Transnational Relationships and Political Engagement between Arab Youth and Migrants

Research over the last decades has shown that migrants sustain strong social, cultural and political relationships with their homeland, and that over time these relationships may strongly influence societies of origin. As a result of these relationships, migrants share and introduce new ideas, practices, values, skills and identities to their social networks abroad. Although these relationships have been extensively analysed, the vast majority of studies focused on understanding these activities, identifying the actors and the effects on the country of origin. In this paper we study the effect the relationships with emigrants have on the perception of young people in Arab Mediterranean countries. In particular, we focus on how the perception of living in a society of emigration or having emigrant family members or friends affects youth political engagement, measuring by political attitudes, political participation and political interest. We therefore analyse the extensive, unpublished data from the SAHWA Youth Survey (2016), which contains answers of 10,000 young people from Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. Preliminary results show that there is not a significant relation between contacts abroad and political engagement. Firstly, in Arab Mediterranean countries migrants do not seem to act as agents when we focus on contact with people. Secondly, in the same manner young people with contacts abroad, mainly relatives and friends, are not more political engaged than people without.