Diaspora policy’s impact on migrant organizations: fifteen years of the Tres por Uno program in Zacatecas, Mexico

Abstract

ABSTRACT Migrant origin countries are increasingly implementing diaspora policies to embrace and tap into emigrant communities. These policies often call for the participation of migrant organizations, but it is unclear how the outreach affects the groups or whether space is created for migrants to exercise agency. I engage these questions through analysis of Mexico’s migrant-centred 3x1 Program for community development, examining the institutionalization of the policy and the experiences of established migrant organizations. Two broad trends emerge: First, bureaucratization of the program at the federal level has strained the capacity of participating migrant groups, which are volunteer-managed clubs not professional NGOs. They have been forced to find informal workarounds and rely on help from government officials, which has the potential to tokenize their participation. Second, however, I find that established migrant organizations have nonetheless continued a pattern of mediated empowerment. They are interdependent with the state government and constrained in some ways, but they also are able to build and exercise agency to influence how diaspora policy is enacted in their origin areas. I conclude that the proliferation of diaspora policies is a mixed bag for migrant organizations, with the potential both to empower and to marginalize them.