Homeland Engagement Research Articles

Socio-economic relationship of Korea and Kazakhstan: The role of Korean diaspora and homeland engagement

An increase in bilateral relations between Kazakhstan and South Korea has been experienced in many spheres, with advances noted in the economic, social, cultural, and educational areas. It is argued that the historical and cultural affinity of the two nations, such as that of the ethnic Korean diaspora, have played a significant role in the development of these ties. Therefore, this study investigates the socio-cultural, economic, and educational relationship between Kazakhstan and Korea. To this end, the history of the ethnic Koreans in Kazakhstan and the governmental organizations that are involved with the Korean diaspora are first investigated, with a particular focus on social and cultural aspects, after which the economic ties were analyzed, along with statistical data related to imports, exports, and investments. Finally, an analysis of the exchange programs in place was completed, including the Korean studies in Kazakhstan, and the Central Asian and Kazakhstani studies in Korea, increasing the understanding regarding the depth of the educational relations between the two countries.

Passing on the torch of memory: Transitional justice and the transfer of diaspora identity across generations

Abstract∞ The role diaspora actors play in transitional justice (TJ) has recently been recognized by practitioners and scholars. This article focuses on how TJ initiatives, by re-emphasizing, retelling or silencing traumas of the past, can play an important role for the transfer of diaspora identity and homeland engagement across generations. Based on research on the diasporas from Rwanda and Sri Lanka, the article highlights the different positions made available for and taken up by young people in TJ, and the ways the past is evoked by the homeland state, diaspora organizations and people they meet in their day-to-day lives. TJ initiatives, the article argues, can serve as critical events that mobilize the young generation to support – or resist – narratives of the past, while also providing them with experiences that add to a postmemory of the painful past of their parents’ homeland.

Empowering to engage with the homeland: do migration experience and environment foster political remittances?

This article investigates the drivers and mechanisms of emigrants’ electoral and nonelectoral political engagement with their homeland. Our analysis concentrates on the diverse experiences of Polish migrants in the UK. By utilizing original mixed-method data, including a large-N survey of Polish migrant voters across the UK, in-depth interviews with Polish migrants in the UK, and matched interviews with their family members and friends in Poland, we highlight the importance of the migrant experience and environment as factors explaining the (de-)mobilization of transnational political engagement. The quantitative analysis highlights proxies of integration in the host society as the strongest predictors of transnational political engagement, while the participation in emigrant/diaspora networks has less clear-cut effects than previous studies have suggested. The qualitative analysis unpacks the migrants’ experiences that foster homeland engagement. The composition of personal networks - whether they are primarily Polish or international - emerges as an important element of the causal mechanism behind the (de-)mobilization of engagement with Polish politics.

A cross-border perspective on migration: beyond the assimilation/transnationalism debate

ABSTRACTThe transnational perspective emerged in the early 1990s as an alternative to assimilation theory, gaining instant and wide influence. But curiously, the intellectual confrontation between these two perspectives was averted, as scholars concluded that persistent homeland engagement was fully compatible with hostland integration. This paper seeks to pick up that challenge. I demonstrate how a cross-border perspective, encompassing places of origin and destination and the flows of people, ideas, and resources between them, highlights the ways in which population movements across state borders create tensions on both receiving and sending sides. In the process, I will show how looking across borders paradoxically highlights the centrality of the territorial boundary, as it simultaneously underscores the importance of dissimilation – the social and political separation of immigrants from the people they have left behind – yet also the ways in which non-citizen status and foreign origins simultaneously hamper immigrants’ ability to gain acceptance in receiving states while furnishing sending states with opportunities to reconnect with nationals abroad.

Integration and Homeland Engagement: A Case of Ethiopian Refugees Residing in Atlanta

Integration and Homeland Engagement: A Case of Ethiopian Refugees Residing in Atlanta

Homeland engagement and host-society integration: A comparative study of new Chinese immigrants in the United States and Singapore

This article addresses three main questions through a comparative study of new Chinese immigrants in the United States and Singapore: (1) How do contexts of emigration and reception affect the ways in which new immigrants are tied to their homeland? (2) How do diasporic communities help members engage with the homeland? (3) What effects does transnationalism have on host-society integration? We develop an institutional approach to analyze how the state is involved in the transnational fields and how diasporic organizations serve as a bridge between individual migrants and state actors in transnational practices and integration processes. We find that new Chinese immigrants maintain emotional and tangible ties with China even as they are oriented toward resettlement in the hostland and that their transnational practices are similar in form but vary in magnitude, depending not only on diasporic positionality in the host society but also on bi-national relations. We also find that those who actively engage themselves in the transnational fields tend to do so through diasporic organizations. Finally, we find that homeland engagement generally benefits integration into host societies. These findings suggest that social forces at the macro-level – the nation-state – and at the meso-level – diasporic communities – are intertwined to affect processes and outcomes of immigrant transnationalism.

Economic Integration to Send Money Back Home?

This article investigates the links between economic integration and remittances sending behavior through the cases of Afghan, Burundian, Ethiopian, and Moroccan first generation migrants in the Netherlands. The analysis demonstrates that economically-better-integrated migrants, especially those with secure employment, are significantly more likely to remit, remit more, and remit more for investment purposes rather than consumption. Consequently, I challenge the assimilationist perspective on the links between economic integration and homeland engagement, emphasize the significance of dual-engagement, and discuss the implications of this research for integration and development policy.

Toward an improved understanding of immigrant adaptation and transnational engagement: the case of Cuban Émigrés in the United States

The article compares the explanatory power of assimilationist and transnational frameworks with a historically informed generation (historical cohort) thesis that addresses the long-term cross-border impact of premigration experiences on immigrant new country adaptation. It tests the utility of the thesis with respect to immigrant remittance-sending among different waves of Cuban emigres to the United States, who had different homeland experiences before uprooting. Regression analysis is used to assess the relative import of premigration experiences and factors immigration studies have found to be associated with assimilation and transnationalism. The article concludes with a discussion of the applicability of the historical cohort thesis for improved understanding of other immigrant group adaptation and homeland engagement.

Changing Generational Dynamics in Chinese America across Time

This article examines the causes and consequences of generational formation in the Chinese diaspora in America. Based on a review of the existing literature and a reanalysis of data collected from my prior research on China-born immigrants in the United States, I document the formation of immigrant cohorts in four historical periods of Chinese immigration and illustrate how contexts of emigration and host-society reception intertwine to influence the evolution of immigrant cohorts across time and, in turn, produce variations on patterns of immigrant adaptation, leading to differences in the outcomes of host-society integration and levels of homeland engagement.

Migrants’ Multi-Sited Social Lives

This paper challenges the assimilationist assumption that suggests migrants cannot be simultaneously embedded in multiple societies. Based on survey data collected among Afghan, Burundian, Ethiopian and Moroccan migrants in the Netherlands, the paper shows that overall sociocultural integration in the Netherlands and sociocultural homeland engagement are significantly positively correlated. Moreover, it demonstrates that migrants with more contact with their co-ethnics in the Netherlands tend to engage more in sociocultural activities oriented towards their home country. Besides, the influence of favourable political and security situations and economic prospects in the home countries is brought to the fore in relation to migrant groups’ sociocultural homeland engagement. The paper consequently highlights the prevalence of transnational ways of living and calls for theoretical adjustments in line with migrants’ multi-sited social lives and more inclusive policy approaches that recognize the relevance of dual-citizenship in this contemporary context.

The diaspora solution to innovation capacity development: Immigrant entrepreneurs in the contemporary world

AbstractThe international migration of highly skilled labor was formerly a threat to the underdeveloped world with regard to indigenous innovation capacity. However, certain countries have successfully turned “brain drain” into “brain gain” by effective engagement with a skilled diaspora who have returned to set up business ventures in the homeland. This article advocates an entrepreneurial approach to the development of national innovation capacity through contemporary diasporic entrepreneurship (CDE). Drawing evidence mostly from China, the article argues that (1) CDE offers an alternative to conventional indigenously and internationally oriented approaches toward innovation capacity development; (2) compared to other ways of diaspora homeland engagement, CDE is most beneficial to capacity development; and (3) besides participating in philanthropic and scientific projects, a skilled diaspora returning as private business owners represents an often more productive way of contributing to national capacity development. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Mexican New York

Rob Smith's book, Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants, makes an important contribution to a growing body of work examines migration from a transnational perspective. He offers read ers an extended case study, based on over 15 years of field work in the small town of Ticuani in rural Mexico, illuminates the formation of political community, the negotiation of gender, and the simultaneous incorporation and homeland engagement of the second generation across space. He brings to light lived experiences and processes and the ways local and global forces, structures, and actors influence each other over time. Transnational life, Smith writes, includes those practices and rela tionships link migrants and nonmigrants to their home countries, that have significant meaning and are regularly observed, but are also embodied in identities and social structures help form the life world of immigrants and their children and is constructed in relations among people, institutions, and places. Thus, a transnational optic brings into view the social and the cultural, as well as the political and economic; it includes people who migrate and their children, as well as those who stay behind. This book is valuable for several reasons. First, it draws on extensive ethnographic work carried out in at least two of the sites of the transna tional social field in which Ticuanenses are embedded. It has the feel of earlier ethnographies of urban life (i.e., Sidewalk by Mitch Duneier, The Code of the Street by Elijah Anderson, or In Search of Respect by Philippe Bourgois) with the added virtue the street extends across space. Over time, the interaction between these places produces new forms