Diaspora studies have undergone a sea change in recent years. Skilled diasporas as a subset of diasporas have drawn the maximum attention as the developed countries have started to vie for talent from the global supply of human capital rather than relying mainly on the supply of knowledge workers in their home population. As a result, diasporas’ potential contributions to development in the developing countries of their origin have become important policy consideration and focus of research. This special issue of Asian Population Studies is addressed to an evaluation or assessment of such place for skilled diasporas in homeland development. The first selection is a short paper focused on the methodology of diaspora analysis, with examples from the Indian high-skill diaspora in the United States. The next three papers refer to the role of diaspora in contemporary Asian development—one is a comparative study of policy lessons China and India can draw from each other, another one looks into the potential that its medical diaspora has for contributing to the development of Bangladesh and a third one argues for diaspora networking as a development strategy with examples from India. The final paper, focused on internal migration from rural Pakistan and the absence of a substantial diaspora originating in rural Pakistan, substantiates this emerging perspective by providing a contra-view. The papers together thus cover substantial ground on the issue of South Asian diasporas and their role in development.
Beginning with the conceptualization of a framework for an underlying matrix of the large expatriate Indian migrant community abroad, which comprises a number of typologies of models and actors, the paper by Binod Khadria proposes a way of addressing a number of the binaries in the sub-matrixes, while still keeping the issues together under a holistic entity called the Indian Diaspora. It deconstructs the interface between the Indian diaspora and its international context—identifying each as a dependent variable under one construct and as independent variables under a different construct. The choice would depend on which perspective of policy is more dominant in time: of the origin home country of the diaspora or the destination host country. The reason a paradigm shift in the host societies and regions where Indians have settled has become important lies in the realization that, given certain assumptions, one type of diasporic actors can become the other. The paradigm shift in India—away from ‘brain drain’ being looked at as an outright loss, and therefore painful for development, towards ‘brain bank’ or ‘brain gain’, and therefore a gainful opportunity—could be understood as the outcome of such change only. What role the diaspora would play in making these transformations reality has been left as an open question. The paper suggests construction of alternative matrices of diaspora actors and models based on the chosen role.
Xiang Biao's paper also highlights this change in policy thinking on skilled migration, shifting focus from discouraging emigration in the 1970s to encouraging returns in the 1980s, and to facilitating ‘brain circulation’ since the 1990s. Based on a comparison of China and India, this paper argues that the fact that the highly skilled migrate out in the first place could be as important as their return and the way they could connect back to the homeland. Using the example of the Information Technology (IT) industry, brain circulation with minimum government intervention in India has been shown to be more effective and sustainable than the heavily invested government programmes in China aimed at promoting return and transnational connections. In other words, the IT professionals’ migration from India with minimum government intervention may have had more sustainable developmental effects than the aggressive government programmes in China aimed at promoting return and transnational relations. The Chinese programmes may, on the other hand, have been more conducive for the development of basic research. In short, a proper mix of government policy and market mechanism seems a key to achieving more sustainable brain circulation. Thus, one policy recommendation could be that in addition to attracting emigrants back and keeping in touch with them, governments should also consider facilitating and even cultivating productive outflows through industrial and human resource policies.
The paper by M. Omar Rahman and Rubayat Khan also makes reference to the dent in the traditional view that professional out-migration from developing countries is outright harmful to the country of origin. It stresses the notion of ‘brain drain’ being supplanted by other phrases like ‘brain gain’ and ‘brain circulation’, whereby professional out-migration from the developing to the developed world can potentially impact homeland growth and development positively, even without permanent return of out-migrants to their source countries. This paper elaborates the case for Bangladesh realizing this potential of its health sector diaspora, and the policy and practice changes that are necessary for it.
The paper by Eric Leclerc and Jean-Baptiste Meyer argues that the diaspora knowledge networks are an unambiguous contributor to the development of home countries. It substantiates the argument by citing a number of evidences from Asia, mainly the case of the development of the Information Technology industry in India and an indisputable involvement of the Indian skilled diaspora in it. The paper highlights the point that it was indeed the diaspora factor which was behind the knowledge transfer to the Indian IT industry and its movement up the value chain. The policy mediation in operationalizing the diaspora would, according to this paper, be a non-zero sum game of development in home countries.
The paper by Hisaya Oda indirectly underlines the important role of the skilled migrants as opposed to unskilled migrants on the one hand and diaspora or external migrants as opposed to internal migrants in development on the other. It also highlights the role of the household as a collective, which is akin to the concept of the diaspora, as opposed to the individual entities. Referring to external migration from rural Pakistan, the paper cites the anecdote of one person migrating to Hong Kong some 30 years ago in search of employment and then creating a network to attract other Pakistani migrants to come to Hong Kong. Such examples abound for the Mirpuris from Azad Jammu Kashmir migrating to the United Kingdom and Gujaratis and Punjabis from India to Norway. Oda's paper also refers to remittances being spent to finance schooling of household members in rural Pakistan, and speculates that the relatively high literacy rates and high levels of educational attainment in Chakwal district might be explained by remittance-financed spending on education. Importantly, the paper talks of a relatively high incidence of poverty among internal migrant households, indicative that internal migration had not improved the lot of migrant households. External migration, according to this paper, seemed to be the best option to upgrade the living standard of the households in Pakistani villages. However, another matter was that most landless and small landholding families could not afford the cost of external migration, and even if they did, chances of their getting jobs in the destination countries were limited due to their low levels of human capital. The paper thus indirectly lends credence to the proposition of the other papers in this collection: that skilled diasporas could play roles that could become crucial in homeland development—roles that neither unskilled nor non-diasporic migrants could play.
Acknowledgements
This special issue of Asian Population Studies has been inspired by the Panel on Skilled Diasporas, at the International Conference on Population and Development in Asia: Critical Issues for a Sustainable Future, organized by the Asian MetaCentre for Population and Sustainable Development Analysis and supported by The Wellcome Trust, and held at Phuket, Thailand in March 2006. In putting the issue together as a guest editor, I have been privileged to receive help from numerous people to whom I would like to record my sincere indebtedness. Gavin Jones, the editor of Asian Population Studies, and Brenda Yeo, the convenor of the Phuket conference deserve my special thanks for inviting me, as the chair of the panel, to be the guest editor for this special issue. While the authors of three papers had carried out substantial revisions to their conference papers, the first and the last papers have been invited specifically for the special issue. I am grateful to all the authors for obliging me with their cooperation in keeping within the timelines. In addition, the constructive comments and suggestions of expert colleagues, chosen as anonymous referees, were indeed invaluable inputs behind the scene. Ms Shamala Sundaray helped with the organization of the logistics of communication and putting the drafts in order. The collective effort would be amply rewarded if, as I hope, the readers find the issue enjoyable reading and a useful collection to keep.