Emigrants and emigration states: A contested relationship?


Please note: Due to unavoidable circumstances, Roger Waldinger will not be able to join this seminar as advertised. Robin Cohen will now be taking part as a discussant.

In her presentation, Alexandra Délano Alonso will discuss diaspora policies focused on integration and the protection of social rights across borders. The evidence, based mainly on Mexico’s diaspora policies in the United States, engages a larger debate about transnational solidarity focused on equal access to rights from a perspective of shared responsibility and accountability. It considers examples of extension of rights and the expansion of concepts such as integration and citizenship in the context of diaspora policies, as innovative practices and discourses around migration that are being articulated, challenged, and imagined through interactions at multiple scales and across borders between migrants, states, and nonstate actors. The presentation juxtaposes these policies and practices against anti-immigrant discourse and xenophobia that have developed in parallel and examines alternative discourses and practices in response to it.