Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Return migrants as 'agents of change'
'Counter-diasporic migration' is Russell King and Anastasia Christou's
(2009) conceptual label for the return of second-generation, transna-
tional migrants to Greece, their ancestral homeland, which illuminates
the many ambiguities and cultural challenges such contemporary
returnees have faced. Also, challenging what had been the conventional
wisdom that Caribbean return migrants made few developmental
impacts back home, Conway and Potter (2007) convincingly argued
that despite their relatively small numbers, return migrants were mak-
ing positive social and economic benefits and were contributing as sig-
nificant 'agents of change'.
Social remittances
Continuing their revisions of earlier conventional ideas about remit-
tances being more than mere material inputs 'back home', Peggy Levitt
and Deepak Lamba-Nieves (2011) have widened the scope of social
remittances' impacts to include the contributions of diasporic returnees
as meaningful organizational actors. Consequently, this recognition of
return migrants' considerable stocks of social and human capital has
developmental implications for social remittances as vehicles for
'people-centred' organizational management and capacity building in
global South origins (see Chapter 2.2). Migration-development relation-
ships that occur at micro-scales such as these, therefore, appear to
show promise for the future, in that migrant families and local com-
munities appear to be the major beneficiaries. Regions and more geo-
graphically marginal areas, however, may not be so fortunate as
investment prospects for social and economic remittances (Cohen, 2005;
Newland, 2007).
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Migration: Remittances and Beyond
It is no longer in doubt that there has been an increasing influence of
migrant-donated remittances in the development and growth of the
home communities they have left (International Organization of
Migration (IOM) 2005; 2008). Migration and development relations are
currently viewed as very important for global South development pros-
pects (Faist, 2008). Remittances have always been sent back to family
dependents back in the villages or small rural towns by city-ward
