Transnational childhood and adolescence: mobilizing Sahrawi identity and politics across time and...

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Transnational childhood andadolescence: mobilizing Sahrawiidentity and politics across timeand spaceElena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

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To cite this article: Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2012): Transnational childhood andadolescence: mobilizing Sahrawi identity and politics across time and space, Ethnic andRacial Studies, DOI:10.1080/01419870.2011.631557

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Transnational childhood and adolescence:

mobilizing Sahrawi identity and politics

across time and space

Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

(First submission June 2010; First published January 2012)

AbstractThis paper proposes the importance of examining not only how and whendiasporas are mobilized by political brokers, but also which members ofdiasporic populations are strategically engaged both according to theirown characteristics (including their age) and the nature of their diasporichosting context. It explores how Sahrawi refugee children and youth inthe Algeria-based Sahrawi refugee camps, Cuba, Syria and in Spain havebeen mobilized by their political representatives (Polisario), asking whyparticular cohorts of youth have been actively encouraged to promoteand protect ‘the Sahrawi cause’, while other members of the diasporahave not. Drawing on a framework that facilitates comparison bothwithin and across cases, the paper argues that a combination of factorsinfluence the extent to which the Polisario is able and interestedin activating the support of Sahrawi children and youth, includingthe characteristics of the students themselves, their position within therespective host contexts, and the space and resources available to thePolisario/SADR in each location.

Keywords: Children; diasporic identity; refugees; youth; Sahrawi; transnational

mobilization.

Introduction

A growing body of literature examines the roles played by diasporic1

groups in situations characterized by, or with a potential for, conflict.These transnational groups have variously been identified as poten-tially initiating, exacerbating, mediating or resolving conflicts (Collierand Hoeffler 2000; Adamson 2004, 2006; Lyons 2006; Smith and Stares

Ethnic and Racial Studies 2012 pp. 1�21, iFirst Article

# 2012 Taylor & FrancisISSN 0141-9870 print/1466-4356 onlinehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.631557

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.631557

2007). Importantly, diasporic identity is not a ‘reified entity’, but isconstructed via a range of transnational processes that lead to thecreation and negotiation of a common sense of self (Adamson 2010).Much of the existing literature therefore highlights diasporic elites’roles in establishing and maintaining transnational networks acrosstime and space.

Adamson (2010) proposes a core of mechanisms that could providea common framework to enable a systematic comparison of themobilization of diasporic communities in different geopolitical andhistorical contexts, thereby establishing under which circumstancescertain diasporas may or may not respond to calls for their political,economic and military involvement in their ‘home’ context. Thesemechanisms include: transnational brokerage by ‘transnational poli-tical entrepreneurs’ who implement strategies designed to activatediasporas’ direct involvement in the politics of their ‘home state’;strategic framing, which I interpret as the discursive means throughwhich political elites mobilize the support of their diasporic audi-ence(s), convincing them of the justifiability and necessity of theirinvolvement in various types of collective action; the financial ormaterial resource mobilization of diasporic groups by transnationalelites, which may maximize the group’s ability to act independently ofand challenge other actors; and lobbying and persuasion, throughwhich political elites obtain the commitment of non-diasporic actors(such as western states or regional organizations), who in turn mayoffer political, material and/or military support to the ‘cause’.

While these mechanisms undoubtedly provide a fruitful means ofcomparing across cases, a highly significant set of questions remainunanswered: which members of a given diasporic population areidentified by transnational political entrepreneurs as being worthmobilizing? Concurrently, why do certain members of a diasporiccommunity accede to these processes of mobilization, while othersresist or disengage from such attempts? Indeed, while even liberalinternational relations theory has traditionally attached less weight tothe position of the individual in society than does either history oranthropology (Grant 1991), and realist state-centric assumptionsrender gender relations invisible (Steans 2006), one of this paper’sfounding premises is that individual members of a given diasporiccommunity may be mobilized in different ways and to different effectsby transnational political actors according to a range of factorsincluding their gender,2 age and location.

A key defining feature of ‘diasporic’ populations is that they are notonly dispersed from their original homeland, but that they ensure thesurvival and strengthening of a common and collective intergenera-tional memory of and commitment to their and their ancestors’place of origin (see Safran 1991; Cohen 1997). However, although

2 Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

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diaspora studies implicitly centralize intergenerational dynamics, thediverse ways in which children and youth ‘inherit’, contest andnegotiate diasporic identities have infrequently been examined.Filling a significant gap in the literature, this paper analyses thetrans-generational mobilization of a refugee diaspora by exploringunder which circumstances children and youth who live apart fromtheir families may be strategically politicized by transnational actorsof the older generation. Rather than assuming that social contracts,including those between members of diasporic groups and politicalrepresentatives, are entered into, ‘seemingly, by orphans who havereared themselves, whose desires are situated within and reflectnothing but independently generated movement’ (Di Stefano cited inSylvester 1992, p. 89), such a focus allows us to interrogate the extentto which transnational childhood and adolescence may facilitate orimpede the mobilization of diasporic (and, indeed, non-diasporic)support for nationalist political projects.

A case study of the multi-sited mobilization of Sahrawi3 refugeechildren and youth allows us to explore how and why particularactivities and forms of engagement have been promoted by theSahrawi’s political elite (Polisario), and why certain members of adiasporic community may be mobilized while others are marginalized.Concretely, the paper examines how and why Sahrawi refugee youthhave been mobilized by the Polisario since the refugee camps’ estab-lishment in late 1975, and is informed by over 100 semi-structuredinterviews conducted between 2002 and 2009 with Sahrawi refugees inthe Algeria-based Sahrawi refugee camps (home to approximately155,000 refugees) and in Cuba, Syria and Spain, where youth oftenspend up to a decade studying without contact with their families in therefugee camps (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009a).4 These interviews wereconducted as part of a broader research project that explores thenature and implications of a variety of transnational humanitarian andpolitical networks designed to support both the Sahrawi refugee campsand their inhabitants, and the Sahrawis’ political project for self-determination (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009a, 2010b, 2011a).

Although numerous ‘educational hosting countries’ have offeredthousands of Sahrawi refugee children the opportunity to studyoutside of the camps (including Libya and Qatar), in this paper Iexamine the mobilization of Sahrawi youth in Cuba, Spain and Syria,while recognizing the need for further research to be conducted on themobilization of youth in other locations. The forms and levels ofmobilization of each group in these situations will be compared withthe Polisario/SADR’s approach to youth within the refugee campsthemselves.

These sites were selected since they represent highly diverse geopo-litical contexts and authority structures (ranging from authoritarian to

Transnational childhood and adolescence 3

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democratic), and have widely divergent histories and modes ofproviding support to Sahrawi refugee children. Furthermore, thePolisario/SADR plays a significantly different role in each location,having small informal representative offices in Spain and Syria, well-established embassies and diplomatic relations in Cuba, while enjoying‘de facto administration’ over the Algeria-based Sahrawi refugee camps.Of these four locations, the largest proportion of Sahrawi boys and girlshave received primary and secondary educations within the Algeria-based refugee camps themselves, followed by Spain, Cuba and thenSyria. Although no reliable statistics exist vis-a-vis the number ofchildren/youth who have completed their primary, secondary andtertiary studies in Spain, the number is in the thousands (Chatty,Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Crivello, 2010). Regarding Cuba, it is estimatedthat over 4,000 students have graduated from secondary and tertiarylevel institutions since 1975; while the United Nations High Commis-sioner for Refugees (UNHCR) documented the presence of over 1,400Sahrawi refugees in Cuba in 1995 (UNCHR 2000), at the time of myresearch in 2006 fewer than 300 students remained. Syria accounts forthe smallest number of Sahrawi graduates, being the only location tosolely offer a university education to young men; in the past, up to fortystudents a year were enrolled in Syrian universities, while only twelvewere present in 2007 (Chatty, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Crivello, 2010).5

By comparing the Polisario’s approaches to Sahrawi youth dispersedacross the four milieu, three main questions are therefore addressed:(1) how the Polisario has mobilized Sahrawi youth in each site; (2) whyparticular cohorts of youth have been actively encouraged to promoteand protect ‘the Sahrawi cause’ while other members of the diasporahave not; and (3) why the Polisario has prioritized non-violent modesof engagement alone in each site, rather than other strategic processes,including enacting or funding armed activities.

I propose that the characteristics of both the hosting sitesthemselves and of the Sahrawi youth cohort directly influence thetype of mobilization that is both feasible and desirable; thesecharacteristics include the number of youth, the type of accommoda-tion and dependence upon the Polisario. Countering Collier andHoeffler’s (2001, p. 11) (by now widely discredited6) assumption thatdiasporas can be expected to ‘increase the provision of finance forrebellion’ because they are ‘usually much richer than the populationsin their [location] of origin’, I explore the roles played by Cuba- andSyria-based Sahrawi who are undoubtedly ‘poorer’ than thoseindividuals who remain in the camps. I contrast the modes ofmobilization amongst these ‘poorer’ groups, which are housed ingroup accommodation overseen by Sahrawi ‘monitors’, with those ofthe ‘richer’ groups located in Spain who are individually fostered bySpanish families across the country. In so doing, I address the multiple


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reasons why Spain-based Sahrawi have, as a whole, not beenfinancially or politically activated by the Polisario. More specifically,I propose that the Polisario’s success in securing political and materialsupport from Spanish civil society (the former colonial power) hasreduced both the necessity of harnessing the contributions of theSahrawi diaspora in Spain, and simultaneously the probability of areturn to armed conflict against Morocco. The widespread nature, andparticular foundation, of western support for the ‘Sahrawi cause’ hasthus rendered violent strategies of diaspora mobilization ‘unthink-able’, thereby directing the forms of political and discursive engage-ment between the Polisario, ‘its’ diasporic community, and powerfulstate and non-state actors.

A brief history of the conflict

The Western Sahara became a Spanish colony in 1884�5, with theUnited Nations Decolonization Committee’s first resolution on theterritory adopted in October 1964. In May 1973, the main liberationmovement, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguiat El-Hamray Rıo de Oro (Polisario Front) was founded, initially resisting Spanishcolonialism, and subsequently Moroccan and Mauritanian claims overthe territory. The armed conflict between Morocco, Mauritania andthe Polisario intensified from late 1975, and a mass exodus began, firstto other parts of the territory, and later, following the Moroccanbombardment of these first encampments with napalm and phosphatebombs, to the nascent Algeria-based refugee camps near the territory’sborder with that country.7

Spain officially withdrew from its colony and unilaterally declaredthat it was no longer the administrating power on 26 February 1976;a day later, the armed Polisario proclaimed the birth of the SahrawiArab Democratic Republic (SADR), with the Polisario/SADR con-tinuing to govern the Sahrawi refugee camps and its population as a‘state in exile’.8 Bilateral and multilateral political conflicts ensuedbetween states that lobbied in favour of the Polisario/SADR’s strugglefor independence and those that did not. Following intensive lobbyingat the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in favour of the Polisario/SADR, Morocco suspended its membership in 1982 and officiallywithdrew in 1984 after that organization recognized the SADR. Inaddition to being a full member of the OAU (now the African Union),over seventy non-European countries including Algeria and Cubahave since then established full diplomatic relations with the SADR.

Throughout the political negotiations to resolve the conflict, armedconflict continued between the Polisario and Morocco9 until the OAUand the UN brokered a ceasefire in 1988. In 1991, the UN Mission forthe Referendum in Western Sahara was created and mandated to


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organize and hold a referendum for self-determination. Although thereferendum has yet to be held, the ceasefire has been observed sincethen. The reported discovery of offshore oil reserves has increasedwidespread geopolitical interest in the region while simultaneouslydecreasing the likelihood of the referendum being held.

The Sahrawi refugee camps

Upon the camps’ establishment, the Polisario/SADR redistributedrefugees between four camps ‘in order to break down tribalism’(Mercer 1979, p. 19) and to create allegiances to the Polisario/SADR’snewly defined ‘Sahrawi nation’. The Polisario/SADR prohibited theusage of tribal identifiers (Caratini 2000) and displaced the power oftraditional tribal elders by asserting control over its ‘refugee-citizens’through the development of its own constitution, police force, armyand parallel state and religious legal systems. Despite being almostentirely dependent upon externally provided humanitarian supplies,the Polisario/SADR remains ‘the only authority with which campresidents have regular contact’, with the Algerian government having‘ceded de facto administration’ to the Polisario/SADR (Human RightsWatch 2008, p. 9).

A universal, obligatory and ‘secular education system’ was created inthe 1970s by the Polisario/SADR to ‘constitute a modern society’(Gimeno-Martın and Laman 2005, p. 23, my translation) led byeducated men and women who could ensure the self-sufficiency of ‘theSahrawi nation’. Indeed, a wealth of literature from the 1960s onwardshas explored the role of education and mass-schooling in (re)creatingnational identity and identification.10 Sahrawi children currently attendtwenty-nine primary schools and twenty-five preschool centres in thecamps (UNHCR 2006); although two ‘national’ secondary-levelboarding schools existed until recently, only one has been functioningsince floods destroyed the other in 2006. Supplementing this camp-based education system, in 1976 the SADR formally requested thatfriendly countries welcome Sahrawi children to educate them abroad(Velloso de Santisteban 1993). This initiative led to a major transna-tional education programme that continues to date, and that hasinvolved the separation of thousands of Sahrawi children and youthfrom their families and broader refugee community for periods of up to(and sometimes over) ten years (Chatty, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh andCrivello 2010; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2011b).

Transnational adolescence and the mobilization of the Sahrawi ‘self ’

While families and immediate social environments often provide thestrongest forms of guidance during childhood, the structural reality of


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the camps and the Polisario/SADR’s struggle for ‘national’ indepen-dence led to a major shift in supervisory roles from families to ‘thestate’. As a result, children were separated from their families andhome camps at an early age, with such separations continuingthroughout children’s formative years, and often extending beyondadolescence (Chatty, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Crivello 2010). Althoughone reason for this separation was to provide an education in a hostileexilic context, withdrawing children from families also strengthenedthe Polisario/SADR’s power over the younger generation(s), creatingan ideal space from which to teach children about the significance ofthe war against Morocco, of the particularities of Sahrawi history and‘national identity’, and of their role in the future of the state.

The separation of children from their parents and broader com-munity has therefore presented the Polisario/SADR with numerouschallenges and opportunities with regards to political mobilization.Sahrawi youth’s physical mobility for educational purposes has thusbeen paralleled by the development of mechanisms designed to ensurethat youth remain connected to the protracted refugee context and thePolisario/SADR’s political aims. I now address the ways in which thePolisario/SADR has mobilized the ideological and political support ofthese widely dispersed young Sahrawi for ‘the cause’. I do so bybroadly following the framework advocated by Adamson (2010) toenable the systematic comparison of the mobilization of diasporiccommunities in different geopolitical and historical contexts, focusingin turn on transnational brokerage, strategic framing, resourcemobilization and lobbying and persuasion.11

Transnational brokerage by the Polisario/SADR

The Polisario/SADR’s ability to create and sustain connections withSahrawi youth has varied widely according to factors including thenumber of youth dispersed in each location, the accommodationsystems and authority structures in place, the position granted to thePolisario by each state, and the period of time refugees have spentwithout returning to the camps. In essence, although the Polisario/SADR has effectively instigated the support of youth based in Cubaand Syria, and has ensured that children and youth are exposed tonationalist messages via the closely controlled camp-based educationsystem, it has largely marginalized those based in Spain for reasonsexplored in subsequent sections.

Sahrawi refugees typically arrived in Cuba at the age of eleven ortwelve, completing their secondary educations in ‘nationality based’boarding schools in Cuba’s Island of Youth,12 before starting theirgraduate studies in Cuba. In total, students often spent over fifteenyears in Cuba, returning only infrequently if at all to the camps during


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that time. In the Island of Youth, Sahrawi refugees effectivelystudied and lived among other Sahrawi in isolation from both their‘home’ context (the camps) and their ‘host’ context. Indeed, Cubanauthorities designed the boarding schools to strengthen non-Cubanstudents’ ‘national’ ties, and to maximize the provision of a culturallyrelevant education tailored to the students’ ‘home’ context, on theexplicit agreement that graduates would return to work in the campsupon graduation.

In this scenario, a key role has been played by male Sahrawi‘monitors’ who have accompanied the students, living with them andsharing responsibility for their care with the aim of ‘helping theadolescents to preserve their linguistic and cultural identity’ (UNHCR2003, p. 49). The Sahrawi ‘monitors’ who supervised their childhoodsand adolescence in Cuba both physically separated youth from theirhost communities and ensured that certain understandings of ‘Sahrawi’identity were transferred to this new generation, protecting the survivalof ‘the Sahrawi nation’ and ‘the Sahrawi cause’. The monitors’ role onthe Island of Youth was closely paralleled by that played by members ofthe SADR Embassy in Havana when youth took up university studiesacross the island. These students have therefore been exposed to aportrayal of the protracted Sahrawi conflict via the only sourcesavailable to them: official Polisario/SADR accounts deriving from their‘monitors’ and SADR Embassy staff.

The isolation of Sahrawi youth from their Cuban host context, theinevitability of eventually returning to the refugee camps and theirdependence upon well-established Polisario/SADR authority figures,is similar to the case of the Syria-based students who equally rely uponthe SADR representative to the Middle East13 for a variety of politicaland material reasons. Throughout my fieldwork in Damascus itemerged that youth have led relatively secluded lives in close proximitywith and dependence on other Sahrawis, including the Polisario/SADR representative, while engaging little with Syrian society. Theseyouth’s dependence upon the Polisario/SADR is considerable since,unlike in Cuba, they do not receive a scholarship from the Syrian state,but only a small allowance from the Polisario/SADR. Visiting thePolisario office guaranteed these students a hot meal, with oneinterviewee stressing that ‘otherwise we’d just eat once a day’. Bysharing accommodation, meeting in the Polisario/SADR office on adaily basis and maintaining a strong dependence on the pre-existingsocial group, Sahrawi youth appeared to have had only limited contactwith Syrian youth or their broader hosting environment.

In circumstances characterized by youth’s long-term separation fromfamily and the broader community of origin, group-based accommo-dation and material dependence upon Polisario/SADR staff, thePolisario’s political elites have successfully mediated with Sahrawi


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youth in Cuba and Syria, transmitting and simultaneously connectingthem with a particular image of their home context. Before turning ingreater detail to the ways in which this image is constructed andtransmitted, it is important to note that the experiences of Spain-basedSahrawi children and youth have been substantially different fromthose of their Cuba- and Syria-educated counterparts. Rather thanliving in group accommodation supervised by established Polisario/SADR monitors within the host context, hundreds of Sahrawi childrenand youth currently live in Spain through fostering arrangements madewith individual Spanish families (Crivello and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2010;Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2010a). Unlike in Cuba and Syria, whose govern-ments explicitly prohibit Sahrawi students from remaining aftergraduation, many of these young people eventually enter the labourmarket in Spain following the completion of their studies, havingsecured individual residency permits in the process.14 In other cases,youth who studied in the camps or elsewhere travel to Spain in order tosend remittances to their families. As a result, thousands of Sahrawiyouth are widely dispersed across Spain, where they are individuallyhoused, rendering it more difficult for the Polisario to address Sahrawiyouth and mobilize their support for the cause, especially since thePolisario has only small, unofficial representational offices across thecountry. Below I will return to a broader range of reasons why thePolisario/SADR has failed to activate youth in either Spain, where itsauthority is dispersed, or in the camps, where both its authority and therefugee population are concentrated.

Strategic framing: ‘travelling discourse’ and material factors

The second mechanism to be explored is that of the ‘strategic framing’utilized by the Polisario/SADR to convince Sahrawi youth of thenecessity and justifiability of their engagement with ‘the cause’. Here,I discuss the ways in which the Polisario/SADR has transmitted animage of the conflict to dispersed Sahrawi youth, identifying how andwhy youth are encouraged to adhere to specific interpretations of thiscontext. I therefore analyse how the Polisario/SADR has encouragedthe development of a common identity and understanding of theconflict among youth located in distant geographical locations andwho have been separated from each other and their families in thecamps for protracted periods of time.

Derived from Said’s notion of ‘travelling theory’ (1983, p. 226), wecould describe these dynamics as embodying a process of ‘travellingdiscourse’, with the mainstream representation of the Sahrawi ‘cause’appearing to have been ‘inherited’ by certain members of the youngergeneration, or at least ‘transferred’ to them by the older elite. We couldthus understand the official Polisario/SADR discourse as having


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travelled both across time � from the old to the new generations � andacross space � from camp-based Sahrawi to those in Cuba and Syria,and simultaneously to non-Sahrawi observers.

The one constant that unites the otherwise different experiences ofyouth in these field sites is the extent to which a fixed narrative aproposthe Sahrawi cause has been transferred to them, including the justnessof the Polisario’s struggle for self-determination; the inviolable integrityof ‘the Sahrawi nation’; and the ‘ideal’, ‘democratic’, ‘secular’ and ‘self-sufficient’ nature of the refugees’ sociopolitical systems in the camps(Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009a). In spite of their geographical separation,the Polisario monitors have ensured the continuation of this narrative,which I refer to elsewhere as the ‘official script’ regarding the WesternSaharan conflict (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009a). In part, the Polisario/SADR’s physical and discursive dominance over the lives of Cuba- andSyria-based youth is common among dormitory settings created for‘marginal’, and especially nomadic, students, where ‘cultural super-visors’ have habitually kept the official image and understanding of theculture at home alive, ensuring that ‘purposive transference’ takes placebetween monitors and students (Dawn Chatty, personal communica-tion, December 2008). In the context under consideration, however, theurgency of ‘purposive transference’ is further magnified within aconflict situation characterized by multi-layered and interwovenstreams of mobility and migration. In Cuba and Syria, the capacityand role played by the Polisario/SADR’s ‘politico-cultural supervisors’have been systematically strengthened by a combination of thefollowing: the Polisario/SADR’s institutional position as diplomatsand ‘officially recognized’ representatives in these countries; thepurposive separation of youth from their host environments; youth’sprolonged separation from their parents and broader community oforigin; youth’s multifaceted dependence upon the Polisario/SADR; andthe particularities of the educational systems in these locations.

The latter point is particularly pertinent given that students havebeen designated to study subjects according to the Polisario/SADR’spriorities. Importantly, the Cuban and Syrian education programmesemerge as being intimately connected with a perpetuation of both thePolisario/SADR’s political cadre and the terms of the official rhetoric(the strategic frame itself), with many students being directly encour-aged to become involved with the Polisario/SADR system whileabroad. The longer-term continuity of the official Polisario/SADRrepresentation of the conflict can thus be ensured since these studentshabitually take on significant roles upon their return to the camps,either in ministerial or diplomatic positions, or through ‘accompany-ing’ and interpreting for western visitors to the camps. In effect, theuniversity theses written by Sahrawi students in Cuba in the 1980s and1990s reflected that Humanities and Social Science students were in


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many respects being ‘taught the script’ in order to represent thePolisario/SADR cause (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009a).

Indeed, while studying abroad Sahrawi youth may decide to jointhe official system not solely due to their political conviction andprincipled support for ‘the cause’, but also as a result of the ad-vantages that arise from taking part in Polisario-sponsored activities.For instance, four interviewees in Havana in 2006 had recentlytravelled to Venezuela to participate in an international youthconference. It emerged that they were all direct relatives of keyPolisario/SADR members, suggesting not only the extent to whichfamily connections influence the opportunities offered to refugeeyouth, but also the benefits of remaining closely aligned to the officialpolitical and diplomatic structure. In Syria, those young men whoindicated that they were student representatives or were interested inbecoming Polisario/SADR diplomats, had all reportedly returned tothe camps more frequently than those who remained on the margins ofpolitics. Both in Syria and in Cuba, at least two students who hadagreed to represent their fellow students had reportedly received freetickets to attend Polisario/SADR conferences in the camps. As such, acombination of material and travel-related awards has directly andindirectly encouraged students to stay close to the official stance andterms pertaining to the Sahrawi cause.

In contrast to youth’s experiences in Cuba and Syria, those Sahrawieducated in Spain have been individually fostered by Spanish familiesrather than placed under the direct ‘responsibility’, and thus control,of Polisario/SADR representatives. Although the Polisario/SADR andits affiliated Youth Union regularly organize public events acrossSpain and thereby ensure that Sahrawi youth are exposed to similaraccounts of the conflict and conditions in the camps, the potential toaccess divergent approaches to the conflict nonetheless exists, not leastfrom Moroccans living in Spain and written materials produced bySpaniards, Moroccans and Sahrawis alike.15 The fragmented nature ofPolisario’s authority over youth in Spain, and its inability to maintaina monopoly over the provision of information as it does in Cuba, Syriaor the camps themselves, ultimately influences the Polisario’s capacityto activate Sahrawi youth’s involvement with ‘the cause’ in thatcontext. However, below I suggest that the mobilization of Sahrawiyouth in Spain is, in fact, not a prime concern for the Polisario eitherin Spain or in the camps.

Resource mobilization

Obtaining resources from/via diasporic populations may form acentral part of a group’s politics of self-sustainability, maximizingthe group’s ability to act independently of, and concurrently to develop


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a strategic challenge to, other actors. Indeed, diasporas’ financialimpact upon their ‘homelands’ has been well-documented aproposfamily focused remittances and direct contributions to political andarmed movements. In the Sahrawi context, however, resource mobi-lization has remained an under-activated mechanism for two reasons:(1) Cuba- and Syria-based students are ‘poorer’ than many individualsin the refugee camps; and (2) the motivation to pursue the ‘richer’diaspora in Spain has been reduced given the Polisario/SADR’ssuccessful mobilization of financial and material support from non-Sahrawi sources.

I have already discussed Sahrawi students’ multifaceted dependenceupon the Polisario/SADR in Syria, where youth are therefore unableto contribute monetarily to the ‘Sahrawi cause’. Although Cuba-basedstudents receive comparatively more generous scholarships from theCuban authorities and therefore do not depend upon the Polisario/SADR to the same extent as their Syria-based counterparts, it isnonetheless infeasible for the Polisario/SADR to receive financialsupport from these youth. Indeed, when I asked Sahrawi studentsabout their arrival in Cuba, they predominantly reflected on theharshness of living on the island and the material difficulties they hadfaced, before addressing cultural or religious issues which were ofconcern to them (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2010b). The extent to whichSahrawi youth focused on scarcity is simultaneously indicative of thelong-standing nature of Cuba’s economic situation (characterized bythe US-led embargo), students’ expectations regarding life on theisland, and the differences in living conditions that they believe existbetween Cuba and the Sahrawi camps. Indeed, as explored elsewhere(Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2010b) it is paradoxical to note the frequency withwhich Sahrawi students stated that material conditions in the campswere ‘better’ than in Cuba, despite having been sent to study in Cubadue to the limited infrastructure in the camps.

The implication of students’ situations in Cuba and Syria is thatyouth have been unable to contribute financially to the Sahrawi causevia family-based remittances or contributions to the Polisario/SADR’spolitico-military project. Conversely, Sahrawi youth who live and workin Spain are generally in a considerably stronger material positionthan those living in Cuba, Syria or the camps, and many of theseindividuals contribute to the growing camp economy by forwardingremittances to their families.

However, despite their relative wealth, the absence of diasporic, asopposed to Spanish, organizations in Spain that channel material and/or political support to the ‘Sahrawi cause’ is notable. Indeed, whileSahrawi youth are clearly present as a ‘group’ of individuals inSpain, it is not possible to speak of a Sahrawi ‘community’ or of aninterconnected network of youth united around a common sense of


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identity or set of political values/aims as is the case in Cuba andSyria. In effect, the Polisario/SADR has failed to unite ‘its’ diasporicyouth in Spain as it has elsewhere, with the reasons behind this absenceof diasporic unification including those documented above (theparticular characteristics of each hosting context, the number ofstudents in each location, the form of accommodation, and the degreeof the Polisario/SADR’s control over students and various resources).An additional reason for this absence is simultaneously related to thenature of interactions between the Polisario/SADR and youth in thecamps; the Polisario/SADR and Spaniards; and Spaniards and Sahrawiyouth. My argument is that where the fourth mechanism highlighted byAdamson (2010) (lobbying and persuasion) has been successfullyimplemented outside of the ‘home’ context, there may be no need fortransnational brokers to activate diasporic economic or materialmobilization, since non-diasporic investment will have already beensecured.

Lobbying and persuasion: diasporic youth and the ‘materialization’of support

While broadly conceptualized by Adamson (2010) as separate mechan-isms, in this case the marketing of strategic frames by transnationalbrokers is intimately related to the final mechanism: lobbying andpersuasion. In this final section I argue that non-diasporic actors, inparticular Spanish civil society and Spanish non-governmental orga-nizations (NGOs), are the main audience that has been mobilized bythe Polisario/SADRoutside, and indeed inside the camps. The principalsuccess of the Polisario/SADR has thus been to convince its externalaudience, rather than members of ‘its’ diaspora, to contributefinancially or to lobby politically for a resolution to this protractedconflict. Importantly, however, the Polisario/SADR’s success in lobby-ing and persuading western observers to support the ‘Sahrawi cause’ isnot simply an example of non-diasporic actors substituting the supportthat could have potentially been provided by Sahrawi youth, but ratherdemonstrates diasporic youth’s ambivalent position with regards to thePolisario/SADR. While unable to provide financial or materialresources in support of ‘the cause’, Sahrawi youth have nonethelessbeen successfully activated by the Polisario/SADR to ‘materialize’ thenational script as part of the organization’s ‘international publicrelations’ strategy. Importantly, children and different groups of youthare called upon to fulfil different functions to ensure the continuationof this script and thus secure Spanish support for ‘the cause’. YoungSahrawis’ apparent compliance with the Polisario/SADR’s nationalscript in turn needs to be analysed, bearing both material and politicalmotivations in mind.


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Spanish support for ‘the cause’

Although Spain has not formally recognized the Polisario/SADR,largely due to its strategic relationship with Morocco over immigrationand security-related issues (Lacomba and Boni 2008), highly signifi-cant forms of direct political and humanitarian support are offered bythe Sahrawi’s former colonial power (Crivello, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh andChatty 2005; Crivello and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2010; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh2009). The funds provided by these civil society groups and officialinstitutions to complete projects in the camps are directly channelledto the Polisario/SADR, with the SADR’s camp-based ministriesimplementing these projects with minimal external intervention orsupervision (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009a).

Such high levels of support have strengthened the Polisario/SADR’sresolve to ensure these groups’ continued involvement in promoting‘the cause’. This leads us to ask how such support has been instigatedand how it is maintained, despite claims of the Polisario/SADR’s‘corruption’ and mismanagement of funds (e.g. Garcıa 2001). Ratherthan conceptualizing ‘lobbying and persuasion’ and ‘strategic framing’as two separate mechanisms, I therefore argue that these intersect innumerous ways, and can usefully be analysed in conjunction. Themechanisms that Adamson (2010) identifies by drawing on socialmovement theory are also recognized, if differently labelled, by therefugee studies and development studies literatures. Hence, Harrell-Bond (1999, p. 151) stresses that ‘most refugees are able to infer’ that inorder to be ‘successful in obtaining aid’ and gaining ‘the approval of thehelper’, one of ‘the most effective survival strategies’ is to ‘ingratiatethemselves’ with aid providers. Within development studies morebroadly, analysts are increasingly documenting how multiple forms ofdependence on externally provided aid have directly impacted the waysin which recipients ‘market’ themselves to their ‘providers’ (Bob 2005).

In line with these approaches, I argue that the Polisario/SADR hasidentified which claims may best ‘persuade’ different audiences tosupport it, and has strategically mobilized these ‘strategic frames’accordingly. Concretely, the camps are revealed to be dependent not on‘unconditional solidarity’ but rather on ‘conditional solidarity net-works’, which risk being undermined when certain central conditionsare unmet (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009a, 2010b). In particular, thePolisario/SADR has recognized the extent to which being perceivedto be ‘ideal’ refugees, fulfilling all of the non-economic conditionalitiesassociated with contemporary notions of good governance (‘peaceful’,‘secular’, ‘democratic’ and ‘respectful of women’ (Moghadam 1997, p.36)), attracts the attention and support of western academics, NGOs,civil societies and solidarity networks (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009a,2010c). The Polisario has in turn projected a specific image of the


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camps to ensure these actors’ continued support, just as other aidrecipients and transnational brokers have done elsewhere.

I would thus argue that the Polisario/SADR’s success in mobilizingwestern support through reference to these particular characteristicshas in turn led to certain strategies of diaspora mobilization ultimatelybeing rendered ‘unthinkable’. In particular, funding or enacting armedactivities would threaten to destabilize the provision of essentialpolitical and material support for the camps and the Polisario’spolitical project.

Having outlined the general terms and concepts that are invoked bythe Polisario/SADR to ‘persuade’ western observers to lobby on itsbehalf, I now turn to the role played by diasporic youth in‘materializing’ this strategic frame from two main locations: Spainand the refugee camps.

Securing support in Spain

Although Spain-based youth have not been actively mobilized by thePolisario/SADR, it is nonetheless worth reflecting on the interactionsbetween Sahrawi children/youth and Spaniards. Importantly, Sahrawichildren have played a key role in securing the provision of aid to theirrefugee families (Crivello and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2010). Furthermore,despite an absence of viable and active diasporic organizations unitingSahrawi adolescents and young adults in Spain, the approximately10,000 seven- to twelve-year-olds who participate in the annualHolidays in Peace programme often play a key role in mobilizingtheir Spanish host families’ support (Crivello and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh2010). This therefore points to the politicized nature of such‘humanitarian’ hosting schemes, and the extent to which childrencan, in given cases, be significant actors in processes of non-diasporicmobilization. As recognised by many adults in the refugee camps,‘Sahrawi children are like young ambassadors of their people andthrough them people get to know about the Sahrawi people’ (Crivelloand Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2010, p. 85).

In other cases, Spanish families have provided a political educationto ‘their’ Sahrawi children, transmitting information about the conflictand their right to self-determination, and ensuring that these childrenreturn to the camps more politically aware of what it means to‘be Sahrawi’ than upon their arrival in Spain (Crivello, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Chatty 2005, p. 24). Ironically, perhaps, recognizing therole played by Spanish families in ‘educating’ these children about theconflict and ‘real’ Sahrawi identity highlights that the Polisario/SADRdoes not itself need to explicitly mobilize youth either before theirdeparture from the camps or in Spain, since members of Spanish civilsociety effectively do this on their behalf. As such, civil society’s role in


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mobilizing other Spaniards and Sahrawi children alike has arguablysolidified the Polisario/SADR’s perception that mobilizing ‘its’ dia-sporic youth in Spain is less significant than ‘lobbying’ and ‘persuad-ing’ Spaniards directly.

Securing support: youth and lobbying in the camps

While Sahrawi youth may be peripheral in processes of mobilization inSpain (either as individuals to be mobilized by the Polisario or as themobilizers of Spaniards), the Polisario/SADR requires the coopera-tion of different members of Sahrawi youth. With Spanish hostfamilies visiting ‘their’ children in the camps at least twice a year, andseveral thousand Spaniards arriving en masse during vacations, thecamps emerge as a central location from which to mobilize and securevisitors’ support. Indeed, throughout processes of displacement,refugees are not only usually observed and thus subject(ed) to analysisand eventual representation by a wider, international audience(including through NGO, academic and journalistic reports), butoften also obtain or develop a new ‘stage’ from which to presentthemselves and obtain humanitarian and political support for theircause (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009b, 2010a, 2011a).

On this ‘stage’, the Polisario/SADR is a ‘director’ that assigns youngSahrawi different roles to ‘materialize’ the national script. A particu-larly visible role is played by those Cuba- and Syria-educated youthwho currently occupy positions of authority in the camps and are inregular contact with Spanish visitors there. With one member of thePolisario’s National Secretariat estimating that approximately 2,000youth trained in Cuba occupy the most important political, social,administrative and professional roles in the camps (Agencia Cubanade Noticias 2006), it is evident that students’ time in Cuba providedthem with the necessary political and linguistic training to work inSahrawi institutions and to represent the Sahrawi ‘cause’ in the campsand in ‘diplomatic missions’ around the world.

By acting both as guides and bridges between Spanish civil societyand the camp administration, these Cuba-graduates personify thenational script and enact the ideal roles that have been assigned tothese young Sahrawis by the Polisario/SADR: active, secular membersof a self-sufficient and democratic refugee community. However,although they may be ideal agents of representation to a westernaudience, Cuba-educated youth in particular have nevertheless typi-cally been restricted to fulfilling their assigned roles as ‘guides’ and‘interpreters’ rather than being able to participate directly in thedecision-making processes, which have been monopolized by Polisario/SADR veterans. While the Polisario/SADR may have situated Cuba-educated graduates at the centre of its international public relations


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campaign directed to Spanish-speaking audiences, since their arrival inthe camps these graduates have simultaneously been perceived aspotential threats to the camps’ sociopolitical balance (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2009b). The positions assigned to youth reflect the extentto which politicians have recognized that Cuba-graduates have thecapacity to challenge the representation of the camps to outsiders, andto disrupt the internal status quo.

However, this leads us to ask why such youth do not overtlychallenge the Polisario/SADR, despite their experiences of margin-alization within the camps and the broader political ‘cause’. Onereason is that individuals associated with the Polisario/SADR tend toconcurrently be employed by projects funded by external investors.Accordingly, these individuals accumulate considerable financial andsocial capital, while socio-economic differentiation increases andoverall unemployment remains high in the camps. Their visibility toSpaniards grants these individuals greater access to both materialgoods and sociopolitical networks, thereby leading Cuba-graduates inparticular to recognize the benefits that arise from acting as the camps’‘ideal representatives’. Equally importantly, this also demonstrateswhat they could lose were they to either refute the images reproducedby camp managers during their engagements with Spaniards, or todirectly challenge the legitimacy of these political bodies.

Conclusion

Complementing existing studies of diaspora mobilization, this paperhas explored the ways in which Sahrawi children and youth have beenpolitically activated by the Polisario in ‘their’ Algeria-based refugeecamps, Cuba, Spain and in Syria. Utilizing Adamson’s (2010) frame-work facilitates comparison both within and across cases, therebylaying the foundations for future studies to not only identify andcontrast the ways in which the Polisario/SADR has mobilized Sahrawiyouth in other locations (including Libya and Qatar, for instance), butalso to identify similarities and differences with other, non-Sahrawicases around the world. Furthermore, by proposing the particularimportance of examining not only how and when diasporas aremobilized by transnational brokers, but also precisely which membersof diasporic populations are strategically engaged, this multi-sitedstudy directly contributes to an emerging body of literature that isstarting to centralize the heterogeneity that exists within diasporiccommunities by exploring the ways in which factors such as age,gender, class, generation and sociopolitical status influence interac-tions within and between groups.

As such, one of this paper’s key contributions has been to examinethe intergenerational transmission of diasporic identity across time


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and space, a dynamic that is typically only implicitly acknowledged indiaspora studies. Recognizing the extent to which Sahrawi children,youth and adults have been differently encouraged by adult Polisariorepresentatives to enact particular roles in support of ‘the Sahrawicause’, this study has suggested that transnational childhoods andadolescence may, in some cases, facilitate the mobilization of bothdiasporic and non-diasporic support for political projects. The extentto which particular strategies have been identified as appropriate orfeasible has depended upon a variety of factors, including students’characteristics, and both students’ and the Polisario/SADR’s posi-tion(s) within the respective host countries.

Separated from their parents and broader refugee camp ‘home’ forprotracted periods, I have argued that Cuba-, Spain- and Syria-educated Sahrawi youth have been actively persuaded to adopt specificand at times contradictory subject positions by their politicalrepresentatives, camp-based families and non-Sahrawi humanitarianproviders. Youth have, in turn, often actively decided to participate inthe Polisario’s broader strategies for a number of intersecting materialand political reasons, despite being marginalized by transnationalelites who defend the status quo in the camps and beyond. Hence,although some individuals may identify politically with Polisario’s‘cause’, those who disagree with the Polisario/SADR’s internationalrelations and internal management strategies remain reluctant toopenly challenge the Polisario, preferring to ‘materialize’ and perpe-tuate the official representation of the conflict at least partly due to thematerial and sociopolitical benefits that they accrue as a result.

In this way, Sahrawi youth and the Polisario respectively adopt‘strategic frames’ to secure the continuation of material and politicalbenefits from non-Sahrawi audiences. Indeed, I have argued that it isprecisely Spanish civil society’s pro-Sahrawi activism and the nature ofties between Spain-based Sahrawi youth, the refugee camps andSpanish ‘Friends of the Sahara’ that simultaneously promote thecontinuation of Sahrawi youth’s adherence to the Polisario’s repre-sentation of the camps, while reducing the need for the Polisario itselfto mobilize refugee youth in either Spain or in the Algeria-basedrefugee camps. This system also ultimately renders certain mobiliza-tion strategies unthinkable, precisely through the Polisario’s successfulmobilization of Spanish support for its ‘cause’ through lobbyingaround notions of secularism, gender equality, democracy and peace.

Acknowledgements

I thank Fiona Adamson and Yousif Qasmiyeh, and the participants ofthe Explaining Diaspora Politics workshop held at the School ofOriental and African Studies (University of London) in October 2009


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for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Part of the researchdrawn upon in this paper was funded by an Economic and SocialResearch Council (ESRC) (UK) doctoral research grant; the majorityof the article was written in my capacity as Research Fellow inDiaspora Mobilisation and International Security, working on FionaAdamson’s ESRC funded research project of the same title (ESRCGrant Reference: RES-181-25-0036).

Notes

1. Diasporas may be categorized as groups of individuals who have come to define

themselves through reference to a common identity and attachment to an existing or desired

homeland (Adamson 2010).

2. The Polisario’s mobilization of Sahrawi women is explored in detail elsewhere (Fiddian-

Qasmiyeh 2009a); here I focus primarily on the mobilization of Sahrawi boys and young men

educated in a variety of hosting contexts.

3. Although the Arabic term s˙

ah˙

rawı literally refers to any inhabitant of the desert, it is

most frequently used to refer to those individuals who belong to tribes that have traditionally

lived and moved throughout the territory currently defined as the Western Sahara. Towards

the end of the Spanish colonial presence in the territory, the term Sahrawi was increasingly

mobilized by the Polisario as a political unifier for the territory’s multiple tribes.

It is, therefore, intimately related to this group’s political struggles. Since tribal identification

is the primary basis for the referendum for self-determination designed to resolve the

Western Saharan conflict, precisely who is defined as ‘Sahrawi’ rather than ‘Moroccan’ or

‘Mauritanian’ is politically and legally highly significant.

4. Interviews completed in Spain and Cuba, and with graduates from Cuban universities,

took place in Spanish (interviewees’ second language; author’s mother tongue). Syria-based

students and Sahrawi families in the camps were interviewed by the author in Spanish or

Hassaniya-Arabic (the language spoken in the camps).

5. Twenty-five interviews were conducted with Cuba-educated Sahrawi refugees in Cuba

and 21 with Cuba-educated youth in the refugee camps; 12 in Syria and 10 with Syria-

educated youth in the camps; 20 in Spain, and 10 with Spain-educated youth in the camps.

6. Collier and Hoeffler’s study has been widely critiqued, including by authors who

argue that poverty and relative deprivation, rather than affluence, breed nationalist

mobilization.

7. See Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2009a) for a detailed overview of the conflict.

8. Given the extensive overlap of Polisario members and SADR representatives, these

terms shall be used interchangeably.

9. Mauritania signed a ceasefire with the Polisario in July 1978, retracted its claims to

(and soldiers from) the territory, and recognized the SADR in 1984.

10. See, for instance, Hanson and Brembeck 1966; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Anderson

1983; Gellner 1983; Smith 1983.

11. Given the nature of this case study, I modify Adamson’s framework by excluding a fifth

mechanism of ‘ethnic outbidding’, through which ‘parties or elites attempt to outdo each

other, leading to a cycle of polarization that fuels extremism’ (Adamson 2009).

12. On Sahrawi and non-Sahrawi students’ involvement in and experiences of the Cuban

scholarship programme, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2009b and 2010b.

13. While Syria has not established diplomatic ties with the Polisario/SADR, it has granted

it significant autonomy within the country as the official representative of the Sahrawi

people.


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14. In contrast, Sahrawi students are resolutely unable to obtain work or residence permits

in either Cuba or Syria.

15. Such alternative interpretations are infrequently available to students in the camps,

Cuba or Syria.

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Transnational childhood and adolescence: mobilizing Sahrawi identity and politics across time and...

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