International Migration and Home Country Politics

Abstract

According to recent research, 215 million people—approximately 3% of the world’s population—live in a different country from that of their birth. Population flows take place notably from the developing South to the developed North, although a considerable volume of migration is of the South–South type (Ratha and Shaw 2007; Castles and Miller 2009; World Bank 2011). These movements of people are accompanied by financial, social, and political remittances sent by migrants to their countries of origin. In many developing countries, financial remittances have become a crucial source of foreign exchange and a potential tool for development. In 2010, remittance flows to developing countries were estimated to have exceeded $325 billion, surpassing the inflows of foreign aid and, in some cases, foreign direct investment (World Bank 2006, 2011). Migrants also transfer knowledge, ideas, values, and expectations acquired in the host country back to their communities of origin in the form of social and political remittances (Levitt 2001; Piper 2009). Undoubtedly, together with the movement of goods, investment, capital, and information, international migration is a central component of globalization. Whereas most research to date has emphasized either the economic consequences of international migration or its political impact in immigrant-receiving rather than emigrantsending countries, an increasing number of scholars are exploring a question surprisingly overlooked to date: what are the political consequences of migration and remittances for the migrants’ countries of origin? And, more generally, what is the relationship between outmigration and the functioning of democracies in sending countries? This special issue is one of the few collective efforts to date exploring the relationship between outmigration and politics, particularly in new democracies (see also Oestergaard-Nielsen 2003a; Lyons and Mandaville 2012). Specifically, the papers investigate whether and how emigrants and the remittances they send back home affect St Comp Int Dev (2014) 49:1–12 DOI 10.1007/s12116-014-9149-z