Governmentality, Diaspora Assemblages and the Ongoing Challenge of “Development”

Abstract

Drawing on governmentality debates, I argue that skilled members of the Jamaican diaspora are becoming important actors in an ongoing development strategy to extend the rationality of the market into everyday social relations and institutions. Diaspora members are imagined by states and development institutions to be ideal development partners because of their access to potentially lucrative business, knowledge and capital networks, and their desire to direct them towards socially transformative ends. But, as I shall demonstrate, efforts to incorporate skilledémigrés into national development plans raise important questions about the entanglements between diaspora strategies, state power and enduring local patterns of uneven development. Rather than a space of social transformation, diaspora can also function as a space of stasis that reproduces rather than transforms such patterns. By examining Jamaica's emerging diaspora strategy, I examine not only the governmental role that diaspora groups are increasingly beginning to play, but also their potential to support or disrupt the class, gender and racial asymmetries that have historically governed flows of wealth, opportunity and power across the island.

The European Union and neoliberal governmentality: Twinning in Tunisia and Egypt

“…With individuals bearing the responsibility for their employment, poverty, health and so on (Brenner et al, 2010), neoliberalism assembles its energies 'to promote social and moral orders conducive to entrepreneurial conduct' through indirect regulatory and legal measures of control and guidance that 'disseminate the necessary rights and freedoms for individuals to give their lives an entrepreneurial shape' in accordance with the wishes and requirements of the market (Vrasti, 2013: 60). Here, 'local ownership' proves a critical element that takes the form of giving individuals and local networks certain aspects of power and incorporating them into governance processes (Kurki, 2011: 353) in the area of, for instance, security (Joseph, 2009) and socio-economic development (Mullings, 2012). Neoliberalism is the encouragement of local ownership by investing in the skills of local planners, experts and governors and proliferating their resources, spaces and linkages to play a part in governance matters.…”

“…Such procedures apply to both individuals and states vis-a-vis the market. Making individuals self-responsible for risks and benefits obliges them to acquire capacities and expertise-driven qualities to increase their market value and their chances to get a better share of economic opportunities and governance processes (Mullings, 2012). However, the association of the proper kind of rational economic subject not only results in the ruling out of people unable to coincide with market logics, but also has the effect of depoliticisation by dismissing alternative economic models and making structural factors of poverty, risk, illiteracy and illness invisible through its overemphasis on individual responsibilities (Munro, 2012;Vrasti, 2013).…”

Articulating an Indian diaspora in South Africa: The Consulate General of India, diaspora associations and practices of collaboration

“…Governing technologies that extend beyond the state (such as dual citizenship, migrant bonds and extra-territorial voting rights) act as constellations of power/knowledge that are able to be reproduced across a wide network through socially embedded institutions and forces (Varadarajan, 2014). Typically, the focus of the diaspora governmentality literature has been on the biopolitical rationalities regulating skilled expatriates (Larner, 2007), but also significant are gendered middle-class diasporic subjects with concerns surrounding economic development of the home country (Mullings, 2011).…”

“…This use of articulation suggests the value of exploring the spatialities and sites in which articulatory practices take place (Featherstone, 2011) and from what ''angle(s) of vision'' different elements become combined together (Li, 2007). This paper's use of articulation therefore is posed as a response to Mullings' (2011) call to take more seriously how diaspora strategies become legitimized amongst diasporic subjects with a diversity of voices. It does so by developing an understanding of the multidimensional relations of power and agencies involved as a range of actors performatively and discursively articulate governmental diaspora strategies together with diasporic subjectivities and histories via the outreach practices of consulates and embassies.…”

“…In this paper, I explore specific sites of exchange between states and their diasporas, past studies of which (e.g. Mani and Varadarajan, 2005;Mullings, 2011) have produced a rich tapestry of insights into the underpinning logics of governments' diaspora policies. Nonetheless, there is also a need to account for the local contexts in which diaspora policies are implemented, received and translated by diasporic populations embedded in 'host' countries so as to better understand specific policies' successes and failures (Délano, 2011).…”