FA-5 Relational Remittances: Privileged Migrants Reimagining Development as Equitable Relationships with the Marginalized

Governments of migrant-receiving nations, migration policy think tanks, international funding institutions and the United Nations and allied institutions have commended the Indian diaspora for its efforts in leveraging Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for development projects in India and for the remittances they send to India. Both policy and academic research have studied migrant host-home relating using the predefined category of remittances to the homeland. Remittances conceptualize diaspora giving primarily in economic terms and where sociocultural aspects of diaspora relating are acknowledged within this framing, contributions towards development are described as the transfer of social and cultural skills that can put citizens of India at an advantage as members of a globalized workforce. This project argues for the need to be cognizant of theoretical definitions of terms such as ‘diaspora’ and ‘development’ with which we attempt to describe people and their ways of relating to others as they experience and practice mobility. Through an ethnographic study, this project presents the migrants’ own imagining of development in India and alternative discourses about privileged migration from India. The site of study is the Association for India’s Development, a volunteer-run non-profit organization in the US. Ethnographic observations and interviews with members of this organization afford a more expansive understanding of diaspora-assisted development, beyond social and cultural remittances. These privileged migrants from India necessarily link their imagining of development to a more equitable relating between the privileged migrants and marginalized communities in India.