Engaging Diasporas As Development Partners For Home And Destination Countries

This publication explores different challenges posed to home and host country governments engaging with their diasporas for development purposes. How to define diasporas? How to gather data on diasporas? How to incorporate diaspora contributions into development strategies? How to identify most relevant partners within the diasporas? What incentives are conducive to diaspora contributions? What resources are available within diasporas and how can their impact on development be maximized? What is the role for policy? These are some of the questions raised in this publication.

This publication explores different challenges posed to home and host country governments engaging with their diasporas for development purposes. Topics covered include: defining and gathering data on diasporas; incorporating diaspora contributions into development strategies; partnering with relevant diasporas; home country programmes and incentives conducive to diaspora contributions; identifying resources available within diasporas and how their impact on development can be maximised.

State governments recognize the value diaspora populations bring to development efforts worldwide. Since 2007, the Global Forum on Migration and Development has examined ways to highlight policies and programs that can magnify the resources, both human and financial, that emigrants and their descendants contribute to development. This handbook continues that effort on the basis of earlier investigations by the book's collaborating institutions, the academic and policy literature, consultations and in-depth interviews with government officials and nongovernmental actors, and input by 62 national governments. The handbook is divided into three major parts. Each part gives concrete examples of policies and programs that have been effective, and pulls out both useful lessons and common challenges associated with the topics at hand. The pivotal question now facing many policymakers is not so much if diasporas can benefit their countries of origin but how they do so and what kinds of government policies and programs can foster these relationships.

Drawing on examples from the global North and South, this book examines the relationship between migration, development and diaspora engagement from a governance perspective. It explores the ways that governments interact with their own extra-national diasporic populations in order to boost economic development, build global trading and investment networks, and increase their political leverage overseas. Inside, readers will find fifteen essays which highlight such issues as diaspora engagement by governments at different scales, the divisions that often exist within diaspora groups, diaspora transnationalism and return migration, diaspora knowledge networks and higher education capacity building, and the neglected issues of South-South migration and diasporas as well as North-South migration and diasporas. The book presents empirical case studies from various geographical contexts including Australia, Canada, the Philippines, India, the Caribbean, Zimbabwe, and the United States. Overall, this book presents fresh insights into how and why migrant-sending countries are increasingly turning to the diaspora option to attempt to benefit from the transfer of knowledge, skills and financial and social capital. It provides policy makers, researchers, and students with new perspectives on governance and the means by which states are attempting to utilize their diaspora resources.

​This volume discusses how diasporas have evolved and engaged in economic, social and cultural domains of their host and home countries across the globe. The volume is divided into six parts: Issues, Challenges and Development Experiences; Diaspora Finance and Economic Development; Knowledge Transfer and Diasporas; The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion; Gender and Diasporas; and Representation in Film, Theatre and Literature. It is truly a global representation of diasporic engagement. Its contributions come from experts in various disciplines across the globe, and the chapters cover socioeconomic, policy-related and cultural elements in countries as far apart as New Zealand and Zimbabwe. The contributors discuss major issues related to local communities' engagement with the diaspora and diaspora--home relations in Africa, West Asia, South and South-east Asia, Australia and New Zealand, China, and the USA, providing a panoramic view of diasporic flows in the twenty-first century. The interdisciplinary thrust of the volume, together with its global focus, makes this volume useful to researchers, academics and experts from the social sciences, population sciences and development studies, as also to analysts and policymakers across the world.

The diaspora of developing countries can be a potent force for development, through remittances, but more importantly, through promotion of trade, investment, knowledge and technology transfers. The book aims to consolidate research and evidence on these issues with a view to formulating policies in both sending and receiving countries.

As important as state-to-state and multi-state cooperation have long proven to be, many countries in the Global South have yet to fully explore its potentials. Despite their shared history of slavery, colonialism, and underdevelopment, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean currently show a lack of significant cooperation. Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean: The Case for Bilateral and Multilateral Cooperation, therefore, makes the case for an increased and renewed effort at bilateral and multilateral cooperation between the three regions. In this multidisciplinary work, scholars make the case for renewing, continuing, and deepening relationships between the people, the state, and the non-governmental organizations in the three spheres—taking not only an economic and political point of view, but also considering sociological, geographical, and historical perspectives as well.

"This book offers an unprecedented taxonomy of 45 diaspora-engaging institutions found in 30 developing countries, exploring their activities and objectives; it also provides important perspectives from country case studies by senior practitioners from Mali, Mexico, and the Philippines."--BOOK JACKET.