Orchestrating a Migration Regime

Chapter 9 shows how the widespread adoption of diaspora institution models and best practices has been orchestrated by international organizations, and supported by the actions of a ‘diaspora engagement industry’ of professional consultants, think tanks, and NGOs working on the topic. The chapter shows how and why key international organizations consumed and assimilated models of diaspora engagement, and how they ‘orchestrated’ the dissemination of these policy models and best practices to states around the world. The discussion also highlights how international organizations have used mechanisms such as ‘donor menus’ to retain credibility as disinterested experts, and also how such mechanisms have concealed the role of powerful donor state interests in shaping this supposedly disinterested advice.

Human Geopolitics in the Black Sea and Beyond

Chapter 7 maps a region in which the dynamics of state competition over populations have grown particularly tense since the mid-1990s, as states in the Black Sea shatterbelt have used their diaspora policies to jockey for position between regional hegemons of Europe, Russia and Turkey. The Black Sea zone is the region perhaps most affected by geopolitical competition between Europe and Eurasia in recent decades. The multiple, overlapping regional integration processes associated with this competition have been accompanied by a proliferation of new diaspora institutions across the Black Sea region and Eurasia beyond, many of them involved in the overlapping and competing sovereignty claims that characterize human geopolitics.

Intercultural Borders in Europe and its Emulators

Chapter 6 shifts to Phase 2 in the rise of diaspora institutions, describing the spread of diaspora institutions from the mid-1990s, as a ‘model’ of migration management in regional integration schemes like the EU. Diaspora institutions helped regional leaders to merge their member states into new regional units. Because these diaspora institutions involved the projection of one state’s authority into the domestic domain of another, they required states to soften their sovereignties and share responsibility for migrants. They demonstrated how an integrated region with porous ‘intercultural’ borders could address Europe’s abiding ethnic minority issues where a Europe of sealed nation-states could not. And they helped the new EU border states build the migration management capacities to deal with their new responsibilities as the sentries of Europe’s new perimeter. But sometimes, this process has released pent-up nationalisms and dredged up past territorial disputes.

Conclusion

Chapter 11 summarizes the central argument of the book—that the global spread of diaspora institutions is now being driven by the accelerating evolution of a global migration regime, and is enabling the re-emergence of strategic competitions over population in some parts of the world. The chapter highlights the main conceptual and practical contributions of the book, and highlights priorities for future research, including on the emergence of ‘authoritarian emigration states’ at the time of writing. It also argues that the emerging global migration regime needs more clearly articulated principles to guide the benevolent engagement of diasporas in their homelands, and to avoid outbreaks of human geopolitics. The chapter outlines principles of internal non-interference, external non-interference, non-preference as starting points.

Human Geopolitics

Chapter 1 introduces the extraordinary global spread of diaspora institutions since the 2000s, and reviews existing efforts to explain this trend as an expression of state interests and national identities. The chapter then outlines the new theory presented in this book, which is based on the idea that diaspora institutions are spreading today as a result of efforts to build a global migration regime. It highlights an unintended consequence of these efforts, namely the spread of human geopolitics: strategic competition over populations rather than territories. The chapter also provides an overview of the book’s structure.

Epilogue

This research has taken many twists and turns on its way into the book you are holding (or more likely reading from a screen). It began, in one sense, when I was very young—born in Canada into several diasporas, to New Zealand parents of English, Scottish and Māori heritage, who claimed citizenship by descent for me as an infant, and returned ‘home’ for my schooling. I became a migrant again as a twenty-something, travelling, working, and studying in Asia, and became intrigued by how many homelands were reaching out to emigrants like me. I won a scholarship to Oxford for doctoral study on that topic; it remained central to my later work on the Oxford Diasporas Programme, out of which this book eventually grew....

Following Diaspora Policies

Chapter 10 studies how states have taught and learned from each other as they simultaneously attempt to secure international legitimacy by implementing the recommendations of international organizations and experts. The chapter provides clear evidence of many cases where states’ diaspora institutions have been driven not by their national interests, but by their conformity to changing international norms. The chapter investigates the impacts of these dynamics on the spread and policy convergence of state diaspora institutions around the world through processes such as ‘benchmarking loops’. The chapter draws on the growing human geography literature on policy mobilities in order to understand the global movement and mutation of migration policy models and best practices.

Diaspora Engagement goes Global

Chapter 8 shows how diaspora engagement shifted from a regional model of migration management to a global best practice. In the late 1990s, engaging diasporas was openly advocated by a range of regional organizations, but by 2006, the Secretary General of the United Nations had become a cheerleader. Drawing on concepts from World Society theory and the literature on Epistemic Communities, this chapter argues that the global spread of diaspora institutions is a response to the growth of a new global institution: a global migration regime. ‘Engaging diasporas’ has become a central theme in efforts to link migration with the international development agenda and build a decentralized but coherent system of global migration governance. It has been enthusiastically promoted by migration policy experts and international organizations, as a way of sharing responsibility for migration management without the need for a world migration organization. Governments around the world have responded to these recommendations by establishing diaspora institutions.

Labour Export from the Asian Body Shops

Chapter 5 covers the emergence of diaspora institutions in countries across South and Central Asia and elsewhere from the 1970s. In these regions, the trend has been less about exile in-gathering and more about avoiding regime shocks through ‘safety-valve’ emigration and labour export, to support the consolidation of authoritarianism. Unemployment may fuel social and political unrest and destabilize governments. Using emigration as an economic and socio-political safety valve has allowed governments to keep disgruntled unemployed workers, dissenting labour unions, and other organizations representing them, from contesting or destabilizing the regime. This strategy has typified the labour export policies of a number of developing states across Asia since the 1970s.

Regime Shocks in India, Mexico, and Eritrea

Chapter 4 provides new information about specific case studies of three well-known diaspora engagement efforts: the Institute for Mexicans Abroad, the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, and the Department of Eritreans Abroad. Emphasizing the strengths of a mixed-methods approach, the chapter quotes and comments on extensive passages from in-depth elite interviews with senior policy makers in these countries. The chapter fleshes out the dynamics of regime shock and diaspora institution formation introduced previously. In all three cases, diaspora institutions have, in various ways, responded to major territorial reconfigurations and involved elements of human geopolitical claims over population rather than territory.