Beverley Mullings

The ‘Diaspora option’, migration and the changing political economy of development

ABSTRACT Influenced by the recognition of the social and economic value of migrant exchanges, the shift to a Post-Washington Consensus, and the rise of India and China as emerging economies – the ‘Diaspora option’ is becoming a significant component of the development strategies of countries with large migrant populations across Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Eastern Europe. In this paper we examine the political economy within which the Diaspora option has emerged and the broader implications of the discursive and material ways that migrants are being incorporated as professionalized partners in development. Drawing on a case study of the World Banks Africa Diaspora Program we examine the underlying assumptions, ideologies and silences upon which this policy option rests. We conclude that the emerging Diaspora option should be approached more critically because the current celebration of these strategies obscures the selective and narrow neoliberal orientation; the assumptions that they make about the nature of diasporic engagement, and their increasing reliance on migrant populations to shoulder the investment risks associated with social transformation.

Women Rule? Globalization and the feminization of managerial and professional workspaces in the Caribbean.: ¿Las mujeres mandan? Globalización y la Feminización de los espacios gerenciales y profesionales en el Caribe

The visibility of Caribbean women in occupational positions and workspaces once reserved for men and for people of European descent in the Caribbean raises new challenges to the theorization of the transforming relationship between gender and global capitalism. To what extent are these changes in the professional and managerial recruitment practices of the finance and banking industry constitutive of a new relationship between capitalism and patriarchy? Does the increased number of women in organizational positions that they were once excluded from indicate a challenge to forms of gender inequality in the region? This article argues that in the Caribbean, the particularities of race, class and gender relations have been such that educated women have become significant beneficiaries of the economic transformations in these countries. While it is clear that education has allowed women to challenge patriarchal structures in both the workplace and the home, these achievements have not been sufficient to challenge the gender inequalities that continue to subordinate women in this region. The article concludes that in order to truly empower all women, the very structures of income and class inequality that have facilitated the feminization managerial and professional workspaces must be challenged. La visibilidad de las mujeres del Caribe que ocupan posiciones y espacios laborales tradicionalmente reservados para los hombres y personas de ascendencia europea en el Caribe produce nuevos desafíos en la conceptualización de la relación siempre variable entre género y capitalismo global. ¿En qué medida son estos cambios en las prácticas de reclutamiento profesional y gerencial en la industria financias y bancarias indicativas de una nueva relación entre el capitalismo y el patriarcado? ¿Son las cifras crecientes de mujeres en posiciones organizacionales, de las tradicionalmente fueron excluidos, un desafío a las formas de desigualdad de género en el Caribe? Este artículo propone que en el Caribe anglófono las particularidades de las relaciones entre raza, clase y género han sido de tal manera que las mujeres educadas se hicieron beneficiarias importantes de las transformaciones económicas en estos países. Aunque está claro que la educación ha permitido que las mujeres como individuas desafíen las estructuras patriarcales en el trabajo y en el hogar, estos logros no han sido suficientes a desafiar las desigualdades de género que continúan subordinando las mujeres en esta región. Este artículo concluye que para empoderar a todas las mujeres, las mismas estructuras de desigualdad de ingreso y de clase que han facilitado la feminización de los espacios laborales gerenciales y profesionales, debe ser desafiado.