Typologies of Diaspora Policies
Scholars on diaspora policies tend to create typologies by identifying similarities and differences among state policies designed to forge the relationship between diaspora communities and their kin-state. On the one hand, Peggy Levitt and Rafael de la Dehesa—drawing on material from several countries, but focusing most closely on Brazil, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic—categorize state outreach policies into five main types. (1) Bureaucratic (ministerial or consular) reforms that states implement in response to emigrants’ and their descendants’ increasing importance to policymakers. (2) Investment policies that aim to attract or channel migrant remittances. (3) The extension of political rights to non-resident populations in the form of dual citizenship, the right to vote, or the right to run for public office. (4) The introduction of state services or protections for diaspora communities. (5) The implementation of symbolic politics designed to maintain and reinforce national identity, a sense of belonging, and long-term membership for co-nationals living in the diaspora. On the other hand, Alan Gamlen provided a quite similar typology. He systematically reviewed the diaspora policies of approximately seventy states. As a result of his comparative research, he divided diaspora engagement policies into three main types. (1) Capacity-building policies, which aim at discursively producing a state-centric transnational national society and developing a corresponding set of state institutions. (2) Policies of extending rights to the diaspora, thus playing a role that befits a legitimate sovereign. (3) Policies of extracting obligations from the diaspora, based on the premise that emigrants owe loyalty to this legitimate sovereign.