Tunisian leftists and Islamists were active in fighting Ben Ali’s authoritarian regime, but several of them were also at the forefront of organisations that were concerned with immigrant politics. These were as much related to the French Muslim field as they were to the working and living conditions of immigrants and the fight for social and political equality. Chapter 5 therefore explores the articulation between different types of engagement, as well as the continuity, complementarity and simultaneity of activism in the fields of immigrant and homeland politics. The chapter also looks at the tensions and dissonances that resulted from those two faces of activism. The comparison between Tunisian leftists and Islamists shows how various activists found themselves facing different rules in the field of immigrant politics and how they negotiated these rules in the face of the unequal accumulation of material and symbolic resources. The chapter shows how new perspectives should be considered in order to fully understand Tunisian politics in France, and how ideological and class dimensions sometimes superseded the pro- or anti-regime cleavages.

Chapter 3 explores how the host state (France) and the home state (Tunisia) influenced the possibilities, nature and forms of pro- and anti-regime activism. It shows how the trans-state space of mobilisation should be understood in the light of the diverse and dynamic opportunities and constraints it offered. It first examines the ways in which the Tunisian system of control – the politics of encadrement – worked from afar, and shows how this system was characterised by a dialectic of assistance and surveillance. Through social and cultural encadrement, as well as surveillance, propaganda and a pervasive sense of threat, the Tunisian party-state succeeded in constraining Tunisian anti-regime mobilisation while simultaneously facing difficulties in encouraging support and pro-regime action in France. The chapter also looks at the ways in which the French authorities managed the different groups, from a diplomatic approach towards Ben Ali’s party-state to a securitised approach towards Islamists and a tendency towards indifference to the leftist movements.

Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical and empirical background to the study of long-distance Tunisian activism as well as the guiding questions on which the book rests: What were the conditions that enabled Tunisian politics in France? How do we explain what it meant to oppose or support an authoritarian regime from afar in terms of reconfiguring this activism in a migratory context? The chapter begins by discussing the choice to examine the Tunisian case in France and situates the study as part of the broader political, economic and migratory relationships between the two countries. The chapter then presents the theoretical framework underlying that universe of political practice, namely ‘the trans-state space of mobilisation’, which I locate at the intersection of scholarship on North African politics, social movements and diaspora politics. It concludes by outlining the issues involved in undertaking fieldwork in the wake of the 2011 Revolution and introduces the material on which this book draws.

Chapter 6 focusses on the different forms of cross-ideological alliances between Islamist and leftist movements that were made to oppose the authoritarian regime. Far from romanticising those experiences into the clichéd concept of good opponents all coming together to fight the authoritarian regime, the chapter demonstrates instead how building cross-ideological alliances provoked ruptures and crystallised dissension within the constellations of actors themselves. It also shows how specific organisations and actors, mobilised on several scenes, came to play different roles in those alliances. The chapter goes on to demonstrate how each constellation of actors also maintained its own spaces of sociability and its own networks. Long-distance activism entailed other forms of activities that were turned towards group members in order to maintain activist groups despite their members’ new political lives in exile. Both Islamists and leftists worked to preserve their communities and to ensure the continuity of activism, albeit in different ways.

Chapter 4 explores the nature of anti-Ben Ali politics from afar. It focusses on the field of homeland politics by investigating the modalities, frames and repertoires of action used by activists who fought the authoritarian regime. The chapter highlights the ambivalent logic underlying the use of human rights, which became the main frame of contention for the various actors. For pro-regime actors, the human rights frame was paradoxically a way of legitimising the regime abroad; for Islamists, the activation of a discourse on human rights appeared as a way of circumventing the distrust to which they were habitually subjected in France; and for leftists, human rights stood as a rallying point, because fighting the Ben Ali regime during this period meant embracing the Islamists as a matter of necessity, as they were main victims of repression. The chapter goes on to investigate two further lines of cleavage that are crucial to the full understanding of long-distance Tunisian opposition politics. These lines offer a framework that determined means of action in terms of relationships with the Islamists and the degree of rupture with the Tunisian authoritarian regime.

This concluding chapter looks back at the main findings that emerged from this research and shows how they explain the transformation of long-distance Tunisian politics in the aftermath of the 2011 Revolution. It asks how the anti- and pro-regime struggles evolved following the demise of the central purpose of these struggles and the movements they inspired, and looks at the ways in which boundaries were redefined through different fields of action and the growth of new divisions. The emergence of new actors, the political reconversion of those who had shifted to Tunisian-centred politics, new rules of the game and the various possibilities of return to Tunisia each played a role in redefining the modalities of long-distance Tunisian politics. However, decades of activism had regulated the practice of activists from afar and reinforced the informal rules of the trans-state space of mobilisation. The 2011 Revolution simultaneously represented a decisive rupture and a continuity, reshaping and continuing to reshape the dynamics of the trans-state space of mobilisation.

Chapter 2 redraws the genealogies and characteristics of the different players involved in long-distance Tunisian activism. These various constellations of actors were pro-regime, Islamist, leftist and trans-ideological, and they created political parties, associations or other movements within which to conduct their politics in the trans-state space of mobilisation. This space represented a political and relational battleground on which the position of each actor played a role. The chapter shows how Tunisian activists were able to politically survive despite distance from the homeland, and the extent to which they were able to adapt to new configurations to continue their activism. The organisation of long-distance Tunisian politics assumed a specific and complex configuration in the French environment, so it cannot be considered as a simple replication of Tunisian politics.