First results of the Provincial Globalisation research programme
This WOTRO-NWO funded research programme focuses on the process of ‘provincial globalisation' in India. The first working papers can now be downloaded.
The Provincial Globalisation research programme presents its first results:
Working Paper 1: Measuring International Remittances in India: Concepts and Empirics
Author: Puja Guha
India is the top remittance receiving nation in the world. The international remittance receipts in India have grown at an impressive rate of 300 per cent during the past decade. Understanding the true impact of these foreign exchange flows is possible only with better knowledge and accurate measurement of the volume of these flows. This paper presents an empirical illustration of the different measures of international remittances for India, as measured by different institutions and surveys, and highlights the discrepancies between these measures. The broad objective of the paper is to understand the conceptual and empirical issues involved in measuring these flows.
Working Paper 2: Diaspora Philanthropy from a Homeland Perspective
Authors: Natascha Dekkers and Mario Rutten
Financial flows are an important aspect of transnational ties between migrants and their respective home countries. Worldwide, the amount of remittances has increased substantially, India being the largest recipient of overseas remittances in the developing world today. Although household level remittances have received the most attention from scholars and policy makers, an increasing proportion of financial flows from migrants to their home countries consists of philanthropy. Additionally, studies on the economic and social impact of diaspora philanthropic activities in India emphasise the role of the migrants who send such transfers, while relatively little is known about the views and activities of the recipients in the home communities.
Working Paper 3: Economics of Migration and Remittances: A Review Article
Author: Puja Guha
The economic discourse on migration and development has swung from the neo-classical developmentalist optimism of the 1950s to a somewhat pessimistic hypothesis of lost labour and brain drain of the 1970s, to a more nuanced view of the new economics of labour migration (NELM), which looks at the gains arising out of resource transfer from migrants in the host countries to their respective countries of origin. Not only has there been a paradigm shift in the discussions, there has also been a change in the approach to understanding the migration-development nexus. From the Lewisian dual economy model of rural-urban migration for factor price equalization, there has been a shift to, and a recent boom in, empirical work on remittances, which are viewed both as a return from the migration process and as an important source of development finance.
The aim of this paper is to analyse the different generations of migration theory and remittances from the development economics perspective, examining in particular the dichotomy between economic and social theory in explaining the nexus between migration and development.
About the programme
This WOTRO-NWO funded research programme focuses on the process of ‘provincial globalisation' in India by tracing transnational reverse flows of economic resources from migrants to their home regions - remittances, investments and charitable donations - as well as of ideas, cultural orientations and social aspirations - and examining the influence of these flows on political and economic processes and cultural identities at the regional level.
Provincial Globalisation is part of the programme Group Moving Matters of the AISSR.