Nationalist Narratives, Political Process, and the Transformation of Identities: The Evolution of Racial Identity Politics in Tunisia

The lands of the African diaspora and regions that are internal to the continent were part of the long-distance slave trade that led to the forced transfer of millions of human beings from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Americas, North Africa, and the Middle East over many centuries. These historical dynamics led to the emergence of racial discrimination towards dark-skinned individuals as well as the creation of political and socioeconomic structures that disadvantaged racial minorities. These structural inequalities were only challenged significantly with the emergence of Black rights social movements in the twentieth century. While these regions of the world share this common history, there have been significant degrees of variation across time in terms of the saliency and ideological nature of Black identity, the social movement activity of the supporters of racial equality, and the capacity of these movements to challenge the political and cultural legacies that were left behind by slavery. Racial identity politics, in other words, differs across time. Why is this the case?<br>Through an analysis of racial identity politics in Tunisia from 1956 to 2021 using a mixed methods approach, this dissertation will show how racial identification is shaped by the interaction between macro-, meso-, and micro-level systems across time, and it will also demonstrate how the interaction between systems is mediated by the political process. Macro-structuralists are correct in asserting that top-down processes such as the nationalist narratives of the state can impact racial identification at the micro-level, but individuals and organizations within social movements can also challenge these narratives by promoting new forms of racial identification and new ideologies such as multiculturalism and intersectionality, and they can pressure the state to make political reforms. The ability of social movements to challenge the state though is mediated by the political process since social movements can only form when they have the political opportunities and the organizational capacity to do so. Black identity, consequently, has become more salient throughout Tunisia and other parts of the world in recent decades due to the spread of democracy, the growing influence of transnational activism, and the diffusion of ideologies such as multiculturalism and intersectionality across borders.