Diasporas and Fragile states – beyond remittances assessing the theoretical and policy linkages

ABSTRACT

There is a need for further refinement of the complex relationship between diaspora communities, their transnational social networks and fragile states. Research clearly shows that many diaspora mobilise to support their causes, but this often creates unevenness in outcomes and inequalities in access to resource especially in fragile states settings. We argue that remittances address only part of the state fragility problematique and that there are other, equally important roles for diaspora beyond remittance flows. We develop this argument by first explaining why a broader definition of state fragility improves our understanding of the importance of different kinds of diaspora linkages between home and host state. We then identify additional factors that can contribute to a reduction of state fragility and evaluate these against six cases.

KEYWORDS:

• Diaspora mobilization
• fragile states
• development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Fragility is the extent to which the actual practices and capacities of states differ from its idealized image (Carment, Prest, and Samy 2009, 2011).

2 https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/01/5-ways-to-help-finance-smes/

3 FDI stock from Kazakhstan was not reported for 2012. Above quoted numbers include available data from US and Russia for 2012.

4 Data for largest host states derived from World Bank Migration Matrix 2013, http://go.worldbank.org/JITC7NYTT0

5 See: World Bank Migration Matrix 2013, http://go.worldbank.org/JITC7NYTT0 (accessed May 3, 2015).

6 In 2012, Afghanistan scored 7.51 on Authority, 6.57 on Legitimacy, and 6.72 on Capacity. Haiti scored comparatively better at 5.46 on Authority, 6.41 on Legitimacy, and 6.51 on Capacity. Somalia scored the poorest at 8.34 on Authority, 7.25 on Legitimacy, while no data was available for capacity. ALC scores are measured as an index on a scale of 1–10, where scores about 6.6 are considered representative of ‘extreme fragility’ (CIFP, 2015). For more, please see http://www4.carleton.ca/cifp/app/ffs_ranking.php