Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the transnational political practices of the Congolese diaspora and its impact on home and host country politics.

Paper long abstract:

Whereas most African countries formally allow their emigrants to take part in home country elections from abroad, the Congo-DRC finds itself in a peculiar situation. Citizens living abroad are not entitled to take part in Congolese elections from abroad but a significant number of Congolese Parliamentarians hold multiple nationalities and are themselves (former) emigrants.

In this paper, we first propose to examine why and how the diaspora has been prevented to this date to take part in home country elections from abroad. To do so, we shall rely on existing works on external voting which relate the development of external voting to processes of democratic transition (Escobar 2007) and to dependency of sending states on emigrant resources (Lafleur 2011). Through an analysis of the legal and political arguments used in this debate, we will shed light on the concerns among Congolese ruling elites that the diaspora might be able to influence electoral results.

In the second part of the paper, we argue that the absence of formal voting rights do not prevent the diaspora from exercising strong influence on the home country politics. To do so, we will refer on the literature on transnational political participation and diaspora politics which has experienced a dramatic increase over the past decade. Looking at the case study of the 2011 Presidential election and relying on ten years of field research with the Congolese Diaspora, we will demonstrate how local and radical movement of pressure managed to transform their small-scale movement into a transnational mobilization.