International Migration and Sending Countries: Perceptions, Policies and Transnational Relations.

• Author: Dryden-Peterson, Sarah
• Position: Book Review

International Migration and Sending Countries: Perceptions, Policies and Transnational Relations Edited by Eva Ostergaard-Nielsen (Palgrave Macmillan Ltd., 2003)

International Migration and Sending Countries examines global migration from a new angle, choosing to highlight the role of sending countries in migration management and in relations with emigrants and established diasporas. In so doing, this edited volume creates a link between comparative research on migration and integration politics on the one hand and the rapidly emerging research field of transnational communities on the other. In an increasingly globalized world, in which the massive movement of human beings across international borders is one of the most pertinent phenomena of the time, this book is timely both for academics and for policy-makers.

This volume emerged from a workshop held at the London School of Economics and Political Science in July 2000. The eight contributors work primarily in Europe, although one is based in the United States and one in the Philippines. Eva Ostergaard-Nielsen, the editor and a research fellow at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, frames the volume with an introduction and conclusion, both of which highlight substantive and theoretical themes in migration. She identifies two questions that the volume seeks to address through a series of case studies drawn from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

First, why are some countries more reluctant than others to engage in sustained dialogue with citizens abroad and to involve them in their economic development, or domestic and foreign politics? Second, why do some sending countries succeed in these endeavors while others do not? In addressing these questions, the authors argue for a "reconsideration of the role of sending countries in international migration that includes but does not overestimate their role in creating transnational economic, social, and political spaces and in turning emigrants and diasporas into a part of national development and democratisation."

The unit of analysis in this particular approach to the topic is the individual state. As a result, comparative analysis across cases is sparse. The eight case studies are nevertheless effective in probing the particular nature of sending countries' relationships with their emigrants and diasporas, and in suggesting certain, more global, themes. The structure of the book itself proposes an analytic flame for types of...