International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   The exceptional growth in significance of the diaspora as a development actor during the past decade poses a range of complex analytical and policy challenges. Changing migration flows and networks in the developing world have ensured that diasporas remain at the center of policy debates, with the links between migration, development, and security coming under particular scrutiny since September 2001 and the end of the Cold War. Migrant numbers have continued to expand globally with the United Nations (UN) estimating that there were 191 million migrants worldwide in 2005, up from 176 million in 2000 (United Nations Secretariat 2006). These rising figures have not only given rise to disquiet at the imbalance of migration flows, in particular net skilled emigration from developing world countries ( Dumont and Lemaitre 2005 ), but are also suggestive of the vast, largely untapped potential of certain migration flows in facilitating development. Most obviously, it is the diaspora as well as the dramatic increase in remittances from migrant workers to developing countries, which are estimated to have reached US$206 billion in 2006 ( World Bank 2006 ), that have attracted the greatest attention. That said, the relationship between diasporas and development is necessarily complex. The diaspora spans all of the local, national, regional, and global levels, its ... log in or subscribe to read full text