Harnessing the Diaspora

Abstract

Political rights provided to immigrants by host countries have received much attention in the literature. Less attention, however, has been paid to the extension of extraterritorial rights by home countries. In this article, I focus on a common type of right provided by home countries to their expatriates—the right of dual citizenship. Dual citizenship rights, I argue, help home countries leverage the financial and human resources of their diasporas, encouraging both remittances and return migration. I test this argument using migrant surveys performed in six host countries and find that migrants from homelands that extend dual citizenship are more likely to both remit and express a desire to return home. The micro finding regarding remittances is confirmed using aggregate panel data for a large sample of homelands over the period 1980-2009. The results point to the importance of political rights and policies as extended by the migrant’s homeland.