I begin the analysis of oil-financed institutionalized practices with a focus on government transfers and subsidies, highlighting the variation in access to resources in Gulf monarchies. I describe various types of transfers: 1) universal – those, such as free health care and subsidized household utilities, which all citizens enjoy; 2) particularist – those which are extended to specific communities – as in allowances to members of tribes or royal families and contracts to business elites; 3) idiosyncratic – as in funds to men to assist with their marriage expenses. I note changes to government distributions from mid-2014 and the oil price downturn. I then explore matters of equity and exclusion, highlighting those social categories who are privileged and those who are discriminated against in access to distributions in these states. I argue that the hierarchization of society and the related variation in access to resources are both integral to the shaping of the national community and a means for the state to exercise control insofar as key social categories are appeased via the relative marginalization of others.

I consider how Gulf Arabs evaluate their government’s behavior relative to the circulation of wealth. On the basis of roughly 350 interviews in the four countries with scholars, economists, dissidents, bankers, members of government, representatives of public and private foundations and NGOs and official and independent ‘ulama, I summarize their views, quoting from their responses to a set of questions and sharing the evidence they provide. I note the extent to which my interlocutors criticize their rulers in ethical terms, especially insofar as their commitment to social justice, equity and inclusion is concerned. In short, they confirm that there is no genuine concern for equity in the distribution of resources, and no indication that religious norms are integrated into this domain of governance. Rather, fairly narrow political and material interests prevail. Then, I briefly describe episodes of resistance to Gulf rulers from religious forces in society. The aim is twofold: to demonstrate how they too instrumentalize Islam for political capital and how rulers respond to the challenge they face from the religious field.

This chapter focuses on the complex relationships between Gaza’s urban elite and the rural population around the city, especially the network of villages in the Subdistrict (kaza) of Gaza. It discusses the composition of the rural population and the ethnic, social, and economic barriers between them including peasants, Bedouins and Egyptians, the involvement of the rural population in urban politics and its alignment with rival coalitions within the city, and the complex relationships with Bedouin groups in the city’s vicinity and farther away.

This chapter examines Gaza’s socio-spatial organization and the demographic features of its population. It presents Gaza’s main urban features during the late Ottoman period, including divisions into neighborhoods, main landmarks and thoroughfares. It then offers an in-depth portrayal of Gazan society, including data on economy and lifestyles, social hierarchies, marriage patterns, migration and health, based on a detailed analysis of the Ottoman census of 1905 and surviving court records (1857–1861), in light of evidence from the literature, maps and images.

In discussing Islamic banking and finance (IBF), I first provide a brief overview of its development in Gulf monarchies, before turning to an investigation of particularities of its form and substance. I address a set of issues related to, on the one hand, the adoption, governance and regulation of IBF and on the other hand, the conformity of its practice with its alleged purposes. My aim is to uncover the actual goals of IBF, that has become prominent in the Gulf (and in the global economy) in recent decades. The analysis shows that IBF is a means for regimes to both appease their restive populations and respond positively to the material interests of key segments of society. Thus, ruling priorities related to enrichment and social management cohere; these are the principal purposes, even though ruling elites cloak their intentions in religiosity and ethical commitments. Like the other institutionalized practices discussed in this book, IBF represents the conjoined instrumentalization of (oil) wealth and Islamic doctrine for the sake of social control, and beyond that, the ongoing political domination and material enrichment of the royal family.

In March 2022, a couple of months after Kais Saied’s coup, I met Samia Driss, a leader of Ennahda in France whose trajectory we have followed throughout the preceding pages. I met her at the Place de la République in the centre of Paris, where many demonstrations took place during Ben Ali’s regime and where a new protest to oppose Kais Saied’s ascent to power was about to happen after several that had taken place over the previous months. Indeed, on 25 July 2021, the highly symbolic date of the proclamation of the Tunisian Republic, President Saied announced a state of emergency in Tunisia, suspended the Assembly and dismissed the prime minister. He then placed all powers under his control, with some initial popular support. Exactly a year later, he organised a constitutional referendum to replace the January 2014 Constitution.

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.