The Indian and North African Volunteer Sector in Europe

Abstract

The crumbling of working-class organisations marked the 1980s. The rise of the Khalistani movement from 1984 onwards, the end of large industrial movements after the right-wing parties came back to office in 1986, the end of the Algerian one-party system in 1988, accelerated the end of the amicales IWA, AMF and ATMF as mass organisations. These events revealed a process of identity transformation silently at play since the previous decade. The present chapter analyses the way Algerian, Moroccan and Indian associational fields reconfigured from the 1990s onwards. It lays special emphasis on the forms taken by the “development turn” during this period. After focusing on individual and collective incentives for group-making, it addresses the evolution of the policy (political opportunity structures) and associational contexts (ecological factors) that set the stage for the growth of collective remittances. This chapter discusses HTOs in the context of Indian and North African associational fields in France and the UK. Drawing on a quantitative assessment of the number and types of associations created in both countries, it examines the structure and transnational extensions of investigated volunteer sectors. Specific attention is paid to the growing importance taken by development activities. This is not an isolated process, but a distinctive facet of the broader transnationalisation dynamics of immigrant volunteering.