Remittances and political participation in the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT How does the receipt of remittances affect the likelihood of engaging in civic and political activities in the Middle East and North Africa? Research in Latin America and Africa has found two contradictory effects. Remittances can increase recipients’ capacity for political participation by providing them with greater economic resources. But remittances may also reduce the incentive for political participation by lessening the importance of the domestic economy to the livelihood of recipients. Using survey data from Arab Barometer, I show that remittances are associated with a greater likelihood of engaging in non-electoral political activities, including protests, strikes and contacting elected officials, and (to a smaller extent) with electoral participation. To explore the relationship between remittances and political participation in greater depth, I report the results of interviews with 54 remittance-receiving families in Jordan and Tunisia. This qualitative evidence suggests that the greater relative economic security offered by remittances allows recipients to devote more resources, particularly time, to civic and political participation. The interviews also revealed a strong conditioning effect of gender: women are more likely to use remittances to donate time and money to non-political civil society organisations, while men are more likely to use remittances to conduct explicitly political activities.