This book considers the activities of migrant organizations in the face
of state diaspora engagement policies in their members' countries of
origin. The case study is the Programa Tres por Uno para los Migrantes
in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. The research uses events - understood
as festivities and work meetings - as lenses. They offer a door to
access the actors' reality and furthermore serve as an object of
analysis themselves.
The study combines analysis of biographical interviews at the
microlevel with that of organizations' work meetings at the mesolevel
and the analysis of the staging in public events as way to access the
macrolevel. The work concludes that institutionalizing collective
remittances enhances the capital- skills (cultural capital), relations
(social capital) and economic resources (economic capital)- generated by
lives and practices taking place in a transnational way. The work
proposes the term diasporic capital. Diasporic capital creates
the identity of and nurtures the belonging to a distinct class. As a
result, migrant organizations participating in the Tres por Uno Program
are given legitimacy to speak in the name of all the nationals living
abroad and their leaders to claim a higher social status.
Carlos Villela obtained a PhD in International Development Studies
(Summa Cum Laude) and a MA in Development Management by the Institute of
Development Research and Development Policy at the Ruhr-University
Bochum, Germany. He also holds a Magister Administrationis from the
University of the Western Cape in South Africa and a BA in Business
Management from the Universidad Tecnológica Centroamericana in
Honduras. Dr. Villela has worked for governmental organizations and
international cooperation organizations in Honduras, Germany and Myanmar.