The Utopian Collective Empowerment of TREs

In this work I report on the political and institutional interactions with transnationals in the context of the draft law creating the High Council of Tunisians Abroad. The idea for the project which has been on the Tunisian institutional agenda since 1990 but never saw the light of day has been revived by transnationals since the Tunisian revolution. The draft law is part of the democratization process in Tunisia to which transnationals have contributed in order to establish themselves as fully-fledged citizens. On the one hand this project represents a considerable change in that it takes into account their migratory condition. On the other hand it represents a form of institutional essentialization giving rise to political tug-of-war and power struggles hindering its realization.