Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Migrant Collective Remittances: Transforming Public Works, Local Government and Transnational Civil Society

政治学博士论文研究：移民集体汇款：改变公共工程、地方政府和跨国民间社会

• 批准号: 0819245
• 负责人: Steven Wilkinson
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-08-15 至 2010-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0819245&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

Migrant remittances, the portion of earnings foreign workers send back to their countries of origin, reached $276 billion in 2006. Empirical scholarship investigating this source of hard currency concludes that households spend the majority of remittances on basic needs-housing, medicine, food-however, some studies report a portion for 'productive' ends. The extant literature privileges the household as the dominant analytic framework overshadowing the collective efforts of citizens, migrants abroad and government actors to improve local conditions with remittance income. There is evidence to suggest that communities across traditional migrant-sending states are improving social welfare by pooling remittances to finance community projects, although there is currently no data to permit systematic analysis of the determinants of this phenomenon or the outcomes produced. This dissertation rectifies this empirical gap and theorizes the factors that facilitate collective uses of remittances, specifically how migrants and the civic associations they embody in host countries negotiate an alternative mechanism to the electoral process in the provision of public goods and services.This project argues that to explain the variation in remittance-use, researchers must move outside the confines of the nation-state to evaluate migrant cross-border exchanges and the economic and extra-economic linkages they create. Migration induces a spatial extension of social networks across borders enabling the formation of new forms of political agency and civic practice. This research examines the interplay of multiple actors and structures operating at different spatial scales within one comprehensive, interactive framework, creating the opportunity to explain synergy or co-production: patterns of constructive mutual support between state, society and migrant actors, Using a multi-methodological approach grounded in fieldwork, the project explains variation in remittance use across Mexican municipalities from 1990 to the present. The large-n econometric analysis examines the affect of remittances on access to public goods and services, while a survey instrument disseminated to all registered migrant associations in the U.S. collects data on collective remittance practices and public-private partnerships. Follow-up interviews with migrants and government actors triangulate the quantitative component and generate descriptive data on the process of co-production. The database of public works projects and descriptive data accumulated are for the public domain. This dissertation will also make audible the voices of migrants and their actions that lead to political and social re-organization in their home communities, particularly salient during contemporary discussions of immigration policy reform.

移民汇款（外国工人汇回原籍国的收入的一部分）在 2006 年达到 2,760 亿美元。调查这一硬通货来源的实证研究得出的结论是，家庭将大部分汇款用于基本需求——住房、药品、食品——然而，一些研究报告称，一部分汇款用于“生产”目的。现有文献将家庭视为主要的分析框架，掩盖了公民、海外移民和政府行为者通过汇款收入改善当地条件的集体努力。有证据表明，传统移民输出国的社区正在通过汇集汇款资助社区项目来改善社会福利，尽管目前没有数据可以对这一现象的决定因素或产生的结果进行系统分析。本文纠正了这一经验差距，并对促进集体使用汇款的因素进行了理论化，特别是移民和他们在东道国所代表的公民协会如何协商提供公共产品和服务的选举过程的替代机制。该项目认为，为了解释汇款使用的变化，研究人员必须跳出民族国家的范围来评估移民跨境交流和汇款使用的变化。 它们创造了经济和超经济联系。移民导致社会网络跨越国界的空间延伸，从而形成新形式的政治机构和公民实践。本研究探讨了在一个综合性互动框架内，在不同空间尺度上运作的多个行为体和结构之间的相互作用，为解释协同作用或共同生产创造了机会：国家、社会和移民行为体之间建设性相互支持的模式。该项目采用基于实地工作的多方法论，解释了从 1990 年至今墨西哥各城市汇款使用的变化。大规模经济计量分析研究了汇款对获得公共产品和服务的影响，而向美国所有注册移民协会分发的调查工具则收集有关集体汇款做法和公私伙伴关系的数据。对移民和政府行为者的后续访谈对定量部分进行了三角测量，并生成有关联合生产过程的描述性数据。公共工程项目数据库和所积累的描述性数据属于公共领域。本论文还将让人们听到移民的声音及其行动，这些声音导致了家乡社区的政治和社会重组，特别是在当代移民政策改革的讨论中尤为突出。