Abstract
In this paper we present the Emigrant Policies Index (EMIX), an index that summarizes the emigrant policies developed by 22 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) states. In recent decades sending states have increasingly adopted policies to keep economic, political or social links with their emigrants. These “emigrant policies” vary in scope and nature between different countries and include measures as diverse as dual citizenship policies, programs to stimulate remittances, the right to vote in the home country from abroad, and the creation of government agencies to administer emigrant issues. The EMIX proposes a useful tool to condense and compare a wide spectrum of policies across countries. Its development involved the collection of official data, as well as a critical review of secondary literature and input from experts as complementary sources. Through a rigorous framework for constructing the index, we show how emigrant policies can be aggregated to measure the overall degree and volume of emigrant policies in LAC states. The results of the EMIX portray a region that has indeed made serious efforts to assist their diaspora in the states of reception and to encourage their involvement in the political, economic and social fabric in the states of origin. The results, however, also reveal great variation in the emigrant policies and the administrative setting adopted by LAC states.
Highlights
Data on the migrant flows in Latin American and Caribbean countries show a complex picture: the region deals with immigration, emigration, transit migration, return migration, and transborder livelihoods
Scholars and international organizations have recently highlighted how states develop policies to engage their emigrants in the state of origin, piloting new migrant membership practices and facilitating the transnational political involvement of migrants (Agunias, Rannveig, & Kathleen Newland International Organization for Migration and Migration Policy Institute, 2012; Baubo€ck & Faist, 2010; Delano & Gamlen, 2014; Gamlen, 2014; Iskander, 2010; Lum, Nikolko, Samy, & Carment, 2013; OECD., 2015; Ostergaard-Nielsen, 2003; Rhodes & Harutyunyan, 2010)
Rather than letting theory pre-determine which policies we look at, we focus on conceptualizing the full array of what we found can be defined as emigrant policies
Summary
Data on the migrant flows in Latin American and Caribbean countries show a complex picture: the region deals with immigration, emigration, transit migration, return migration, and transborder livelihoods. A dense web of hypotheses on the contemporary interactions between state and emigrants has developed from several in-depth studies (Delano, 2011; Margheritis, 2011, 2014; Ragazzi, 2014a, 2014b), studies with comparative perspectives (Lafleur, 2011; Martiniello & Lafleur, 2008; Delano & Gamlen, 2014; Ragazzi, 2014a, 2014b; Collyer, 2013) and theoretical studies on the new conceptions of statehood and citizenship (Baubo€ck, 2007, 2009; Itzigsohn, 2000) What this fast-developing literature lacks so far is an understanding of emigrant policies that derives inductively from a systematic collection of policies for a whole region, allowing different profiles to emerge and display variations (i.e. refraining from selecting by outcome) before organizing and. We conclude the paper with some reflections on the limitations of the EMIX and its potential applications beyond this paper
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