![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
Ecuadorian migration has emerged as a good case study on the pro-active orientations of sending countries toward expatriates, as an attempt to retain their allegiance, connectedness, and investments. Drawing on the discourses and policies of the Correa government in Ecuador, this paper aims to explore the effects of emigration on the national ‘self-understandings’ of sending countries and on their nation-building projects. Three theoretical questions are addressed: how do symbolic issues interact with more instrumental reasons in accounting for the political agendas of emigration countries? How do emigrant-addressed appeals affect the shifting boundaries of their national belonging? How do migrants react, if at all, to state-led representations and policies which build on their (supposedly) persistent loyalty to the homeland? While revisiting the Ecuadorian case, this article argues for domestic factors, nation-building agendas, and ‘banal nationalism’ to be factored into the literature on diasporas and emigration countries.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper have benefited from valuable comments by Mike Collyer, Peggy Levitt and Jan Willem Duyvendak. Preliminary drafts of it were presented at the Seventh IMISCOE Annual Conference in Liège (2010), at the NORFACE Conference on Migration – Economic Challenge, Social Change (University College London, 2011) and at the MMDAL Programme of the University of Córdoba, Argentina (2012). Helpful information was also provided by Eduardo Domenech, Gabriel Echeverría, Gioconda Herrera, Francesca Lagomarsino and Jacques Ramírez. Finally, I thank the three anonymous reviewers of National Identities for their insightful criticisms and remarks.
Notes on contributor
Paolo Boccagni is a Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento. His main areas of work are migration studies, care, social welfare, diversity, and transnationalism. He has done fieldwork on immigrant integration and transnational participation, as well as on ethnic boundaries, remittances, external voting, and the migration-development nexus. His recent publications include articles in International Migration, Global Networks, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Social Identities.
Notes
1. This article revisits the research I did on Ecuadorian migration to Europe, with particular regard to transnational families, political transnationalism, return migration, remittances, and social protection (Boccagni, Citation2010, Citation2011, Citation2013). More specifically, my analysis of emigrant-addressed policies and discourses draws on three field visits to Ecuador between 2006 and 2009. While in Quito, I did in-depth interviews with 30 key informants on the emerging ‘Fifth Region’ policies. The latter interviewees were academics, civil servants, government officials, NGO and migrant association leaders. I also did a documental analysis of the sources of normative and political information about emigration provided by the Ecuadorian authorities (including the web-based ones). Last, valuable insights came from two transnational surveys on Ecuadorians' external voting, which I co-organized in 2006 and 2008. Altogether, while the central focus of this article is on state-led representations of emigrants as part of the Ecuadorian ‘nation’, my remarks on migrants' reactions are primarily referred to the more recent migration flows to Western Europe (particularly Spain and Italy).
2. As far as Latin American countries are concerned, a review of these political developments has been provided by Escobar (Citation2007).
3. According to the most recent estimates available, Ecuadorian migrants abroad number about two million – out of a national population of almost fourteen million. Over 80% of them is settled in three countries only – the USA, Spain, and Italy (OIM, Citation2012). The same countries, unsurprisingly, host most of the Casas Ecuatorianas (Houses of Ecuador – governmental centers for legal and social support to emigrants).
4. See however, on the antecedents of emigrant-addressed policies in Ecuador, Eguiguren (Citation2011) and Margheritis (Citation2011).
5. See for instance, on the European case, Suvarierol's (Citation2012) analysis of a ‘new nationalism’ whereby migrants and their descendants turn out to be the main source of self-distinction for the reproduction of ‘native’ national identities. For a review of the ‘cultural politics of nation and migration’, from the point of view of receiving countries, see also Vertovec (Citation2011).
6. This concept, introduced by Anderson and then empirically elaborated by Skrbis (Citation1999) and Glick-Schiller and Fouron (Citation2001) among others, is of limited relevance – just like the cognate one of diaspora – to the Ecuadorian case. This emigration flow is relatively recent, as it started on a widespread basis about 40 years ago to the USA, and only in the late 90s to Europe – mainly to Spain and Italy (OIM, Citation2012). Furthermore, despite the strong ethnic divisions and inequalities in Ecuador (Roitman, Citation2009), inter-ethnic divides have generally far less salience – nor are they remarkably ‘politicized’ – in Ecuadorian collectives abroad.
7. Quote from Fitzgerald (Citation2006).
8. Similar instances are available all across Latin America (although no comparative study exists about them): Quinto Suyo in Perù, Tenth Department in Haiti, Department 15 in Salvador and so forth. See however, on the related policy provisions, Araujo & Eguiriguen, Citation2009; Berg & Tamagno, Citation2006; Vono de Vilhena, Citation2006; Weeks & Weeks, Citation2013. See also Feldman-Bianco, Rivera Sanchez, Stefoni, and Villa Martínez's (Citation2011) collection of viewpoints about the prevailing ways of ‘socially constructing migrants as subjects’ across Latin America.
9. This formulation, revisited by other authors as well, stands for three commonsense assumptions that are invariably questioned by migration: ‘(1) some sense of cultural identity is presumed to characterize a people; (2) this identity/people is believed to be contiguous with a territory, demarcated by a border; (3) within the border, laws and a moral economy underpin a specific social and political order… which both draws on and reinforces the sense of collective identity’ (Vertovec, Citation2011, p. 245).
10. Interestingly, this top-down discursive strategy addresses migrant memories in an abstractly civic and patriotic terrain, as epitomized by national flags, anthems, and so on. Much less salient are specific identity markers – such as local and ethnic identities or traditions – that would inevitably refer to the strong territorial, ethnic, and social divides within the Ecuadorian society.
11. Such representations are typically mixed – in Ecuador, and arguably in many other sending countries – as a reaction to the strong influence of emigration on the extant social and economic hierarchies, or on the normative understandings of family roles and gender relationships (the highly stigmatized issue of ‘left behind’ children being a prominent instance – cf. Boccagni, Citation2013).
12. The archive of president Correa's official speeches is available on www.presidencia.gob.ec/discursos (last consulted: 6 November 2013). Correa's inauguration speech after the 2013 re-election, for instance, includes an explicit acknowledgment of gratitude to the ‘migrant brothers’, ‘exiled by poverty and expelled from their own land’, who ‘were able to keep their Homeland depicted within themselves’, ‘were able to open new horizons’ and ‘were those who maintained us through their hard work, their sacrifices and remittances, despite the cost of distance and uprootedness’ (Correa, Citation2013, p. 71). Incidentally, the minority of ‘migrant brothers’ who participated in absentee ballots voted predominantly for Correa and his party, whether in 2013 or in the previous elections (Boccagni & Ramírez, Citation2013).
13. After all, the gross national product growth rates of Ecuador in the last few years have been remarkable, despite the crisis-related ups and downs in remittance inflows (Weisbrot, Johnston, & Lefebvre, Citation2013). And in strictly realpolitik terms, issues such as bilateral relations with China or oil revenues and contracts are probably of far greater strategic relevance – although of lesser symbolic significance – than cultivating relations with expatriates.
14. The eviction (due to unpaid mortgages) of several thousand Ecuadorians in Spain has been harshly condemned by the Ecuadorian government, which has also appealed to the European Court of Human Rights against this practice (Ramírez, Citation2013).