Diaspora engagement policies

Turkey has many expatriate communities abroad, as well as communities of various origins, whose members reside within its borders and feel connected to other states or regions. Many of these communities have been ignored or eyed with suspi-cion by the modern Turkish nation-state since its inception in the 1920s. It is only recently that Turkey has “discovered” its people abroad and the diaspora communities within, a discovery that appears to be causally connected with Turkey’s rising ambitions and ‘soft power’ capabilities. Under the Justice and Development Party, efforts for a concerted dias-pora policy have reached a peak with the creation of the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities in 2010. This report deals with the Presidency, its goals and capacities, its role within the larger context of Turkey’s foreign policy and its desired and actual impacts on Turkey’s diaspora communities.Is this a “new diaspora policy” geared towards increasing Turkish influence abroad or an attempt to improve the quality of life of Turkish citizens often experiencing discrimination in Western European countries? Or is it an example of constructive foreign policy and diaspora building among a disparate group of people, most of whom have only very little in common? Based on qualita-tive field research in the Presidency, this paper argues that Turkey’s new diaspora policy combines all of these different approaches. This openness and flexibility is a great strength, even though significant political challenges await Turkey’s diaspora policies, precisely because it is still very much in the process of assembly. That said, this first stage in the making of Turkey’s diaspora policy is a perfect time to discuss its direction and suggest ways to make it more inclusive and internationally respected. This is all the more important as Turks abroad are likely to experience more discrimination in a European Union increasingly influenced by racist and Islamo-phobic political parties, while the contestations over the hundredth anniversary of the Armenian geno-cide in 2015 will add new stress to inter-community relations between Turks, Kurds and Armenians abroad. An inclusive and post-nationalist diaspora policy would be an important remedy to both of these challenges.

Based on review of documentary sources on state-emigrant relations, the dataset reviews how 64 states relate to their diasporas. It shows how states constitute various extra-territorial groups as members of a loyal diaspora, through a diverse range of institutions and practices. Three higher-level types of diaspora engagement policy are identified: 1 - capacity building policies, aimed at discursively producing a state-centric ‘transnational national society’, and developing a set of corresponding state institution; 2 - extending rights to the diaspora, thus playing a role that befits a legitimate sovereign, and 3 - extracting obligations from the diaspora, based on the premise that emigrants owe loyalty to this legitimate sovereign.

The Diaspora Policies dataset focuses on thirty-five states characterized in terms of their symbolic policies, social and economic policies, religious and cultural policies, citizenship policies and government and bureaucratic control, coded in nineteen categorical variables. The dataset includes features of diaspora policies. The dataset is composed of 19 indicators, regrouped in five headings: symbolic policies, social and economic policies, religious and cultural policies, citizenship policies and government and bureaucratic control. Data for these variables has been collected from a variety of secondary sources, as well as primary sources from states, international organizations and diaspora organizations

Over the last four decades since the initial mass resettlement of refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1975, principally in the US and France, the Southeast Asian communities in Europe and the US have registered a demographic shift with the emergence of diaspora-born generations with different experiences, access, mobility, ties to the ancestral homeland, and notions and claims to citizenship and belonging in multiple contexts. Despite the long history of migration to France, dating back to the colonial period, there is little scholarly attention paid to the Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian communities (heretofore referred to as "Southeast Asian") in France. French preoccupation remains largely fixated on Asia and on the antiquities, rather than on the diaspora. This is particularly noteworthy given that Southeast Asians collectively constitute the second largest Asian population in France, a close second only to the Chinese. Despite the resurgent attention to immigration issues in Europe in recent years, we know little of the integration experiences of these earlier but relatively recent refugee communities in Europe. In particular, we have virtually no knowledge of the post-refugee generations that are an integral part of French cultural, political, economic, and social fabric. These knowledge gaps deprive us of critical insights that would be relevant and invaluable in view of the current refugee situations in Europe, and the intensifying debates engendered by demographic and cultural shifts both in the US and in France. Though relatively more prolific, scholarship on Southeast Asians in the US remains uneven, with more studies available on Vietnamese Americans than on other communities, and comparatively little on the post-refugee generations. With their different historical relationships with Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and different philosophies about immigrant incorporation and cultural pluralism, the US and France make for a rich comparative study that is at the center of our proposed collaboration. This two-part initiative proposes, firstly, to bring together an interdisciplinary group of European and American researchers working on Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian diasporas to engage in critical, cross disciplinary discourse on the post-refugee generations. Among other concerns, the researchers on the project are particularly interested in their social, cultural, political, and transnational negotiations with regards to identity politics, networks, and public engagement, as guided in part by the following questions: What are the experiences of the Southeast Asian post-refugee generations in Europe? What forces and factors in the receiving contexts shape their experiences, and how, and what are the differences and commonalities among the contexts of reception? How, if in any way, does historical memory inform their identity constructions, socialities, and diasporic consciousness and engagement? What, if any, are their relationships with the ancestral homeland? How are those ties maintained or made manifest? The ultimate aims of this project are as follows: - to map the landscape of research on contemporary Southeast Asian migration to Europe - to share research methodologies, trends, and findings - to broaden and deepen our comparative understanding of refugee resettlement and incorporation experiences in America and in Europe that are the two principal refugee resettlement hubs - to foster cross and trans-disciplinary discourse on migration and diasporas - to advance and widen the transnational fields of critical refugee, migration and diaspora studies - to transnationalize the Critical Refugee Studies Collective, which is a University of California-based network of critical refugee studies scholars. Secondly and as an extension of this larger conversation, Um and Le Bail also propose to begin ethnographic research on post-refugee generations of Southeast Asians in France, with particular attention to the Sino-Vietnamese community that is their shared research interest and that constitutes an underexplored research terrain.

The project breaks new ground in the study of migration governance by looking at the so-called immigration countries from the perspective of emigration governance. The main underlying theme of this research is that emigration and immigration are two sides of the same coin and thus European migration governance should be approached from two angles to understand its full dimension. European Union is in fact still a region of emigration, with majority of flows staying within its boundaries, but important numbers leaving EU every year. Following the current global trends emigrants should be perceived as a potential asset. ÉMIGRÉ analyses emigration and diaspora policies of four EU Member States (UK, France, Spain and Poland) as well as EU-level responses to emigration to understand what are the drivers of the emigration governance in Europe and how the policies actually work. Key objectives are: 1) To close the knowledge gap on migration from the EU. 2) To enrich international migration governance studies by providing comparative analysis of actions of EU States in regards to emigration management, over time. 3) To ask what is the relation between State identity formation/shifts and success of policy learning/policy transfer processes between levels of governance. 4) To contribute to evidence-based policy making at the EU level. The project focuses especially on EU emigration to other OECD countries and in particular Canada. It employs a wide range of interdisciplinary methods to collect and analyse data. It also offers an intensive training programme.