Administering Diaspora: Complexity and Innovation in the Emigrant Policies of Latin America and the Caribbean – A Learning Opportunity for the Global North?

Abstract

Diaspora engagement policies are an area of migration policy which tends to be neglected in countries of the Global North. Specifically, the configuration of public administration agencies behind diaspora policies has been treated superficially in comparative analyses. Epistemic communities have created a narrative that diaspora policies are mostly a form of window dressing. Using original data, this article compares the configurations of agencies that design and implement diaspora policies across 22 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, a particularly innovative region in this policy area. It argues that the Global North misses a learning opportunity in overlooking their complexity.