Human Geopolitics

Abstract

Abstract This book describes and explains how diaspora engagement institutions have spread globally and begun to unleash a new wave of human geopolitics. Migration has become an urgent priority around the world and at every level of government, but most research still focuses exclusively on immigration policy, even while most governments care more deeply about emigration and the transnational involvements of emigrants and their descendants in the diaspora. Liberal democracies long eschewed emigration controls, which may violate freedom of exit and interfere in other countries’ domestic affairs. But this is changing: in the past quarter century, more than half of all United Nations member states have established a government office devoted to ‘their’ people abroad. What explains the rise of these ‘diaspora institutions’, and how does it relate to the political geographies of decolonization, regional integration and global migration governance since World War II? In addressing these questions, this book reports quantitative data covering all UN members from 1936–2015, and fieldwork with high-level policy makers across sixty states. It shows how, in many world regions, the unregulated spread of diaspora institutions is unleashing a wave of ‘human geopolitics’, involving state competition over people rather than territory. The book suggests the development of stronger guiding principles and evaluation frameworks to govern state-diaspora relations in an era of unprecedented global interdependence.

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