Doctoral Dissertation Research: State-Making, Migration, and Development

The New School, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Doctoral student Monica Fagioli (The New School University), under the supervision of Dr Janet Roitman, will conduct research on the participation of diaspora populations in state processes and programs in their countries of origin. The researcher will focus on the case of the Somali diaspora in a United Nations Development Program and International Organization of Migration (UNDP-IOM) project, the "Qualified Expatriate Somali Technical Support- Migration for Development in Africa" or QUESTS-MIDA. The central research question addresses the relationship between transnational governance and state-making processes: how is transnational governance enacted in practice in places like Puntland and Somaliland, where a sovereign central state has not existed for nearly twenty years? This project will include twelve months of multi-sited fieldwork in five key sites: Washington D.C. (U.S.A.), London (U.K.), Nairobi (Kenya), Hargeysa (Somaliland) and Garowe (Puntland/Somalia). The research will use participant observation, unstructured interviews and archival work and will be divided into two phases. In the first phase, data will be collected on a) the processes of mobilization of the Somali diaspora; and b) the ways in which the opportunities offered by QUESTS-MIDA are taken into consideration by Somalis in the U.S. and the U.K. In the second phase, evidence will be collected on a) how QUESTS-MIDA defines the skills which should be transferred to Somaliland and Puntland and how its priorities of intervention come into being; and b) how Somali diaspora and Somali civil servants involved in QUESTS-MIDA projects actually enact their daily duties and pursue their official tasks within the institutions that UNDP-IOM has targeted for capacity building. The importance of this study lies in its contribution to expanding an understanding of state-building processes. Further, the study provides a critical understanding of what policy-makers call the "migration-development nexus," the recent redefinition of migration as an instrument for national development. Funding this research also supports the education of a social scientist.