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

移民汇款，即外国工人汇回原籍国的收入部分，在2006年达到2760亿美元。调查这一硬通货来源的实证学者得出结论，家庭将大部分汇款用于基本需求——住房、药品和食品——然而，一些研究报告称，有一部分用于“生产性”目的。现有文献将家庭作为主要的分析框架，使公民、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黯然失色。有证据表明，传统移民输出国的社区正在通过汇集汇款为社区项目提供资金来改善社会福利，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，并将促进汇款集体使用的因素理论化，特别是移民及其在东道国所体现的公民协会如何在提供公共产品和服务时谈判选举过程的替代机制。本项目认为，为了解释汇款使用的差异，研究人员必须走出民族国家的范围，评估移民跨境交流及其创造的经济和经济外联系。移民导致社会网络跨越国界的空间扩展，从而形成新的政治机构和公民实践形式。本研究考察了在一个综合的、互动的框架内，在不同空间尺度上运作的多个行动者和结构的相互作用，为解释协同作用或共同生产创造了机会：国家、社会和移民行动者之间建设性的相互支持模式。该项目采用基于实地调查的多方法方法，解释了1990年至今墨西哥各城市汇款使用的变化。大型计量经济学分析考察了汇款对获得公共产品和服务的影响，同时向美国所有注册移民协会分发了一份调查工具，收集了有关集体汇款做法和公私伙伴关系的数据。对移徙者和政府行为者的后续访谈对定量组成部分进行三角测量，并生成关于合作生产过程的描述性数据。公共工程项目数据库和积累的描述性数据属于公共领域。这篇论文也将使听到移民的声音和他们的行动，导致政治和社会重组在他们的家园社区，在当代移民政策改革的讨论中特别突出。

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.