Between illegitimacy and impossibility to participate: shifting forms of participation of Syrian and Moroccan communities in Belgium during 2021 elections

2021 saw two important electoral moments for Syrian and Moroccan communities in Belgium: in May, the Syrian population was asked to participate in the presidential election that would confirm or not Bashar al-Assad’s new mandate. In September, one of the most ambitious electoral appointments was organized in Morocco, but members of the diaspora were not able to vote from abroad. While the international interest tends to present Syrian elections as illegitimate with Syrian electoral participation mostly seen as an impossibility to act on the system, Moroccan non-voting is mostly presented as an impossibility to participate from abroad and neglected in transnational electoral studies. This interpretation assumes that exit and voice (Hirschmann. 1982) are rather mutually exclusive. In addition, literature tends to question distance voting (Tager 2006, Ahanda 2015) as transnational practices and institutionalised forms of participation to apprehend political transformations in the home country (Jaulin & Smith. 2015/4). On the contrary, in one way this contribution problematizes the dichotomy between exit and voice, by considering further manners of taking part in the electoral moment. In another way, it suggests shifting patterns to question political participation from abroad, by going beyond the formal frame of electoral outcomes and political representation. In particular, we suggest to use the 2021 call for participation as a moment to question how those who leave could be at the center of the analysis of political processes in the sending countries. To support this idea, we critically examine the relationship between voice and exit through what we conceive as tones of voices. In particular, tones of voices show different ways of taking part in the national election beyond institutional electoral participation. Entrepreneurship, resistance, negotiation or derision are some examples of the multiplicity of behaviours that should be read as analytical lenses to explore forms of participation in a national moment as well fronts of participation in the transnational community. Based on an analysis of qualitative fieldwork results (participant observation and 15 semi-structured interviews), this contribution emphasizes the singularities of the Syrian and Moroccan communities in Belgium. On the one hand, it allows to apprehend electoral/political participation beyond the vote as articulating the local political arena in Belgium and the political, economic and social dimensions of the country of origin. On the other hand, it contributes to studying the political participation of Syrian and Moroccan communities beyond national frames.