6 - Regime Change and Immigration Policy Continuity in Tunisia

Summary

Chapter 6 dissects the drivers of Tunisian immigration politics before, during and after the 2011 regime change, focusing on the reasons behind restrictive policy continuity in the face of international and civil society efforts to initiate a liberal reform. I show that while foreign policy interests, the role of national identity narratives, and the imperative to secure state power over immigration have remained constants in Tunisian immigration policymaking, the role and weight of domestic factors such as public opinion and civil society activism in public policymaking has fundamentally changed after 2011. Yet, instead of triggering liberal reform in line with the revolutionary spirit, democratization has compelled political elites to put ‘Tunisians first’ and to sideline issues of racism and immigration. Ultimately, the bottom-up and external pressures that emerged after 2011 only led to minor, mostly informal policy changes that have not affected the restrictive core of Tunisia’s immigration regime in the first decade of democratization.