Making the ‘Fifth Region’ a real place? Emigrant policies and the emigration-nation nexus in Ecuador

Abstract

Ecuadorian migration has emerged as a good case study on the pro-active orientations of sending countries toward expatriates, as an attempt to retain their allegiance, connectedness, and investments. Drawing on the discourses and policies of the Correa government in Ecuador, this paper aims to explore the effects of emigration on the national 'self-understandings' of sending countries and on their nation-building projects. Three theoretical questions are addressed: how do symbolic issues interact with more instrumental reasons in accounting for the political agendas of emigration countries? How do emigrant-addressed appeals affect the shifting boundaries of their national belonging? How do migrants react, if at all, to state-led representations and policies which build on their (supposedly) persistent loyalty to the homeland? While revisiting the Ecuadorian case, this article argues for domestic factors, nation-building agendas, and 'banal nationalism' to be factored into the literature on diasporas and emigration countries.

Integration Processes and Policies in Europe

“…Turnout in homeland elections is a notorious case in point, as it is usually nowhere near domestic electoral participatory rates, because the cost of voting in terms of both access to information and the logistics of voter registration is rather high (Lafl eur 2012 ). Emigrants may in general be sceptical towards the outreach of a homeland regime, since lack of trust in that very regime may have been an incentive for emigration in the fi rst place (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003a ;Boccagni 2014 ). Indeed, a recent handbook on bonding with the diaspora repeatedly emphasizes the importance of fostering trust in the country of origin among emigrants and diasporas-an indication that diasporas are not necessarily confi dent in the political institutions of their homeland (Aguinas and Newland 2012 ).…”

“…As argued by Bauböck ( 2013 , xv), we should see understandings of nationhood not as independent variables but as 'discourses through which states legitimate their policies that may be driven by quite different motives'. Indeed, a more constructivist approach to the complex relationship between homeland narratives of the nation and those of emigrants has been highlighted in recent work on sending country policies Boccagni 2014 ). It could be added that this type of research requires an analysis that distinguishes which set of political actors in the sending countries frames their support or opposition to outreach policies towards emigrants.…”

“…A second line of argument suggests that sending state outreach policies are shaped by forms of nationhood and processes of nation-building in the country of origin (Boccagni 2014 ). This view is especially related to the extension of citizenship to overseas nationals.…”

“…European-based research has centred on the countries of origin of the larger migrant collectives from outside of the EU, such as Turkey (Østergaard-Nielsen 2009(Østergaard-Nielsen , 2003c and Morocco (De Haas 2007 ;Brand 2002 ), or on the Eastern European countries that recently became EU members (Waterbury 2006 ). Of course, there are also studies on Latin American sending country policies, such as those of Ecuador (Boccagni 2014 ;Maisonave 2011 ), Bolivia and Mexico (Lafl eur 2012 ), and Argentina and Uruguay (Margheritis 2014 ), as well as Asia (China) . Recently, several studies have attempted a broad crossregional comparison in order to evaluate some of the core assumptions often made regarding why sending states reach out to their populations (Ragazzi 2014 ;Gamlen et al 2013 ;Gamlen 2008 ).…”

“…As mentioned, sending countries have called for protection of their workers abroad. Ecuador's government strongly criticized the Spanish and Italian governments for this reason (Boccagni 2014 ). The Philippines, too, has called for the protection of and proper salaries for especially domestic workers in the Gulf and Asia, and has secured a minimum wage for Philippine domestic workers in Malaysia (Ezquerra and Garcés-Mascareñas 2008 ).…”