The Strategic Logic of Diaspora Management

In The Strategic Logic of Diaspora Management, I develop a framework for the comparative study of state-planned diaspora management policies—which include both policies that cultivate links with co-ethnics and/or citizens abroad and policies regulating the return of these co-ethnics and/or citizens. Countries like Canada and Sweden have uniform policies to engage their citizens abroad while others vary their diaspora policy on the basis of the citizens’ skills or host country (e.g. Mexico or Finland). Moreover, there are countries that extend their policies beyond their citizens living abroad to include communities that have not lived in their purported homeland for generations (e.g. Germany, South Korea, Japan) while others do not (e.g. New Zealand, USA). Based on the information I have collected on all OECD countries, I distinguish between countries that have a uniform policy towards citizens abroad, countries that have non-uniform policies toward citizens abroad, countries that have a uniform policy toward both expatriates and co-ethnics abroad, and finally countries that have non-uniform policies toward both expatriates and co-ethnics abroad. In this paper, I accounts for the variation in the target and uniformity of policies toward diasporas across different countries and over time by focusing on the varied understandings of nationhood as well as the interstate relations between host and home countries.