ABSTRACT
The new millennium has witnessed the proliferation of scholarship and research projects focusing on the nexus of migration and development (M&D). The dominant tendency in M&D research has been to assess the impact of diaspora’s involvement in homeland development, often approached within the national frame of reference. More recently, attempts to problematize the nation-state-centred logic in M&D research have emerged, although generally theoretically informed discussions on what this means for conceptualizations of “development” and “diaspora” have been rare. Drawing from scholarship on transnationalism, we discuss the transnational frame as a way to problematize the nation-state-centred logic in understandings of “diaspora” and “development” in M&D research. This opens a venue to examine the means, motivations and agency in terms of diaspora members’ – and their descendants’ – cross-border activities with clear development goal towards the sending region and to better grasp how diasporas operate as transnational agents of social change and development.
