Diasporic Politics 13 2. State, Diaspora, and Transnational Politics 43 3. Diasporic Lobbying in American Politics 73 4. Virtual Diasporic Public Sphere 113 5. Dediasporization: and Hostland 133 Conclusion: Diasporic Politics and Transnational Political Space 163

Notes 169 Bibliography 189 Index 207 This page intentionally left blank List of Tables

1.1 1999 Special Results 28 1.2 Election Results 2000: Massachusetts House of Representatives (Fifth, Suffolk) 29 1.3 Massachusetts House of Representatives Election Results: Fifth Suffolk State Rep. District 29 1.4 Florida House of Representatives Election Results: District 108 29 1.5 Florida House of Representatives Election Results: District 108 30 1.6 Florida House of Representatives Election Results: District 104 31 1.7 Special Democratic Primary Election Results 32 1.8 City of Boston: Election Summary Report (April 12, 2005) 32 1.9 Haitian American Mayors and City Council Members 34 1.10 Haitian American Judges 34 3.1 U.S. Law Firms Retained by the Aristide Government, Haiti (2001–2002) 90 3.2 U.S. Law Firms Retained by the Préval Government, Haiti (1999–2000) 92 This page intentionally left blank Preface and Acknowledgments

The study of diasporic politics has much to tell us about the democratic process in the host country, the homeland, and the strengths or weak- nesses of the political organizations of the diaspora. Diasporic politics has been studied so far in terms of the relations of the diaspora with hostland and homeland politics. In essence, this book provides an alternative approach to the conventional wisdom in this field of inquiry by focusing on the diaspora as forming a of its own, sustained by the political and organizational infrastructures of the sending and receiving countries. In so doing, it establishes the parameters of such a transnational political system and explains its mode of operation. It shows how place and time shape the practice of diasporic politics in its transnational deployment. For example, these variables help to explain why the diaspora may shift its political engagement from homeland to hostland or from hostland to home- land to achieve specific goals and thus helps explain the flexible shape the transnational political system may take at any given time. With regard to the role of place or location in diasporic politics, we will see how different relations with different segments of the diaspora depend on the nature of the political process in either site and the projected goal contemplated. A specific diasporic site may be called upon for help by the homeland government to achieve a specific outcome, while another site may be contacted for a different reason. Similarly, a specific hostland government may at times use the services of the local diaspora in its diplomatic and trade relations with the homeland, while at other times it may simply ignore such cosmopolitan political actors. Homeland , in this sense, are influential in redesigning the hierarchy of importance of different diasporic groups in different locations, seen as political constituencies. Some diasporic groups form the core of projected overseas constituencies because they consist of xii Preface and Acknowledgments government loyalists, while other diasporans sometimes stand at a lower echelon or on the periphery because they need to be neutralized as a result of their critical stance vis-à-vis the homeland government. Such a hierarchy of diasporic sites developed by the homeland government to tap the resources of the diaspora may not correspond to the perception that the diaspora has of itself, however, and tends to disaggregate depending on the ebbs and flows of the homeland’s political and ideological orientation. For example, the Miami Haitian American community was more important for the survival of the Aristide government than was the Boston or New York community. That was so because this proletarian community was more in tune with the grassroots orientation of the Aristide government than the other middle-class communities were. From time to time, cosmopolitan leaders in the diaspora are asked to play broker roles vis-à-vis the homeland government on behalf of the government of a particular hostland. Just as the homeland govern- ment inadvertently or consciously creates a hierarchical division within the diaspora, these legitimate political practices also fragment the social architecture of the diaspora. Diasporic politics is not only played out abroad, but also at home, by returnees whose dediasporization constitutes a new form of incorporation in the transnational circuit of cross-border political engagement. Returnees develop their own informal groups, meet occasionally to celebrate former hostland holidays such as the Fourth of July or to enjoy a televised American sporting event, serve at times as ambassadors of goodwill, for example explaining U.S. traditions and democratic practices, and sometimes create their own political parties, as in the case of Israel Ba’aliya or Israel Beiteiny, each with a handful of elected parliamentarians in the Knesset. Although the hierarchy of diasporic places depends on the intensity of their linkages to the homeland, the strengths of these relationships may shift or oscillate over time. For example, a hostile attitude toward the homeland government may metamorphose into a friendly rela- tionship or vice versa, as happened with the Haitian American com- munity in Miami vis-à-vis Haiti after the collapse of the Duvalier dynastic regime in 1985. A relationship of the homeland government with a specific site may change in intensity once the issue that brought them together is resolved, as happened in the case of the relations of the Israeli government with French Jewry in the summer of 1982 as a result of the bombing of the Goldenberg Restaurant on the Rue des Rosiers in the Jewish Quarter in Paris. Likewise interest in homeland Preface and Acknowledgments xiii political affairs may be generated in the diaspora because of political turmoil and may subside once the situation returns to normal. Time is also an important variable in the processes of diasporic politics. Temporal shifts help us to understand generational changes in diasporic politics from a primary focus on homeland politics and a secondary focus on hostland politics to a primary focus on hostland politics and a secondary focus on homeland politics. Time is also of the essence in the way in which the homeland government, on occasion, concentrates its attention on helping a segment of the diaspora that is struggling to gain legal status in the host country. This usually occurs within a strictly delimited temporal moment and is not an ongoing process. For example, newly arrived refugees usually become a matter of immediate concern for the host- land government and therefore it may seek the collaboration of the homeland government for the resolution of the crisis. The intervention of the homeland government in diasporic affairs then resolves the impending problem caused by the refugee crisis. When the crisis is over, the homeland government shifts its attention to other matters. Refugees then are either able to return home or provided with a legal immigrant status. This intervention thus characterizes a specific moment in homeland-diaspora relations. It simply shows how time structures this aspect of diaspora-homeland political relations. Special events in the diaspora or the homeland are also occasions when diaspora-homeland relations become intense. Temporal inter- vals thus cadence or provide a rhythm to diaspora-homeland relations. One may speak, for example, of the electoral campaign year, when both sides are engaged in intense relations to help a candidate in the homeland win the contest or for a candidate in the homeland to seek financial donations among diasporic communities to help finance his campaign. Problems that a diaspora community may confront in a host country may also intensify the interest of the homeland and other diasporic sites. These specific circumstances are moments during which diasporic interventions in homeland affairs or homeland interventions in diasporic affairs are deployed. While on the one hand place indi- cates the direction and geographic distribution of these transnational political interventions, temporal changes characterize the moments when such transactions occur and how they fracture the temporal political landscape. The content of this book was presented and discussed in various academic forums, and I am thankful to members of those audiences who raised questions or provided comments that helped me to sharpen xiv Preface and Acknowledgments the thrust of the argument. A portion of chapter 1 was presented at a symposium on transnational citizenship organized by the University of Quebec in Montreal, October 14, 1998. Chapter 2 was delivered at the “States and Diasporas” conference organized by the Italian Academy and the Institute of Latin American and Iberian Studies at Columbia University, May 8, 1998. Chapter 3 was presented at a col- loquium at Georgetown University on October 14, 1999. Chapter 4 was prepared for an international conference at the University of Kent, Canterbury, and read at a conference organized by Trinity College in Washington, DC, in January 2003. Chapter 5 was delivered as a keynote address at a joint symposium organized by Tulane University and Loyola University in New Orleans and held on April 14, 2004. I am most grateful to the following scholars, who contributed in many different ways to the completion of this project: Robert Smith, Robert Maguire, Nicola Short, Jason Ackleson, Bonnie Hurd, Micheline Labelle, Frantz Voltaire, Georges Anglade, Jean Robert Elie, Jean Claude Icart, Marc Prou, Gurton Auguste, Serge Auguste, Harry Fouche, Franck Henry, Bob Joseph, Alice Blanchet, Jocelyn McCalla, Jean-Glovert Laguerre, Ramona Hernandez, and Wesner Emmanuel. I am also thankful to anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions and comments and to the following publishers: University of California Press, London School of Economics, and Ediciones Libreria LaTrinitaria for allowing me to republish here revised versions of my articles, “Homeland Political Crisis, the Virtual Diasporic Public Sphere, and Diasporic Politics.” Journal of Latin American , vol. 10, no 1, pp. 206–225, 2005; “State, Diaspora and Transnational Politics.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, vol. 28, no 3, pp. 633–651, 1999; and “Diasporic Lobbying in American Politics,” in Desde La Orilla: Hacia Una Nacionalidad Sin Desalojos, edited by Silvio Torres-Saillant, Ramona Hernandez, and Blas R. Jimenez. Santo Domingo: Ediciones Libreria La Trinitaria, 2004, pp. 421–440. In the course of the preparation of this book, both graduate and undergraduate students at the University of California at Berkeley helped me in transcribing interviews, performing bibliographic searches in several databases, surfing the Web in search of information on Haitian American elected officials, and compiling data for the tables in the book. Among them, I want to thank more particularly Debbie Yeh, Shridhar Seralathan, Sara Pickett, Bethany Burns, Jodie Atkinson, Jennifer Lee, Raymond Pascual, Lauren Kaplan, Sara Zeiger, Alina Shlyapochnik, Robert Klein and Laura Tolkoff. Preface and Acknowledgments xv

The reference librarians at the Doe Library and the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley promptly located materials for me in the various databases available in these research facilities. Bruce Cain, a leading specialist on ethnic pol- itics and the director of the Institute of Governmental Studies; Nelson Polsby, a leading specialist on the U.S. Congress; and Jack Citrin, an expert on immigration and political incorporation have provided me with the inspiration for this book, and Marc Levin, Debbie Yeh, Mark Tokaro, Hanbinna Park, Liz Wiener, and Louise Salazar have provided the necessary administrative backup for the completion of the project. A special thanks is due to the staff of the Berkeley Center for Globalization and Information Technology, the research site where most of the drafts of this book were prepared and to Gabriella Pearce, Julia Cohen, and Erin Ivy at Palgrave Macmillan Press. Last but not least, I very much appreciate Bud Bynack’s commentaries, suggestions, and editorial skills in transforming the manuscript into a much more readable and enjoyable piece of scholarship. I am, however, solely responsible for any shortcomings that may still remain with the text.