Tamil Diaspora-driven Development Aid: Towards an Understanding of Context, Networks and Historical Changes

Abstract

During the last decade new actors such as migrant organisations, schools and private development initiatives have emerged as a ‘fourth pillar’ of development cooperation. The rise of this ‘pillar’ is often primarily conceptualised and explained within a ‘Western’ social and cultural context. However, development initiatives within diasporas may often be embedded within distinct transnational social systems and rooted in embodied cultural knowledge. Hence, there may be a need to regard diaspora-driven development aid differently from other ‘fourth pillar’ aid initiatives. This article focuses on the changing role of the Tamil diaspora in development projects in Sri Lanka. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, inside knowledge about the diaspora through long-time political engagement in Tamil organisations, as well as interviews and focus groups with Tamils in Norway, we discuss how social and political processes in both the home and host country may have an impact on diaspora networks, remittance practices and the constitution of diaspora-driven development aid. We connect migration practices and development projects in the homeland and argue that we need to acknowledge the importance of shifting political, social, economic and cultural contexts in our attempts to understand the culturally meaningful ways in which diaspora members channel their development efforts and contribute to the constitution of the ‘fourth pillar’ of development.

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