Contested Constitutencies: Political Entrepreneurs and the Mobilization of Immigrant Populations in France (1954-1962) and Germany (1984-2000).

This paper examines the long-distance or "extra-systemic" political participation of immigrant communities in Europe. As opposed to primordialist, statist-institutionalist or globalization explanations for transnational political activities, the paper proposes a model of transnational political mobilization by non-state political entrepreneurs to account for this phenomenon. Transnational mobilization by non-state political entrepreneurs involves the formation of a transnational constituency, the extraction of material resources from that constituency, and the building of transnational networks and organizations. Two case studies of transnational mobilization are examined: the Algerian FLN in France and the Kurdish PKK in Germany. The paper demonstrates the utility of building a bridge between the world systems literature on global migration processes and the state-based literature on immigrant incorporation and participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]