Little is known about why diaspora members invest in their homelands or why investment intensity varies among diaspora communities. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, we generate a multi-level, conceptual model of diaspora homeland investment. Our model examines the effects of inter-diaspora cultural differences, support from diaspora organizations, and three types of investment expectations - financial, social, and emotional - to better understand this phenomenon.

Once viewed as a “brain drain,” migrants are increasingly viewed as a resource for promoting economic development back in their home countries. In Investing in the Homeland, Benjamin Graham finds that diasporans—migrants and their descendants—play a critical role in linking foreign firms to social networks in developing countries, allowing firms to flourish even in challenging political environments most foreign investors shun. Graham’s analysis draws on new data from face-to-face interviews with the managers of over 450 foreign firms operating in two developing countries: Georgia and the Philippines. Diaspora-owned and diaspora-managed firms are better connected than other foreign firms and they use social ties to resolve disputes and influence government policy. At the same time, Graham shows that diaspora-affiliated firms are no more socially responsible than their purely foreign peers—at root, they are profit-seeking enterprises, not development NGOs. Graham identifies implications for policymakers seeking to capture the development potential of diaspora investment and for managers of multinational firms who want to harness diasporans as a source of sustained competitive advantage.

The authors of this book focus on three core issues - the responses of diasporas to homeland conflicts, strategies for mobilizing effective homeland investment and the positive role of direct diaspora participation in development efforts.

In Diaspora’s Homeland Shelly Chan provides a broad historical study of how the mass migration of more than twenty million Chinese overseas influenced China’s politics, economics, and culture. Chan develops the concept of “diaspora moments”—a series of recurring disjunctions in which migrant temporalities come into tension with local, national, and global ones—to map the multiple historical geographies in which the Chinese homeland and diaspora emerge. Chan describes several distinct moments, including the lifting of the Qing emigration ban in 1893, intellectual debates in the 1920s and 1930s about whether Chinese emigration constituted colonization and whether Confucianism should be the basis for a modern Chinese identity, as well as the intersection of gender, returns, and Communist campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s. Adopting a transnational frame, Chan narrates Chinese history through a reconceptualization of diaspora to show how mass migration helped establish China as a nation-state within a global system.

Examining the experiences of Africans setting up businesses back home, the main focus of this book is to establish the economic, social and psychological reasons for such ‘home direct investment’. Despite the personal sacrifices that are often needed in order to set up new ventures, the diaspora invests relentless effort and motivations in the pursuit of home ventures. The authors explore critical areas such as the social and psychological pressures that African Diasporas experience when investing in their home countries, as well as the management of diaspora businesses and the impact of such investment to local economies.

Network diasporas are but the latest bridge connecting developing economy insiders, with their risk-mitigating knowledge and connections, to outsiders in command of technical know-how and investment capital. This book examines the interaction of expatriate talent with institutions in expatriates' countries of origin in an attempt to make the potential of diasporas and their knowledge a reality. The question of how to trigger and sustain such a virtuous cycle is a central concern of this book. The focus is on the "how to" details of how to design effective diaspora networks and transform brain drain into brain gain.

In this book, international experts including academics, policymakers, private sector practitioners, and representatives of diaspora communities further our understanding of how the growing population of expatriates from the developing world can be effectively leveraged to promote development in their homelands. The contributors cover issues relating to diaspora diversity and its impact on development, the potential of expatriates to further entrepreneurship and business development in their homelands, the effectiveness of remittances in furthering inclusive development, and policies to better engage diasporas as drivers of development. Their analyses are supported by examples and case studies focusing on the experiences of specific diaspora networks, home country institutions promoting diaspora engagement, migrant entrepreneurs, and financial institutions facilitating remittances. The contributing experts and practitioners come from a range of public and private organizations and institutions including Microfinance International Corporation, Western Union, Citibank, the Indus Entrepreneurs, Highland Tea Company, Chile Global, World Bank, United Nations, Inter-American Dialogue, African Foundation for Development, and The George Washington University. Realizing the Development Potential of Diasporas draws from papers originally presented during a Rockefeller Foundation meeting in 2008 and subsequently updated, as well as from discussions and research from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) and the United Nations Development Program and from meetings of the United Nations General Assembly.

Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff examines the importance of digital disaporas and explores their implications for security and development policy.